Day 6

Today was our last day in China so we thought we'd better go and see the Forbidden City.

Our hotel was about 3 blocks away from the East Gate so we walked down and went in. The queue was much shorter than it had been on Saturday and it wasn't half as hot today. Mainly because there had been a humongous thunderstorm the night before which cooled everything off. It was a pleasant change.

The Forbidden City was huge. I guess that makes sense when you consider that it is a "city" and it takes up a whole block within the city but it was amazing to see the sprawl of buildings.

We spent a few hours wondering around before we left the City via the North Gate. Across the road was the Jingshan Park where there were five pagodas up on top of a hill where you could get 360 degree views of Beijing city. So up we went! Unfortunately up meant more stairs but it didn't end up being too bad as the hill was only about 100 m high. The view was fantastic but unfortunately you couldn't actually see that far away due to the pollution. There was a large Buddha statue in the biggest pagoda which we tried to get a photo of and then got told by one of the workers "no photos" so bugger.

We heard some music being played so we walked down the hill towards it and found a group of people sitting in a little area playing their instruments and singing. We walked around towards the East Gate to leave the park and stumbled across...dinosaur skeletons! It was very random but cool.

We walked back to the hotel and stopped off in the room for a break before heading out to find some lunch. On our way back to the hotel we walked past an older couple with their little grand daughter. The had a packet of chips that they couldn't open so they asked Steve to open it for them. It was pretty funny, even funnier because we had bought the same packet of chips the other day and Steve had struggled to open it then too. They seal their chips well in china!

We grabbed a couple of things from the supermarket for extra travel snacks (MIC = 33) and then came back to the hotel and packd our bags ready for the flight tomorrow.We grabbed an early dinner before heading off to catch the subway to the Olympic stadium to watch the Muay Thai semi-finals. The street that we walked down to get to the train station has a number of fairly large and expensive looking hotels and we're fairly sure we passed the guy who tried to hawk us art work on day 1. It must be his local haunt for tourists....

Half an hour and three trains later we arrived with Olympic Park. Great - now all we have to do is find the venue! We walked out of the train station and asked the guard outside for some directions (MIC = 34). Walk to the big intersection and turn left? Sure - no problem! So off we went. We got to the big intersection and took a left turn and noticed a number of cars driving into an entrance - that must be it! So we walked down and showed the security guard our tickets to ask if we were going the right way (MIC = 35) and then went in. There was a T-intersection and we were like, hmm, why way do we go? Well, there seem to be people over there so let's go that way! On our way we walked passed a massive golf driving range and a heap of basketball courts. Apparently basketball and soccer are two of the biggest sports.

We arrived at the security check point and went through where they confiscated all of our water which was annoying (MIC = 36). We finally entered the stadium and showed our tickets to the ushers whom directed us to seats that were better than those that we'd paid for so we were like, sweet!

We had missed the first hour of semi-finals due to our adventuring but stayed for the rest of the competition. Some of the bouts were pretty cool, others were a bit boring. There were two boxing rings so there were usually two fights going on at once so you swap between them. The Thai boxers absolutely dominated their opponents (unsurprisingly) and there were two Australian athletes (one male, one female) competing as well. The female athlete made it through her semi which was pretty cool. There were also two Chinese male competitors and the crowd went absolutely nuts for them. One of them got through but the other guy didn't.

Australia in the blue corner!

Some of the competitors would do a funny little ritual before the beginning of their bout. There didn't seem to be any uniformity in it (they all did something slightly different) but it involved strutting around to each of the four points of the ring and praying and then walking into the middle, squatting down and doing a little boxing motions with their hands, walking to the four corners again raising their legs to loosen their hips... I think it was part ritual, part warm up/stretching because not all the competitors did it.

The competition finished around 9 so we headed back to the train station. We grabbed a picture of the Birds Nest and the Cube all lit up at night but didn't go up because we were running short on time.

We caught the train back to the hotel, prepared everything for tomorrow and then got some shut eye in preparation for our flight.