Day 30:

Beijing, now - writing on the front step of my hostel, because it's too bloody crowded in there. I'm at "Saga Youth Hostel." It's quite modern and clean and cheap, but I''m more accustomed to staying at dirty flop-house type accomidations. All of the "backpackers" here give me the willies.

When I fist started travelling, I sort of pretended to be some sort of dirty super-traveller. Conversations on the home front would often go like this:

pretty girl: Oh, you went to Mongolia? That's so remote. How did you manage?
Michael: Ah, you know, I just sort of showed up, and got a driver and a jeep and we went into the desert for a few weeks.

Of course, at that point, I was still clueless about how to do anything on the road, so I really just stumbled into the desert, leaning heavily on my driver and guide for help.

But fuck, if we pretend to be something for long enough, we just sort of become that thing. All that bullshit endured between Mongolia the first time, around to Timor island, to Tynda's train station, to the shittiest flophouse in Hohhot....

Well, these are the reasons all of the backpackers with the official second-hand chic University of Kings College uniform give me the willies. Go get stabbed, motherfucker.

I guess this journal is covering all the bases except for what I've actually been doing on the road. Sorry for that.

So what did I do today? I walked around a lot. Yeah, when not facing danger head on in Dili, I mostly spent my holidays walking around. I arrived at Beijng about 6:00 am today, and hopped into a taxi to the hostel, and found a nice cheap dorm bed. I took a shower for the first time in 75 hours, and set out to explore a bit.

Beijing has a lot of cool sights - the Forbidden City, Mao's Masoleum, Tianammen Square, The Summer Palace, The Great Wall... but MY first stop was the Oriental Plaza movie theatre for a matinee showing of Spider-man 3. But of course! See? I'm a hardcore traveller. I dug how they had Harry and Peter fight in costume but without masks, just as they did so often in the comics.

After that I spent about ten hours wandering the streets. I'm not sure if I like this town, though - it's all a little garish. Tianammen Square is some sort of Maoist wonderland - my guidebook describes it as "all a little Kim-Il Sungish"." And so many of the neat old buildings and alleyways are being demoslished right now to make things tidier for the 2008 summer Olympics, which will be held here in a few months.

The food her is spiffy, though. All sort of super-spicy Sichuan tofu dishes are on offer, and are so delightful! The foreign languages bookstore, also, is massive; about the size of a smallish "Chapters" store, though unfortunatly they don't have the Central Asian phrasebook that I want for my time in Xinjiang provence next month.

Honestly, though, I'm a little underwhelmed: I've yet to find any of the cosmpolitan charm or any of the rougish attitude that was on display in Shanghai when I visited there last year.

But maybe tomorrow...