Days 3 and 4

Day 3 of our journey was our last day in Beijing. We decided to take in some more of the popular sites in town. We started the morning off with the Lama Temple, home of the world's tallest Buddha carved out of a single tree.

We then slowly made our way to the Temple of Heaven, an enormous green space (see below) with gardens and buildings throughout that political and religious leaders would use to chill out when they needed some personal time.

We then made our way to the Pearl Market, somewhat of a Chinese shopping mall with hundreds of tiny stalls selling everything from groceries to electronics, clothing and jewelery. It's just like a North American mall except the stores are tiny and their owners yell at you to buy their stuff.

We then had to travel on an overnight train to Shanghai. We returned to the hostel, grabbed our bags and bid farewell to our newly made friends. We then went out into the street to get a taxi to the station but none of them would take us. In Beijing, taxis are cheap. 10 yuan ($1.50) for the first 3km then 2 yuan per kilometer thereafter. As a result, drivers prefer to take a lot of small fares and none wanted to take us half way across town in traffic. We eventually waved a 100 yuan bill ($15) at one of the drivers and he agreed to take us. When we finally paid him, he wouldn't accept our bribe and gave us full change.

The train to Shanghai was wonderful. We were in soft sleeper class. The rooms had 4 bunks so we shared with one other man who was certainly not a bother. There were nice white sheets and they had placed some fresh flowers in a small vase in the room. Needless to say, we arrived in Shanghai the next day well rested.

In Shanghai, we had a day of touring around, walking out to the very crowded Bund, riding the Shanghai Maglev (431km/h) and exploring the city.

It's incredible how much of a contrast there is between Biejing and Shanghai. We also checked into our new hostel and they pretty much gave us a suite. We have two double beds, a small kitchen area, two TVs and two swanky bathrooms all for less than $20/person/day.

In the evening, we went out to the Shanghai Acrobatic show. It's like cirque but without the million dollar sets. The show was great but somehow, I got pulled up on stage for the "throw knives at one of the audience members" part of the show. Now, we were sitting in the third last row in the theatre so I don't know why they picked me of all people to go up but they did and I nervously volunteered. On stage they covered my head with a jacket so that I wouldn't twitch and then threw 5 knives at me. The first two on either side of my head, then two more by my legs and the last one in between them. Turns out the joke was on me. I couldn't see what was going on since I had my head covered so I didn't know that they weren't actually throwing the knives, they were just getting placed there. I suppose that's why the audience was laughing so much. Ha ha.