Mis-Adventures On A Rickashaw

Today we were set free in Beijing. We made some plans and even had our itinery writen in Chinese characters. We set off for the Lama Temple. We entered the doors of the temple grounds and saw many people burning incense. As the incense is burning the chant and make gestures and the kneel and put their head to the ground. One lady actually laid all the way down and repeated her prayer about ten times. The temple was very beautiful and we even saw the large Budda that made it into the Guiness World record book. I have only seen movies of prople worshipping idols, today I saw it first hand.

After the temple we walked to the Hu Tong area. It was a fun and interesting walk thruogh an old part of town. We managed to buy lunch by looking at pictures on a menu. It was not too bad but someof the dishes we really spicy.

After lunch Bonnie and I took off to go to a flea market on Slik street. I did not buy anything but I had fun looking. We had a little extra time before we wanted to ge back to the hotel so we decided to go to Hard Rock Cafe to get a shirt for Joe. We waved down a taxi only to find out he had no idea what we were saying. We had the idea of finding someone who coould write down the characters tha said Hard Rock Cafe. We found someone who spoke German but understood some English who had a girl friend who could write Chinese.

After about 20 minutes of being turned down by every cab we finally found one. We jumped in and then showed him our chinese writing.He drove us about a half a block and asked to see the paper again. After looking at it he stopped the car ad mtioned for us to ge out. He kind of looked disguisted with us and we thought he didnt want to take us becuase it was just a short distance. We tried waving down another taxi but no one was stopping. We thought if we are too close for a taxi perhaps we can get there on a rickashaw.

We found a lady with a rickashaw and handed her our paper. She drove us a few feet until she found a man she knew driving another rickashaw and motioned for us to go with him.

After negotating the price for taking us to the hard rock cafe , we sat down. We rode for about six or so blocks and he stopped and said we were there. WE WERE NOT THERE. We were in a pretty bad looking part of town. He kept saying this is it and we kept saying no it isnt. We paid him half of what he wanted and he left.

We stood there in the middle of this bad part of town and looked around. We saw stores that said Romance Cellar and Sex Center... We looked again at the store the taxi dropped us off at and saw that it said Woodys. Things were starting to make sense when we noticed another rickashaw driver slow down and stare at us and gave us kind of a leering look. Bonnie was just about flip him off because we thought it was the same driver that left us standed in sex district of Beijing but just in time we realized he was someone different. We decided to get a cab...if we could possibe get one... and just go back to the hotel.

After making it back to the hotel we asked the front desk about the chinese charater that caused so much confusion. Bonnie was told tat the literal translation of Hard Rock Cafe was ....hard as a stone... some how through all of the translations we ended up there.

The rest of the evening we spent going to Snack street. We saw people eating some pretty nasy things like roaches and snakes. This was a cook to order market and things were on sticks ready to be putn the fire.We did not stay too long some of the smells amost madeus throw up.

With a few hours of the evening left we headed to the right hard rock cafe and got Joe a shirt. It was a long trip through some crazy drivng but at least we didnt end up at Woodys again!