Hello from Beijing!

I am staying with the Pig and my mother’s friends here and it is fabulous. Expatriate life is indeed exciting and very agreeable. The place here is located in sort of an expatriate village and developed by a Singapore company. The house has three storeys. Auntie J has a own driver and that is the coolest thing ever. Imagine stepping out of your house to be chaffeured to wherever you want and when you are done at whatever place, the car will be waiting for you outside.

We went to the Forbidden City yesterday. The area is FREAKING huge with lots of Chinese. The good thing about being Chinese is that you can travel within the country for vacations. Like we go to Malaysia. There are like one gazillion rooms and palaces and chambers and what nots, mostly not maintained though those that are maintained are gorgeous. We went to the Imperial Costumes exhibition, the porcelain musuem and the clock musuem. I think knowing Chinese history would have made the place more interesting.

This morning we got up early to go to the Great Wall. It is Great indeed. It is fascinating and incredible. I greatly enjoyed taking the cable car up at Baling Shan (Er, maybe the name of the place is Wrong) and walking ‘down’ in the cool morning air. With the other Chinese of course. Walking down is like bullshit because there is upslope and down. The steps if there are (mostly they are) are uneven in height and sometimes very very steep. The Great Wall was fun! The view was impeccable.

We visited the Giant Panda Exhibition at the Beijing Zoo. Auntie Judy advised us not to visit the other areas of the zoo. The Giant Pandas were very cute and lazy. Dirty too. Did you know they weigh 12 kgs when they are half a year old? No wonder they move like ants. But they are really damn cute.

Uncle CL got us tickets for the athletics events today at the Para Olympics. It was an once in a lifetime experience and truly an eye opener.

I am about to drop. More when I get back.