The Amazing Eurasian Odyssey
as told by characters Matthew Garrick and Stephen Williams
Part 10: The Imperial City, Part 2

We started our hike on The Great Wall of China realizing we had a few dollars, which would be stretched rather thin when we needed to buy tons of water for a six- mile walk. Some sections were uphill and incredibly steep. The view was beautiful. The wall snakes over mountains with a flowing elegance not often seen in cold stone.

We made it through alive, a bit sunburned, and were whisked away a few minutes later to a restaurant included in the transportation. Except for drink, of course, for which we had no further yuan, I managed to convince the people to accept some leftover Vietnamese Dong. I later found out that Vietnam money is essentially worthless and impossible to exchange outside of that country.

We rolled back home tired. We decided unlimited drink at Outback was in order, but no more expensive food, so we headed that way.

The next day we slept in before heading to the train station to pick up a certain Ms. Leki Lai, a fellow student from Macau of whom I am personally rather fond.

We all headed back to Tiananmen Square to Mao's mausoleum, where his refrigerated corpse lies for all to see. When we arrived, we found the building and Mao's pickled body is under refurbishment for most of the year in anticipation of the hordes of Olympic spectators who will undoubtedly come to gaze upon ol' Frosty in awe, or perhaps at least mild discontent. Our hopes were dashed. This is the second failure in our Dead Communist Leaders tour. Hopefully, we will have better luck in Russia.

After that, Leki insisted we try the Peking Duck at a famous restaurant Chairman Mao supposedly frequented. The roasted duck was rolled out by the servers and expertly cut into about a hundred different slices. Without a doubt, it was very delicious!

The next day, Leki and I headed to the Forbidden City. Matthew saw it during his visit in February, and had no interest in seeing it again.

Instead, he headed off to find the Olympic stadium. Matthew reported that it was crazy looking; in fact, it has been nicknamed "The Bird's Nest." Clearly, there is still a significant amount of ongoing construction.

The Forbidden City really cannot be accurately described in words. After passing under the picture of Mao, one enters the first courtyard, which was huge; however, each succeeding courtyard dwarfs the next several times over. The buildings are enormous. An old saying goes that if someone in the royal family were to sleep in a different room each night, it would take about 25 years to get through them all.

There were a number of museum- style exhibits, showing pottery and art styles from the older eras.

As neat as it was, it has unfortunately been touristified in the past several years. Leki said they had even opened a Starbucks inside the complex at one point.

I read a lot about the Beijing Zoo. It seems it is always in the news for breeding some rare animal.

The zoo had a nice variety of animals, though I question some of the conditions there. For example, some endangered creatures, which could be particularly valuable on black markets were housed in glass exhibits. It was clear the glass was cracked in several areas and been caulked in an effort to keep it together.

One particularly sad moment was at the brown bear exhibit where four were housed in an outdoor area. Perhaps they had been performing bears in the past, because they gladly begged on their hind legs and their backs for the tiniest morsel of food which the locals were happy to supply.

We found Matthew on our way back, and he had seen the stadium, and it looked fairly neat.

The next day we were up early to be at the train heading for Irkutsk, Russia. I bid a sad farewell to Leki before boarding. Could someone get this girl a green card, please?