Adventures of a Tourist

It was raining in Beijing the whole of Thursday. Crossing the streets with umbrellas with everyone else carrying umbrellas was really not an easy feat! Having to avoid greenish brown puddles of water on the street only made it harder. By the time we found a new dinner venue, my jeans were soaked halfway up my calves! Beer and meat on skewers (kebabs or satay) make excellent dinner on a cold rainy day, Ｉ must say. Oh and chicken hearts on a stick... so so so yummy!

Our beer and kebab/satay dinner...

Yesterday, we looked into our guidebooks and decided to get a traditional 中国按摩 Chinese massage. Mum and dad, don't get all worked up at the price of the massage.. it wasn't that expensive. But yeah. We decided to go to a place called Bodhi that's near the Worker's Stadium. It was quite a feat for us to figure out how the Beijing subway system works. But we did a good job in the end. First, we could not find the subway station near PKU, and ended up getting these 2 very nice Chinese girls walk us all the way to the subway station (which was in the complete opposite direction). We had to transfer trains twice to get to our stop.

Trying to make out the subway system

A view of one of the subway stations.

This is my very first massage, and boy do I have the most awesome massage story to tell! Stephanie and I both got male masseuses (did I spell that right?) Never have I ever had a guy touch me at so many places in my life! (that sounded so wrong, but it's true!) First things first, my massage bed was creaky, so with every pressure point of my body that he massaged, the bed creaked. I swear that my masseuse was actually mounted up on me while massaging my back. I mean it (the massage) felt good, but it was really rather awkward. And it became even more awkward when he massaged my umm... butt. And kinda did this patting motion up and down my butt. You must already be laughing by now... I felt like laughing when it was happening. haha. Partly because I could feel my fats jiggling with every pat he made and partly because, you just have to laugh you know. Right now my shoulders are really really sore and even a soft pat on them hurts. From what I gathered from my masseuse, my shoulders are really tense. And I could really feel that my right shoulder muscles hurt a lot more during the massage than my left. Oh, and during my massage, my spa uniform top kept riding up my back, and my poor masseuse kept pulling it down for me. Which made me feel extra bad, because I kept wondering if I should be pulling it down myself. In the end, I just let him pull it down my back just about 10 times throughout my 1 hour massage. haha. He also did this little lifting up thing with my legs... practically half my body was lifted off the bed. And he also did it with my upper body. Poor guy, I could feel his heavy breathing during my massage. My tension in my muscles must have needed too much strength to massage.

That's Bodhi's in that turn of the alley

And that's Stephanie and I on our massage beds in what looks like jail uniform. The place was really 'zen-like' and tranquil. It was cool! My first massage...!

Then we decided to continue walking on down to Sanlitun 三里屯 to walk around. That place is really a hub for foreigners. There was a huge outdoor mall there that architecturally surpassed outdoor malls that I have been to in the US. This mall had all the American brands that you could think of.. Apple, American Outfitters, Northface, United Colors.... everything!

That's the mall. Doesn't it look cool?!

On the way to Sanlitun, guess what we managed to spot? Hooters China!

Our most amazing feat of the day... our dinner venue! We are so good at finding the most delicious dinner places... I am so proud of us! haha. We had dinner at a Noodle Bar that we found in some obscure street near the mall. Actually, we found the window to the place along the obscure street and had absolutely no idea how to get into it. The shops on both sides of it had these stair-ladder things leading to it but this shop did not.

See how there's kinda like a little door on the left of the window? We contemplated climbing the steps of the shop next to it and then climbing over the baricade between both shops but it turns out that the 'floor' leading to the door was too flimsy. We ended up calling the number on the window and saying, "对不起．我们在你的饭馆外面可是我们不知道这么近去．" - "Sorry, we're outside your shop but we have no idea how to go in" The owner ended up looking out the window and pointing to us the directions to walk around the shoplot to the back. Then he came out the back alley to show us which entrance to go in to. Turns out, our 15 minutes of standing outside the noodle bar and staring at it while scratching our heads and pointing was well worth it. The food was delicious. Sure, as usual we had no idea how to read the menu and could only understand half of what the 老板 (restaurant owner) was saying but all that we ordered.. SO SO SO YUMMY! We ate in a truly authentic family-run, tiny restaurant that people only know by word of mouth, or stumbling-upon-luck.

This is the entrance to the noodle bar. We actually had to walk through a tiny L-shaped kitchen to get to the eating area. It was truly an adventure.

A very very productive touristy day indeed...! Oh and on our way back.. guess what we saw... a guy peeing by the side of the street into the bushes. He wasn't even peeing facing a wall, nope.. he was peeing into bushes facing the street with his back facing a restaurant. A busy street that people were walking to and fro. Definitely not a pretty sight, not something I wanted to see either.