Aand….last day in China.

*Let me give you a bit of an advice. If you ever come to Beijing…skip the zoo. This was probably one of the worst zoo we’ve seen. And believe me,we have seen hundreds. I was blown away from the fact they had pandas – but why wouldn’t they have? It’s China ☺️-. They were absolutely fantastic and very cute!!

But as we walked more, we had to realise, the cages/boxes/enclosures are too small and way too dirty to keep animals there. I mean, they all had space to walk around but nothing like it would be in Europe. I was absolutely shocked when I saw how my favourite lemurs were kept… they should be outside,enjoying their games, playing and hoping around… but their place which was an inside one was too small to hop around and it was like 25 of them. They looked very depressed and sad. As we walked a bit more further, we found a bit bigger enclosure but still…

The polar bears didn’t have water in their pool… I won’t detail the rest. The whole zoo looked a bit sad but I think it’s also because of the winter season. Nothing is really happy during cold weather when there is no green on the trees or bushes. I’m sure it looks better during summer time.

Subway tickets (had to change twice) to the zoo cost ¥4/person/one way. We couldn’t figure out how we can pay for return, so we bought it there and then back.

As we had lunch back in the hostel, we discussed a bit more about our trip here. We realised, Beijing isn’t that expensive. If you can stay away from the western food which can cost like ¥200 for fish meal or a meat, ¥480 for a steak, you should be fine. Flight tickets, hostel and the visa was the most expensive but apart from that we weren’t actually spending a lot. If you like big cities, shopping and the whole city life, Beijing is great. But if you are like us, more nature person…Beijing is a stop but not more than a 3 days stop.

We also tried to exchange Our leftover Chinese yuan to Burmese money but even in the biggest bank, Bank of China, they don’t exchange. So we have to get it on the airport. We are also planning to take some USD out as we can pay everywhere around SE Asia with dollars in case we couldn’t exchange or take the country’s money out yet.

Just a fun story before I go:

Back to the hostel we were sitting on the sofa in the lobby, I was checking movies to download. A dad and his son came in, dad went to reception, kid sat right in front of us (there were other sofas next to us) and stared at us for like a good 5minutes. Rich was like: look… I just couldn’t look at him as if I’d have done that.. I couldn’t have stopped laughing. His face was hilarious as he stared and stared like who are these alines??

I also smiled at an old man on the street (as I do quiet often when I’m walking on the street -am I creepy?-) and he had to look up twice just to check if a western woman just smiled at him or did he imagined it…. people here make me laugh with how they react to us, ‘westerners’

We are heading to Burma -going by shuttle bus to the airport which is ¥24/person-, fingers crossed they let us through the border, so hear from us tomorrow.

Just a side note… we are at the airport now, and this is the biggest airport I’ve ever seen..*