Before we got to the Great Wall we had to make a stop at the Jade factory. I was quite familiar with these schemes from my Thailand days, the taxi driver drops you off and disappears while you get pressured to buy stuff you don’t need. This wasn’t that bad, actually it was pretty good! We had a lady that […]
Our tour guide picked us up at 7:30am for our full-on day of sightseeing. He was a very nice and knowledgeable man who spoke English fairly well but with a strong accent. We were one of the first to be picked up, an American man was already in the van, then we picked up a friend of dj-marksman and finally […]
As we are walking to the famous drinking street in Beijing, we walk past an Irish Pub. dj-marksman said, “I know those people” and walked off. We thought he was joking as running into someone you know on the other side of the world in a city of 20 million is quite unlikely. Turns out he wasn’t ‘pulling my leg’ […]
Once arriving at Beijing and taking the subway to our suburb, we were a bit lost. We knew we had to head North-East, but being big city folk from Brisbane we had no idea where that was. Lucky for us we had an iPhone with the Compass app, I have always made fun of this for being the most useless […]
The Friday before our Beijing trip was our only short day we had at China. Fortunately for us, there were celebrations and drinks in the Brisbane office to commemorate some of our contractors leaving, so not much work was being done back home anyway. Also, as we are one team, just distributed, we purchased drinks and snacks (chicken’s feet etc) […]
There are few things that I am worse at than singing and there is no food I would never imagine eating more than brains; but tonight I conquered both. The day started like any other, buffet breakfast, struggle getting a taxi to work, lunch at 7-eleven and finished at 6pm. It is what happened after that separated it from the […]
Time is an interesting thing, too much and you’re bored out of your mind, too little of it and your completely exhausted. My time so far in Chengdu has been roughly broken down into five categories; working, trying to see China, maintaining my business, eating (too much) and sleeping (too little). I can safely say that I think I am […]
The guys at work were kind enough to offer to take j-street and I to the Panda Research Facility in Chengdu. For some of them, it was their first time seeing China’s icon. They pick us up at 9am in a rented van that comes with a free driver! As per usual, there are no seat belts, which is unfortunate […]
The day started like our usual week day routine, buffet breakfast and lunch at 7-Eleven. There were a few differences, for instance the cab ride was a lot smoother. My new theory is that the taxis that wait at the hotel are expecting a medium to large fare, but as we work so close, they are not happy with […]