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The Summer Palace, chillis and chinese birds!

I awoke this morning about 9am feeling pretty tired, but expecting Alex and Ack to be moving to my hostel before we could spend a long day seeing what Beijing has to offer...how wrong was I?  They rang my hostel at 9am, to be told that there was no room whatsoever for them after being told there definately would be the night before.  They then spent the next 4 hours trudging around the city looking for a place to stay, before coming back to my hostel and find a bed no problem!!!  What a pain in the arse.  With half of the day watsed, we decided that we could do the Summer Palace in the afternoon no problem, so we set off in a taxi (they are really cheap here, and the public transport is crap!).

The Summer Palace turned out to be really nice.  We could have spent a whole day there easily though as the place is so big, like everything else in Beijing.  They have a series of really beautiful palaces and pagodas with a huge lake in the middle disected by loads of bridges.  We had to leave sooner than we would have liked as they were shutting up for the night, so we boarded another taxi for the ride back to the hostel at rush hour.  Never catch a taxi at rush hour in Beijing!  You hardly go anyhwere, and it turned out being really expensive (if you consider 7 quid for an hour in a taxi expensive) for Chinese standards.

Chuffed with the fact we had actually done some proper sightseeing and enjoyed it, we celebrated by going to a little chinese restaurant near the hostel, where it cost one quid each for more food than we could eat and four 660ml beers.  One of our tasks on this trip is to try and convert Ackroyd to eating really hot food instead of his usual Korma's.  Well, with part of this meal was a dish with shit loads of chillis in it that even made me sweat, so you could imagine Ackroyds reaction when he couldnt feel his mouth after a few mouthfuls!!  He was subsequently completely insane for the following 48 hours (although im not sure if this was anything to do with alcohol or the chillis!)

As the beers we had with our meal slipped down with consumate ease, we decided to have a few more i the hostel.  After all, it would be rude not too as they cost less than water at about 15p a bottle (660ml).  After about four more of these, we decided that it would be rude not to get dressed up and hit a local club (turned out to be a very plush club called Babyface) after a quick visit to the Bus Bar for a few double voddies.  The drinks in this club are on a par with english prices which is about 20 times the price as at the hostel, so me and Alex thought it would be a great idea to play minesweeper (basically where you scan the club for full drinks and help yourself.  Normally people are so druk they dont even notice their drink has gone).  This culminated in us talking to some Irish guys who taking pity, asked us to share their bottle of Jack Daniels with them.  We needed no invite and we soon necking them back and hitting the dance floor to try and dance.  Sorry parents, but i got lucky with a Chinese bird, and didnt have to pay thank god!!!!

We eventually hit the sack at 5am and well and truly wiped out any chance of seeing anything the next day....i think these boys are a bad influence on me! 

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