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Beihai, China
21° 29' N 109° 5' E
Oct 15, 2005 03:43
Distance 169km

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Other entries in Beihai

Golden beaches at last

Text written in: English

For once we got up reasonably early (9.30am) as we are heading for the seaside at BeiHai today.  We walked to what we thought was the bus station, only to find out they sell the tickets here, but the bus station is just outside of the city, so we had to catch another bus to get there, adding a further 30 minutes to the trip.

Once at the bus station, we crammed down a KFC ( it was the only food there) in the 10 minutes we had before our bus left.  The bus was pretty crappy and had awful suspension and played non-stop crap Chinese music all the way - meaning no sleep for the happy travellers on the three hour journey.

We arrived in BeiHai and on first impressions it looked pretty hideous, but then we are beginning to learn that the area around transport hubs are generally pretty rank areas.  Think of the areas around Nottingham train and bus stations and you will realise what i mean.  We caught a taxi to Silver Beach so we wouldnt have to stay in the city, and the taxi driver automatically took us to the most expensive hotel in town (only 30 quid per night between us), but we decided we couldnt afford this level of luxury, so we headed further down the beach and found a pleasant and clean hotel for half the price.  Although this one didnt have snooker tables, a pool and a bowling alley in it!!!

Ackroyd was feeling pretty ill, and we think it might be something to do with starting to take the anti-malarials, but this didnt stop me and Al heading down the beach to check out the local women!  It seemed really nice - the sand was white and the water was clean and warm, but why the hell do no chinese women wear bikinis???  That is just plain wrong.  I then made the inspired purchase of a football that will now travel around the world with me in its little mesh bag.....yey.

For dinner we decided that we would have seafood seeing as we are by the sea and we ended up in a restaurant where you pick the actual live fish you want to eat from the tanks and they just fish them out and cook them up for you.  With the help of a local guy from the street who spoke english, we ordered king prawns, some kind of shrimp and Pearl fish, we only chose this fish because it was the only non-tropical looking one.  The fish was pretty rank, but the rest was good (even though it actually made Alex spew), even if we did get grossly overcharged.

After a few cheeky beers from the local supermarket, the lads were persuaded to get a taxi into town by a taxi driver.  I took some persuading, but finally caved in and we were off into BeiHai for a night out.  The taxi driver took us straight to the eleventh floor of a hotel, a brothel, where we saw people having sex through the windows, but politely declined the offer and asked to be taken to a bar.  Ack looked like he wanted to rip the taxi drivers head off as he had misinterpreted the guy and thought he wanted us to get a room with him?!?!

The first bar (KTV) we went to was shite because you have to pay a lot of money to hire a room and sing karaoke and stuff, so we just had the one and moved on to Tommy's bar which was run by an Aussie.  We drank quite a bit in there as it was cheap, they had a pool table and a few expats to chat crap to (all with young Chinese bits on the side).  I introduced myself as Mario for the night for reasons unbeknown to me, and we stumbled out of there about 2am to the nearest late bar (M Bar).  We didnt stay here for long as we were very drunk and had a small fall out, so we got a taxi back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.