|
October
13, 1999
This is
Jeff Okubo the with your Around The World 1999 team. Today we visited the
Beijing zoo!
Land Rover
Update: Unfortunately, they have not arrived yet. Soon ... very soon. We
hope! Well, today was not something you do every day. We took a cab
across Beijing to the Iranian Embassy so we could obtain our visas for
Iran. You cannot do that in the U.S. for a very simple reason: there is
no Iranian Embassy in the U.S! We stopped at our first cash machine,
which was a treat since we could all use a little extra yuan at this
point. You take cash machines for granted until you go to another country
that doesn't rely on them like we do. We also stopped for our first REAL
cup of coffee. It's been Nescafe all the way up until this point. Talk
about something we REALLY take for granted back home. Thank you Peet's
once again for the generous coffee donation as it looks like we
definitely will need it on this journey. Anyway, the man making the
coffee looked like he was working on a science project rather than making
coffee. There were clear glass cylinders that the hot water was pumped
into, and the coffee dripped slowly from this setup into individual
servings. Impressive, and DELICIOUS coffee!! So, getting the visas was
interesting.
The cab
dropped us at "Embassy Row." We walked inside and thank
goodness the man at the desk could speak English --not to mention Chinese
and Farsi and probably a few other languages as well. Can you imagine
being able to speak English, Farsi and multiple Chinese dialects? It was
very impressive. We discovered that the Visas would cost $50 (U.S)
apiece. Not bad. However, to get them rushed -- which we needed -- would
cost $100! Looks like this trip will definitely be costing us a LOT more
than we anticipated. We filled out the paperwork and paid cash with U.S.
dollars. They assured us the visas would be ready tomorrow. So, with that
out of the way, it was off to the Beijing Zoo!
We really
got a taste of driving in one of the most populous cities in the world.
The drive to the embassy was crazy, but the drive to the zoo was even
crazier. We piled into cabs and drove across town through traffic that
makes driving in Silicon Valley seem like a cakewalk (more on that
later). Streams of cars in utter chaos -- that's just a normal day on the
roadways in Beijing. Our trusty Beijing guide, King was in charge of the
group again today. We have taken quite a liking to him. Also along with
us today was Mr. Lee, the man who will guide us all the way across China,
beyond Xining Province to the city of Golmund in Tibet. Mr. Lee is a very
quiet man, very tall, well dressed and has a serious air about him. We
wondered why he was so quiet but we soon learned that he didn't speak
English. Our tour guide -- across the entire country of China -- will
only speak Chinese. This is going to be interesting. I guess that's
better than if he only spoke English. We like Mr. Lee, we're just afraid
he might make us out for the bunch of buffoons that we are.
The zoo was
fun! None of us had been to an animal park in a while and we really
enjoyed ourselves. We did typical zoo stuff, eating ice-cream, watching
monkeys, gorillas, and panda bears scratch themselves...PANDA BEARS!
Giant pandas even! That was treat. We even got to watch one scratch his
butt on a big rock. It was very funny. There's a movie somewhere on this
very web page that shows it. We saw exotic birds from all over the world,
and lots of cute little kids who just loved practicing that good ol'
American "hello"! We also saw two tall, very attractive young
women at the zoo. We thought it would make a great snapshot for Doug to
take a picture in between them (in his shorts and flip flop sandals).
They agreed and we took a memorable photo. But something happened moments
before we parted ways. As the two women were walking away, one of them
spit on the ground. She made a loud snort, then a big spit -- right on the
ground! Apparently, an ancient belief in China is that swallowing your,
well, loogies, is not healthy -- so people spit constantly! It's gross.
The government is trying to educate everyone that this is indeed
unhealthy. Thank goodness our guides aren't "spitters". So what
better way to end a day of getting Iranian visas and visiting the Beijing
Zoo than by going to Pizza Hut! What a fiasco. We really ran into some
language problems here. Even with King helping us out, we somehow managed
to order one of everything! We had enough pizza and greasy appetizers to
feed all the animals at the zoo! Of course, Doug and I ate ourselves
silly. It was rough packing back into the tiny cabs back to the hotel. We
were very happy to get back and relax after a full day in Beijing.
Well that
does it for today's report. Thanks for tuning in, I'm going to bed.
|
