I gave up... What a wuss part 4: Beijing

Truly massive. And not in a way where any particular area has a different character, at least as far as I could tell. Put me in any street, and I was lost. Not least because I couldn't read any signs at all. This didn't matter quite so much in Harbin because it wasn't anywhere near as big, and we generally only went in one direction. But In Beijing you have to rely on the English street names that you can't pronounce and that the taxi drivers therefore can't understand or read what you've got written down. Which is interesting. When we first arrived, we spent a good hour wandering around the taxi rank with Alex getting annoyed at me for refusing to pay large sums of money to someone who was first convinced we wanted to find a hotel, then get to the airport. When we eventually found a driver who spoke English, we were still overcharged for the trip to the youth hostel and I was shaken and had never felt so isolated.

The hostel was very nice; in the end it was very convenient and very well set-up, nice rooms, a communal area, computers with good internet, staff that all speak English very well and really extremely cheap to boot. It was 2 minutes from a metro stop which as of yet only has 3 lines, but is still very useful. We were put in a room with 6 beds, but there turned out to only be one other person there; an Australian called aargh just a sec eerm Liz? I think... don't hold me to that... who introduced us to a load more Australians:

Activities partaken of with the Australians:
1)Turning up to a festival just as it ended... but you can't have it your way all the time!
2)Japanese meal: I spilt stuff and was told that I can't use chopsticks, but the food was good
3)Expat bar with dice drinking game that I can't remember, which is the sign of a good drinking game
4)Karioke! The greatest night out you can have in China or indeed anywhere, especially with Australians.
5)Buying a mobile phone for someone. Admittedly not a high point. But my god they were cheap.
6)Hanging out in their flat.

Me and Alex also did the normal Beijing sightseeing trail with the forbidden city (lots of old stuff, to be honest that doesn't get me very excited... and there was a starbucks actually in there, which is disgusting. And a lot of it was closed for refurbishment), Tian'men square (huuuge, again well worth seeing, and if you want to get, for example, one of the little red books that everyone seems to be trying to sell you HAGGLE LIKE HELL!! Get it down to at least a fifth of what they first ask for, seriously everyone is trying to rip you off), golden gate, and later with two of Alex's friends we went to the gardeney place... y'know, with the echo wall... the summer palace or something? You can talk to eachother for behind two buildings! Pretty cool. Even though the main building was again closed for refurbishment, because of the Beijing 2008 games as it turns out. So not really particularly good timing to visit China really... oh well. And we went to karioke again.

I had already decided that I was going home fairly soon after arriving in Beijing, after never feeling 100% well and just so insecure and isolated, and had spoken to Alex a few times about it. The day before I left, we went to see the great wall which was spectacular; we went to a bit which steamed up the side of a mountain, revealing an amazing view of the continuing stretch of wall and foreign countryside. It was amazing, even though we probably didn't get the most fair deal getting there and back in the world.

I flew home the next morning to an empty house and spent a month trying unsuccessfully to post some stuff Alex gave me to post. It was not a good time. I lost the money for the remaining plane tickets and travel insurance, and despite parting on what I thought were good terms Alex stopped speaking to me. It was stay and be miserable, as far as I could see at the time, or come back and be miserable but secure. I know I should have stuck it out, but at the time it just wasn't an option. I had to come home.