Friday 4th August 2017
Another travel day. Up early and on the train to Beijing by 9.15am. We had a 4.5 hour train ride travelling at speeds of up to 300km per hour. The scenery sped by. Farms and little villages and many apartment buildings. It was a smooth and quiet ride considering the speeds we travelled. Unfortunately the express taxi service didn’t happen when we arrived at Beijing. We had a 50min wait in the heat and sun for some of the time to get our taxi. Once in the cab it was a good tip t the hotel.

After a rest we headed out to try and get an early dinner as we were going to the Kungfu Show at The Red Theatre tonight. We managed a meal in the food hall at the Mall which was OK.

We were waiting for Ben and Helena to arrive so we could head to the show. They arrived when we needed to leave so Colleen and I headed off as we needed to be at the theatre by 7pm to collect tickets. I thought we could just flag a taxi on the way. Bad idea, we managed to flag a taxi but he refused to take us, so we ended up having to walk the 3km to the theatre. I managed to navigate us through the back alleys to the theatre and our tickets were still available even though we were about 15mins late. The back alleys were small, winding and smelly. There were public toilets every so often which you could smell from a distance, the urine smell was so strong. There were tangled electricity wires overhead, it was amazing that they didn’t have fires. Benny and Helena arrived about 5mins before the show started.

The show was a really great experience. Afterwards we tried to get a taxi directly from the theatre but the drivers were scammers. They wanted to charge us 60CNY for a 14CNY taxi ride. It is only 3km, they so try to rip off the tourists. We refused their cab and walked 100m along the road and flagged our own. It cost 14CNY.

After dropping Colleen back to the hotel, Benny Helena and I went to get their dinner. Due to the time they only managed a Mall dinner as well.

Anyway, off to bed as we have a big tour day tomorrow.