Yes, I do feel a bit of an idiot. Apparently it is common knowledge that Facebook, Google and such like do not work in China – doh!
Right now, I am now sitting in the cute lounge of the hotel covered in pastry and cookie crumbs. Note: carb loading.
The lounge is on the roof of the building with a glass roof and walls. On a raised wooden decking are a couple of small wooden tables surrounded by cushions. There are no chairs. We are sitting on the floor drinking tea from a beautiful Chinese tea set, surrounded by flowers and tasteful trinkets. It’s far too sophisticated for someone like me 😉
Erik is here! He arrived this morning at 10.00, just in time for breakfast. I haven’t seen him since September 2015. In fact, that is when I met him. It was Judgement Day The Unknown, a 36 hour endurance event in Wales. After 34.5 hours, I saw a man with his heavy backpack slumped against a tree looking sad. He said he couldn’t carry on with the event as he had injured himself. I told him he only had another 1.5 hours to go and that he shouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. My friends and I distributed the contents of his pack between us, rallied up some more troops and all got to the finish line together. That is how Erik and I became friends. And here we are in China. He bought me a cheesy Australia T-shirt from, you guessed it, Australia. He knew I’d hate it because it is pink. I sabotaged it instantly : )
We’ve walked around Beijing all day on the hunt for Geocaches. Our grand total of ‘Found It’ caches was a big fat zero! I’ve really let myself down. My first opportunity to do a foreign geocache and we didn’t find a single one. We were mostly concentrating on where to buy food though.
After 3 failed Geocaches, our tummies took charge. I was kind of scared when walking into a riverside restaurant as we had absolutely no idea what to order. Erik doesn’t eat fish. I don’t eat meat. The food counter was full of unidentifiable food including what looked like fried chicken feet, placed right next to chunks of cake, next to green slimy stuff. Weird. We were very hungry and ended up pointing at things in the hope we’d be ok. Far too much food arrived and it all tasted great.
With tummies fit to burst, we then got involved in #StopDropAndYoga China style. Doing handstands in a dress in the middle of the park was a little challenging but I did do my best one yet – it must have been the pressure of the small crowd watching me : )
En route back, we hit a fruit shop and paid way too much for a bag of fruit, then to a pastry shop and ordered far too much again. There was me thinking China would be cheap, perhaps another thing I was naive about.
I was going for 30 days with no sugar and am currently on day 20, but with Sunday’s marathon approaching, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to eat a little?
Back at the hotel, I was so excited to indulge in a delicious coconut covered, meringue style cake….. It was like the McDonald’s BigMac advert – eyes wide, looking loving into the cake, slow motion, eyes closed, smiling, take an enormous bite……… ERGH!!!!!!!!!!! It’s salty and squishy and sweet with bits in. I’ve just asked the lady who works here what it is. It’s a soft creamy cake made of meat and is apparently very famous in China. Oh dear. Good job I ordered an emergency cookie as back up!
My evening will be spent mostly relaxing, eating (a very overpriced) watermelon, drinking Chinese tea and going on the hunt for more food. The tough life of LT.
