Beijing, the pros and cons

Things I'll miss about Beijing:

• Beijing hot-pot, spicy Szichuan food, and the food in general. Only had one or two bad dishes in 2 months!


• Low prices. Beer for €1, a full 5- or 6-dish meal for maybe €3, a 45-minute taxi ride from one side of the city to the other for €4


• The Metro system - I'm going back to the DART now! :-(


• Being able to stick my hand out on any street at any time and have a taxi within about 30secs.


• Haggling in the marketplaces - it can be surprisingly fun once you get good at it. Rule of thumb, start at about 1/10th of what they do, and if they're not coming down in price fast enough, walk away. The more pissd off the look when you hand over the money, the better the deal you got :-)


• Hot chinese & korean women - seems they keep most of the good-looking ones at home!


• Walking through the hutongs, especially Dazhalan (just south of Tian'anmen) - they're tearing that one down in a few weeks.


• Weds night in Propaganda, my local club. 50 quai (€5) in on the door and all the free cocktails you can drink, plus wall-to-wall hot korean chicks!

Things I won't miss about Beijing

• Being able to talk to maybe 1 in 10 or even sometimes 1 in 20 ppl that you pass on the street


• Having to watch out for every chinese person that come up to you in the street "at random" and starts talking to you in english - they're all trying to scam you in some way


• "looka-looka, special friend price for you" - the pushyness of most of the stall owners in the market places - you take any more than 5 secs to glance at their stuff and they're in your face. SOme of them will actually grab you by the arm and try to drag you into their stall!


• Spitting, everywhere. The women wil be a little bit more ladylike and gob in the nearest bin, but the guys will just hock it up any old where.


• Coming home at the end of a night out with your clothes reekeing of fag smoke. How soon you forget!


• Static shocks. It hasn't rained for so long in Beijing and the air is so dry that you build up a static charge just walking around, and then you get a shock when you go to touch a door handle or something. Was really bad in my apartment - sometimes you could actually see a little electric arc going from my hand to the door!