China, so far...

Hello,

We've been the last 6 or so days in Bejing and today is our first day in Hangzhou。 Beijing was OK. We got a chance to hike on the Great Wall and also saw some really nice sites. We're a bit city'd out at the moment having been to Tokyo and Bejing back to back and it gets a bit taxing. We're looking forward to seeing more of China but right now were hoping for a more relaxed atmosphere. If Bejing is any representation of the country, I have a feeling a relaxed atmosphere is not really the Chinese thing. People everywhere, no proper queues, not very clean yadayada..I think we got spoiled in Japan.

Gay's Paradise
You know in the Simpsons where Homer has a dream about a whole world of chocolate and he walks around in a daze eating anything and everything, even biting the ear off of a little chocolate rabbit. We'll that's a bit what it was like for Gay when we found a resturant specializing in vegetarian buffet. Literally about 80 or 90 dishes of all-you-can-eat vegetarian goodness. Veges and saten and soups and even deserts. So I would be doing the vegetarian traveling world a disservice if I didn't mention this place, in the hopes that someone does a google search for "vegetarian, Beijing" They'll find this page. The unfortunate part is I dont rememeber the name of the restuarant only that if you take the metro, get off at the Lama Temple stop. Then in the little alley directly across the street from the Lama temple entrance you will find this place. Good luck.

Gimmie some Communism
As the last real Communist stronghold in the world, China (at least Bejing) is not very communist at all. There are tons of private companies, a stock market, homeless people begging, expensive stuff to buy and I even saw an advertisement for the 2007 Chinese Entrepreneur Summit. So I guess there is such thing as a Communist entrepreneur. Truthfully I was hoping to experience a bit more government opression. In fact the only proof of any government control is the fact that I cannot view my blog. But even that's not entirely oppressive since I can still post to the blog.

We'll try to get some pictures up soon. We have heaps from Japan still to post.

Jon