It was no surprise that we woke up feeling a bit seedy & reluctant to leave our beds earlier than 8am, but responsibilities called! We only had 1 day to submit our Mongolia Visa so that it would be approved in time for us to leave China. We were very prepared with all our supporting documents printed, providing everything they required and much more, the application form we found online which we also had printed & filled out with a visa photo attached.We were waiting at the office with our paperwork before they were even open. They didn't ask any questions, just briefly examined our application form, asked us to sign some paperwork in front of them, collected payment & told us to pick it up on Wednesday. It was so easy compared to the huge ordeal for our China Visa. I'm hoping from now on they are all this easy!
After our Visa mission was complete, we caught the metro back to where our accommodation was & decided to spend our newly acquired day off relaxing as the weather was cold, very windy & raining continually!
We ordered cappuccinos in our hostel common room while I read my book & Tom did some budgeting. Another coffee success story, strong & well priced.
At 6.30pm we saw Luisa & Augusto again & agreed (despite the weather) to head back out and find the elusive Wangfujing Snack street night market. A famous street in Beijing where you can go to be brave, or just watch the brave, as they devour all sorts of critters on sticks. We saw starfish, sea horse, crabs, octopus, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, lizards, snakes & whole baby ducks. I felt a bit disgusted and uncomfortable with the insects on the sticks that were still alive & wriggling around before being deep fried & consumed. I didn't see a lot of locals here, it's very touristy & a lot of the people being brave & eating the food were from other countries. One of these brave people was Tom, he ordered a tarantula for 80Yuan, thankfully it was already dead before being fried! He described it as spicy, chewy & nice until he got to the abdomen which he said tasted weird. I was briefly brave and ate a tiny piece of leg, I couldn't stop thinking about what it was though & because of this I couldn't enjoy it or comment on flavour.
It was an interesting experience!
After walking up and down Wangfujing Street we decided to head on to the next place, Sanlitun Bar Street.A street of bright flashy lights, big glass Windows, various themed bars, sad songs sung by Chinese women, western music, pole dancers & men trying to lure you in from the sidewalk. Not unlike any other street you would find in an international district of a big city.
It was a good place to grab a few beers, after negotiating from 80Yuan down to 10Yuan each, listen to music & enjoy our Friday night out in a foreign country with some new friends. After a few hours, several beers later & a bottle of Jagermeister (that we all shared) we were considerably sloshed and hailed a cab to go home!
- Alli
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