Beijing with Douggy Boi

My trip has begun with an awesome first five days in Beijing...to top it off, complete with a kick ass tour guide named Douggy B. to show me the "real" Beijing. actually, doug is one of my best friends and he is living in beijing for the next year to study mandarin, getting pretty good at it too.

Things started off with Doug showing up at the airport with a sign reading "D. Radcliffe" in english on one side and Mandarin on the other. He was going to shout it out when I walked into the arrivals hall and then snap a pic to make people believe I was the real Harry Potter and get them in a frenzy.... clever Doug. Unfortunately doug got off at the wrong terminal and missed me by 5 minutes so he wasnt able to pull it off. Plus when i did see some dude holding up a sign, I had to double take to realize it was Doug since hes been training pretty hard and slimmed down... u sexy beast.

Doug took me to this kick ass pekin duck restaurant the first night and i got to meet two of his close buddies gil and andrew. from there we hit up a house party that consisted of 20 guys and 2 girls so we didnt stay there too too long. from there we hit up this model party in a lounge in the Westin hotel called Touch. i felt really short here. it was a bunch of tall skinny russian chicks. from there we went bar hopin in sanlitun a strip of bars and restaurants. the expat community is really tight here, doug and his friends ran into quite a few peeps they knew. All in all it was a solid first night.

During the subsequent days, i visited all the classic tourist spots: Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Great Wall of China, Beijing 2008 Stadiums Water Cube and Birds Nest, Tiannamen square. I was lucky enough to be in Beijing during the 60th Anniversary of Republic so it was 9 days of holidays and people from around the country were coming to beijing on holidays and also to witness the huge parade that was going on in tiannamen. From the rooftop of doug's apt, we were able to see three different fireworks displays going on simultaneously...how fitting for a country that invented fireworks.

Some low lights of Beijing included a tipsy doug wanting to try on my only pair of jeans (since now we are almost the same size) and realizing they were too tight after breaking off the zipper.
Also, some horse play in the street after a night of many drinks, ending with a head butt from doug snapping my glasses (my only pair). Thank God everything in beijing is dirt cheap and quick, and the jeans were fixed in 20 minutes for $2 and new baller glasses were made in 10 minutes with $30. oh, and while they were hard at work on these items, we couldnt help ourselves to a custom made shirt ($20) and custom suit ($140)... u gotta love china.

Let me say this about Beijing. It was nothing like what I expected. I pictured Beijing as one huge Manhattan Chinatown; dirty, smelly, over crowded, fish heads in the streets... it was nothing like that. Beijing is super modern, huge wide streets, big cars, brand new infrastructure (subway, airport, ect), clean, efficient, sprawling, awe-inspiring buildings... i kept thinking to myself that it kind of reminded me of a huge Las Vegas. Picture the width of the Strip and the huge casinos that line it on each side... alot of modern beijing is like that. Massive, stunning buildings line wide streets and at night everything lights up. Then there is also more traditional areas of Beijing but even these are kept clean and have been modernized with cafe's and stylish retail shops.

Beijing blew me away. It is obvious to me, that China is well on its way to becoming the next world superpower.

I flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Monday morning from Tianjin, an industrial city 30 minutes via high-speed train from Beijing. The flight cost $79 CDN and I thought I had gotten a pretty good deal. Then I realized the flight was over 6 hours long! I got a crazy deal! I never thought how big Asia is, picture Beijing - Kuala Lumpur is further than crossing the Atlantic...

Stay posted for my Kuala Lumpur experience...

A big shout out to Doug for his generosity and hospitality... as always. I had a ball.