Beijing and the art of deception

We missed our flight. We died a little bit inside. We went home. We came back. We got an upgrade! Upgrades seem to be reserved for the rich or the unlucky - suddenly everything was great and before I'd even had time to finish watching my third film on the (very spacious) plane we were bumbling our way onto a bus in Beijing!

Beijing is fucking busy and a bit intimidating at first. The stream of cars, bikes and buses seemed completely unreasonable and we decided to get a tuctuc to the hostel to avoid adding to the manic roadrage around us. Then we decided to get out of the tuctuc and into a taxi because it became apparent that the driver was completely insane. And he hadn't even started driving! Incidentally, this was not the last crazy tuctuc driver we encountered in our first day in Beijing, we had as funny a near death experience as you could hope for on the way to the Forbidden City, but you will have to watch the video I shot to fully appreciate how driving towards an oncoming bus on the wrong side of the road can be funny.

The funniest part of the day, and the part which reflects what I suspect is an annoyingly large part of the Beijing experience was meeting our first friend! A Chinese art student spotted us looking lost and suggested that we go with him to an art gallery where we could see some of his work (which was very impressive!). It was suspiciously uncomfortable when we decided we weren't going to buy anything, but wasn't until we got back to our hostel that we spotted a large notice stuck to every bathroom door warning travellers not to be fooled by people claiming to be art students and offering to take you to their gallery. What a twat. I thought Alan wasn't a very Chinese name...

written by

steve_stamp on April 2, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: The art of being lost

tagged Beijing, Tuctuc and NearDeath

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i cant beleive you missed your flight... i mean alan!

written by anna mojab on April 3, 2009

wowza you have already done so much, i was sitting here thinking you have only been there for like 12 hours. SOLDIERS. xxxx

written by Sayhan on April 3, 2009

oh meant to say dnt trust any students or teachers in asia - always trying to sell you something!
will get on with that Thailand info today x

written by sarah on April 4, 2009

you are a legend Stampage....long may you travel!
MWAH xx

written by janey on April 6, 2009

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