for me? earlier today. two things on the same day actually.
first, rode an open air cable lift to climb up to great wall mutianyu's watchtower number 6. so i actually felt the berrryyyyy cold wind and saw just how high i was from the ground down there. eewww!
and second, rode toboggan! so i skidded my way down from great wall to the entrance area riding a toboggan.
strangely, both rides did not scare me. hmmm .. my acrophobia is gone?
selama disini, berulangkali saya dikira orang china. dari petugas subway, mbak resepsionis, pak satpam, guide, tukang jualan, pelayan di resto, turis malaysia temen satu tur ke great wall, banyak dah.
pake ndak percaya pulak mereka sampe memerlukan meyakinkan diri mereka sendiri dengan bertanya lagi you are not chinese? atau ya itu bermuka kaget pas saya menjawab dalam bahasa inggris. hihi ..
anyway, dari semua itu yang paling mengasyikkan ya tadi siang. di mutianyu, great wall. jadi ceritanya saya mau beli boneka panda. segera si mbaknya ngecipris dalam bahasanya sendiri. dari kalimatnya yang panjang amat itu, saya nangkepnya cuman 40 yuan. kalo angka bisalah dikit berkat belajar selama sebulan kemaren!
saya bilang aja, 20 yuan yo? asal aja sih. eh si mbak menjawab nyerocos lagi. alakazam, saya segera language switching hahaha .. bilang, c'mon 20 yuan okay, 40 is too expensive lah! sambil pura-pura mo capcus. eh si mbaknya rada-rada ga kasi tapi tetep dong ngeyel 20 yuan aja, kalo ndak yo wis, besok aja beli dimana gitu!
eh pas udah siap capcus, akhirnya si mbak nyerah. pas bungkus tu dua biji boneka, si mbaknya bertanya. are you not chinese? i thought you are chinese, you know, that's why i started the price so low, the price for chinese people.
huehuehueu udah low aja tetep ditawar yo! untunglah. kalo dia mulainya dari harga yang dia tawarin ke bule sebelah, makjang! berapa pulak musti saya tawarpun?
ada untungnya punya muka penipuan ternyata hahahahaha ...
i broke my record. and injured my legs!
so today, i walked from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, except when i was in the beijing subway, three rides that in total was less that an hour! that's almost eleven hours on foot. no wonder my feet hurt so bad now!
so today, i went to lama temple, temple of heaven, tian'anmen square and forbidden city.
first the lama temple. i went there without plan. I could not find any subway map and when i tried to use the vending machine, it turned out that, unlike shanghai metro map that includes popular landmarks on it, beijing subway map does not. just a bunch of station names. help!
the only landmark that i noticed in the map is the lama temple so off i went there on beijing subway. by the way, here in beijing, the subway is on flat rate, two reminbi per single trip. cheap, huh?
from there i went to temple of heaven, again by beijing metro, thanks to wei-wei's direction on what line to take.
i tell you, this temple of heaven area is soooo big that you can easily spend hours enjoying its beauty! i did! until my legs hurt so much that i stopped, sat and listened to some people rehearsing opera singin in chinese. soooooo beautiful!
from the tian tan, temple of heaven, i went to tian'anmen square then walked all the way to forbidden city. on foot for hours. well, nevertheless it is a ... city!
everytime a building appears in front of the eyes, it turns out that it is just another gate to another building. again and again. the forbidden city, formerly imperial palace, is just so ... vast. beautiful. amazing work of architecture.
i cannot help but be thankful for what life has offered me. by the way, the coin that i threw to a pond in the forbidden city fell in the place it should, so i guess ... i will be back?
di china sini, public toilet ada dimana-mana. banyak banget. jangan bayangkan deretan kubikel asal gitu. ini bener-bener bangunan proper dengan deretan toilet didalamnya.
di kota-kota yang sudah saya kunjungi, shanghai, hangzhou, dan beijing sini, ada banyak bertebaran! gratis!
hmm kalo soal kebersihannya sih relatif ya? kalo buat yang biasa spotless yaaa ... hmmm. tapi buat ukuran public toilet sih bersihlah. tissue dan air berlimpah. lagian toiletnya toilet jongkok. lebih higinis.
dibanding kek di indonesia, sok-sokan pake toilet duduk tapi orangnya tetep jongkok! tolong!
hahahaha kurang kerjaan banget yak? tapi ya apa boleh bikin. pengen. wkwkwkwk!
hangzhou - shanghai hongqiao - kunshan south - suzhou north - wuxi east - changzhou north - danyang north - zhenjiang south - nanjing south - chuzhou - suzhou east - xuzhou east - zaozhuang - tengzhou east - qufu east - taian - jinan west - dezhou east - cangzhou west - tianjin south - tianjin west - beijing south.
after all those rainway stations, six and a half hours on the train, beijing's cold welcome at thirteen degree celcius, one hour taxi queue, fifteen minutes taxi ride and here I am blogging my story away from a bar on the hotel's sixth floor, overlooking the tian'anmen!
