After bedding

Yesterday we decided to make the trek out to Ikea to get a warmer doona as it's pretty cold in our apartment. When we've tried to look at this sort of stuff in Carrefour, we were basically mobbed so in the interests of that not happening and also having a bit more of a look around, we headed out on our bikes.

It had just started raining a tiny bit so Jane went back to grab some rain coats. As we left, a guy came barreling around the corner on his fold up bike going stupidly fast, saw us, slammed on his front brake, instantly locked the wheel and fell on his face right in front of us! We went to help him up, but he jumped up, looked pretty silly then rode off! It's very slippery!

It's chilly in Beijing at the moment, a maximum of about 12 so kind of an Australian winter so far. We headed out past where we buy our fruit and veg to a turn off where google maps said there was a road that would take us there and the Lonely Planet Beijing app said there wasn't. It turns out that Lonely Planet were right (good on them!) and there is as yet no road, just a confusing series of alleys that don't go anywhere. Back to the main road we went then and it meant we had to ride against the traffic on the side of the road which I'm not a big fan of. It wasn't too far fortunately and aside from almost being run over by a taxi when we arrived (the lane marked as a bike lane going in is also marked at the other end as a taxi lane going out), we were there. We'd been told it was ridiculously busy but still nicer than Ikea at home but maybe due to the weather it wasn't too bad.

We went in, eventually found doonas, cover and pillowcases and (most excitingly) some fitted sheets! I also got some fine slipper/boot things that make me look like a Christmas elf so that's all good. Most amazingly, our reasonable winter weight doona cost ... 249 yuan which is a bit less than $40!
Attempting to deal with the crowd (which in true Chinese fashion was about 50% going the wrong way, but they know best of course, not the Ikea architects!) we made our way to the exit and joined the very well labelled "Card Only" line. This is pretty common here. Not common or well marked enough for the people in front of us though who put all their stuff through (about 3 bags full) then pulled out cash to pay :(. The poor checkout girl had to go and find a supervisor and get them to come and sort it out. Then when we went to pay, she took Jane's card, and ran off. We never worked out why, maybe it's because it has a chip or something? We haven't had many issues with it before.
Coming home was much easier, we could go with the traffic and it's pretty straight to get back too.

The new sheets and doona are really nice and warm too!

First China Weekend

So for our first weekend in Beijing, we started off going to the market. The market was just a local one, maybe 10 minutes walk from our apartment.

The place is huge and it was packed! People everywhere, pushing each other in true Beijing style. Some old woman tried to push me but I showed her :)

The noodle man was chopping noodles for all he was worth. Fresh noodles for dinner

They also had so many types of mushrooms!
We ended up buying about 2 weeks worth of groceries (including about 6kg of chicken) for about $25. I couldn't believe how much stuff we got.
On the way home there was a weird impromptu market by the side of the river ("river", pretty much a drain) where I was accosted by some guy, no idea why.

However, fishing in the canal/drain thing does not strike me as a good idea. Well I hope they don't catch anything, and if they do, I really hope they don't eat it!

This afternoon we took our first trip on the metro out to the China University of Geoscience which is about 1.5 hours away from the house (an hour on the train and half hour walk). Like everywhere else, there's a dirty great big Mao looking at me.

We were there to go rock climbing on an outdoor climbing wall. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I can guarantee you that it wasn't this:

It was fricking huge! Also it doesn't open in the morning because it gets sun. Once we started climbing the wall face was really hot at the top.

The climbing was fun, really long climbs though. We were taking some of the chinese Thoughtworkers for their first climbing session, they did really well. I did have to share my shoes with a big Chinese guy though, they only had one pair of shoes larger than 42 (they were 44's, still too small). He seemed friendly though. We also got talking to a girl who spotted my PADI bag, she had done her instructors in Malaysia, which was a bit of a coincidence. She backed up the theory that the only diving in China is Hainan island. Apparently they have diving clubs in Beijing but there's nowhere to go other than overseas.

On the way home on the train, there was a busker going through the train. He had the best china-fro I've seen so far:

All in all, it was a fun day, beautiful weather, fun at the market, first trip on the metro, climbing, meeting odd people and then a nice dinner of new, cheap market food. And tomorrow we're off to the FORBIDDEN CITY!!