After the Water Cube, we headed on over across the way to the Bird's Nest Stadium.

The interior is pretty immense.

I love the seating out here. Basic, yet comfortable.

Vincent being grizzly.

Restrooms.

We got back from the Olympic Stadium and decided to search for food.

We stopped by a random restaurant on the way home. I like that they serve beer in 600mL bottles. For 8 yuan. Which is roughly a buck. This country is fantastic.

Pork.

Spare ribs.

These dishes we had tasted roughly like what you can get in Chinatown in Houston, which is to say that it is pretty good as well.

For a relatively cheap and delicious meal, Xiao wasn't a bad choice at all.

The courtyard is lit up pretty nicely at night.

The front of the hotel looks pretty nice too.

The alleyway/street the hotel is located on.

Thursday morning starts off with me wandering around the nearby streets exploring. I don't even know what they sell here.

Out to McDonald's that morning to check out if there were any China-exclusive menu items.

Egg & Ham McPuff- absolutely delicious- it's a bit like an egg and ham pate chaud. 18 yuan (which is like, $2.50 or so). They don't put ice in their juice. So tepid.

Mahjong/chinese chess players in the early morning.

The street/neighborhood we stayed on

There are a lot of stray dogs running around the area, but they're all really small and cute. My cousin was telling me neighborhoods would adopt the strays, letting them run around everywhere and feeding them. One morning I watched as two dogs ran down the street together playing, looking as happy as all get out. I didn't catch a picture of them- I just laughed- but here's another dog running around at the start of Day 4.

It turns out there's some sort of performing arts school just down the street from the hotel that we passed by every morning.

Food stands in asia are the best (but we didn't eat at this one).

I like how they convert public tables into chinese chess boards

While the women were out going to get manicures/pedicures/spa treatment, Tino, Vincent, and I went out to do man things. Meaning we were headed to the Olympic National Stadium.

The interior for the specially-made train to the Olympic stadium is still remarkably clean.

Vincent and Tino headed off to the main area.

It was cold and extremely sunny that day, which strangely caused a sort of cold sweat.

The Olympic area is enormous, requiring quite a bit of walking to get to any of the notable sites. It was pretty hazy that day and I was shooting in direct sunlight at noon, so I had to make do with the shooting conditions. It felt like being on an alien world.

Upskirt time.

There's an entire area filled with just walls of photos from the Olympics.

They had pictures showing "AMERICANS MESSING UP". Vincent and I joked that they had an entire wall devoted to Americans screwing up and looking bad at the Olympics.

First stop- buying tickets to see the Water Cube. The design is amazing, and semi-translucent as well.

The Olympic swimming pool

I wondered about the differently-colored seats in a seemingly random pattern when I realized it's supposed to look like waves of water splashing.

The Fuwas- mascots for the Beijing Olympics. Also, these types of poses run in the family.

A piece of the water cube

So they could take your photo and imprint it onto a pillow with the Olympic theme for sale. A joke between us led into Tino convincing the workers to sell him the pillow with some random asian babby on display. We were all cracking up pretty hard, as were the workers when the translation sunk through.

INAPPROPRIATE MODEL

Up next: Bird's Nest Stadium

That morning I was up early walking around the area we were staying at and stopped in at the KFC nearby.

I always like to eat fast food in other countries because they've got some way different menu items- this preserved egg and lean pork congee was dirt cheap (8 yuan, which is a little over $1) but was a pretty good start for breakfast. I headed back to the hotel after and when I turned on the tv, I saw a girl that went to UT when I was there on the asian music channel. Most of the people I knew knew that Evonne Hsu went to China after college to pursue a singing career, but that was way back in the early 2000s when she went. It's nice to see that she's still making the airwaves over here.

My cousin Tini had a full itinerary set up for our Beijing trip, with something scheduled for every day we were there. Day 3 starts with a bus ride out to the privately owned Red Capital ranch, which owns both restored and unrestored sections of the Great Wall. Afterward, we planned to eat in the open-air restaurant on the second floor on the left of this photo. On a side note, my cousin Tino and one of Ed's friends tossed a frisbee back and forth between the 2nd floor of this open restaurant and ACROSS THIS LAKE.

Walkway to the Great Wall trails

My uncle

The hand drawn (pretty neat) map. We were headed to the unrestored location #6. The rest of the party- the older folks and the baby- headed to the restored section, which was much more easily accessible.

Sofia

Sofia making friends wherever she goes

The hiking trail starts off fairly easily, but after a while, going through fairly rough terrain, slippery slopes, and running into the Great Wall but not finding an entrance of any sort, we discover that we've gone off the path. I am sweaty and some parts of me are caked in dirt mixed with sweat. The camera hanging around my neck has dust on it and sweat as well. Turning back at this point would have been too difficult, so we headed back down a little bit along the Great Wall and decided to climb over onto the Great Wall. Keep in mind, the Great Wall was built to keep out attacking invaders, so this was no easy feat, but the Great Wall was some 8 or 9 feet at the rough section that we found. One by one, we climbed, with the sturdier guys in the group assisting in pulling everyone else up.

Once we climbed onto the Great Wall itself, we looked down and saw the path that we were originally supposed to have taken. I checked my camera bag for my precious cargo- 4 bottles of beer for the group and a few of us popped one open as a breather.

Part of the group shortly after climbing onto the Great Wall.

We continued our hike up to section 6 on the Great Wall map. The steps were uneven and somewhat crumbling, and with my camera bag providing a counterweight, I was off balance and slightly stumbly.

When we got to the guard tower at site 6, we found out there was no longer a guard tower of any sort even there- it had been leveled to the ground. Apparently, this section of the Great Wall had been under attack quite a few times and all that was left of guard tower at site 6 was the flat clearing. Here's the hiking group at the top.

The ranch provided us with box lunches, which were quite bulky to carry up on the trail, but was jam-packed with food. The sandwiches (I think one was tuna salad, but I can't recall the other) weren't that great, but when you've been hiking straight up for over an hour, you'll eat pretty much anything.

Tino and two others take off for the even rougher (and not recommended) guard tower at location #8.

The rest of the group heads back down, myself included.

We reach the guard tower at location #4 on the way down- we were supposed to have passed through this if we had figured out the hand drawn map correctly the first time.

But still, I like dilapidation. It's much better I think than going through the restored guard towers on the other trail. You can feel the history in this place.

View from the other side of the guard tower, looking back up the trail we had originally taken.

Back at the restaurant, we started ordering lunch.

The starting point for the trail to the unrestored section of the Great Wall

No longer functioning water wells

One of the owner's workers led us to this secluded house to admire the ancient Chinese pieces inside.

There were random dogs chained up to the trees along the property. Pretty cute.

Ah, here's a full look at the hotel room Tino and I shared during our stint in Beijing. Pretty fancy!

SO LUXURIOUS.

That night, both families split up and Tini took us on a nice walking tour to end up eventually at No Name Restaurant. It's down side streets that you probably wouldn't notice unless you lived there.

The menu

Everything looking sumptuous again. I've thought that U.S. menus should look like this. I don't get why not.

Shrimp skewers- delicious, and tasting a little bit like salt fried shrimp here, but without as much frying.

Tofu dish in banana leaf. Not bad, pretty much what you'd expect.

You can't tell, but these are lamb ribs in this basket. It's pretty good.

This may be the chicken lemongrass, but it looks like beef to me. I should probably have written these captions back in September. Oh yeah, another interesting thing is that they usually don't bring out the rice until the end of the meal. I, myself, am quite the rice man, and I need rice to eat along with the meal. We had to specifically request the rice to be brought out with the dishes, but I think culturally the rice is brought out at the end because rice is seen more as a "filler", rather than as a substrate to complement a dish.

Later on in the meal, it turns out Ed shows up with his family coincidentally. Tini and Ed had made no plans to eat together that night and they both end up at the same restaurant with their families. Now that's a pair meant for each other.

After getting back from Tiananmen, Tino and I headed out to the streets around the hotel to look for a place to eat. We eventually settled on this random hole-in-the wall and bunkered on down.

The dishware is nice and sterile. The menus came out and it was completely in Chinese, so we were about to play a rousing game of lunch roulette, and almost settled on seeing what the nearby table was eating and pointing at that. At the last minute, the waitress ended up bringing us an english version of the menu.

Chinese people here love their black fungus (a type of mushroom that's almost seaweed in consistency). This here's black fungus with mustard sauce- pretty much like wasabi and it'll clear your sinuses right quick. I liked it.

The restaurant interior

Sauteed beef in chili oil. I love spicy, and Chinese people know spicy. Pretty awesome dish.

That evening's dinner was at Beijing DaDong Roast Duck Restaurant, the first night in which the bride and groom's families would meet. This place is known for their Beijing Duck (they don't call it Peking duck over here).

The restaurant interior is pretty nice- definitely fine dining. The waitstaff was attractive, the servers attentive.

The menus here are amazing.

I mean, look at the quality of the photos! Completely drooling. This menu was in english.

Their specialty- Beijing Duck. They cook it specially so that it's less fat/leaner, but you don't notice. And the skin is extra crispy.

Tino and his international phone card

Sofia being really intent. Tini, Tinou & Sofia, and Tini's soon-to-be sister-in-law.

Tino just got this camcorder. It shoots at like 300fps for video or 60fps. Well worth it.

The groom and the dads

Beer, water, and watermelon juice. They serve their drinks without ice in China (or at least the places we went) and I suspect it's because it's a cultural thing along the lines of not wanting the disrupt the Qi of the body by introducing something extremely cold or somesuch.

We had a ton of dishes that night, but I won't be posting all of them. This one's sauteed bamboo shoots.

Sauteed liver dish. Pretty awesome.

Condiments for beijing duck.

Sofia having a pretty good time

Sisters + Sofia

And now for the main attraction: so we ordered two Beijing ducks. The chefs come out and cut them almost in unison. Apparently they were supposed to cut a minimum of like, 120 pieces from each duck. This means many thin slices.

The finished product. Presentation A+. You get your choice of the flat rice tortilla thing that's typical or (I hadn't had this) a toasted sesame bun.

They brought out the dessert plate and poured water into it, causing the dry ice underneath to fog over the dish.

Corn sorbet. Strange at first, but pretty good.

Vincent pointed out this would make a good title for a porno. I agree.

Tuesday starts off with a quick shot of the courtyard of Han's Royal Garden. My room is on ground floor, middle right. The place is immaculately clean, with someone mopping the concrete and wiping down the wood every morning. I suppose labor is cheap enough in Beijing to do so.

Luckily, the rear courtyard we were staying at had a little pond and little Sofia, being enamored with fish, could easily run out here and look at them when she was feeling cranky. Terrible twos are nothing until you've had a jetlagged almost-two-year-old in a foreign country.

That morning, Tinou put on Sofia's ao dai and asked if I could take some pictures. She loved how this one came out.

The details in the hotel were fairly incredible. This is in the small area dividing the front and rear courtyards.

Same as above- the small area dividing the front and rear courtyards

The humble front entrance to Han's Royal Garden- a pain to find if you've never been here.

Vases near the rear entrance.

Sofia eating breakfast

So the hotel rooms come with vouchers for breakfast, and it's a pretty elaborate breakfast. It starts off with cereal (some sort of corn flakes) and hot milk. Strange, but not bad.

You get your choice of a basket of croissants or basket of pastries for yourself(!). Decent croissants (though I wish they heated them) and danishes. You'd think you'd be full by then, but wait, there's more.

And now, interestingly enough- salad (strange). Tater triangles (YES). And... pan seared fish. For breakfast. I mean, it was pretty good, but something usually eaten for dinner as breakfast was a little strange, but I suppose my severely jetlagged stomach was thinking "Dinnertime" anyway.

And then, even dessert.

Stairs leading down to the dining area.

I set about exploring the streets for a little bit before the next adventure. See that rear part of the cart? You'd see a single occupant riding in the back section around the streets, which was kind of neat. Also, randomly, I heard the currently infectious K-pop hit "Nobody" by the Wonder Girls playing into the streets through the outdoor speakers of a nearby shop at 9 in the morning.

The much more impressive rear entrance to Han's Royal Garden. The hotel's rack rate runs about $400-500, but Tini and Ed were able to negotiate a ridiculously cheap price of less than $140 per room because of the wedding party. The service here is among the best I have ever had. When walking in with any luggage, the waitstaff insisted upon taking the luggage from you to bring it to your room (in all my years of business travel, even staying in W or Renaissance-level hotels, no employee ever did such a thing). When we were hailing a cab to go check out the Forbidden City, the waitstaff ran out to the street (the hotel was smack in the middle of a long alleyway), brought the cabs out to where we were, and instructed the cab drivers where we wanted to go. If I were ever in Beijing again, I would definitely stay there.

Anyway, enough rambling- onto the first of many sites to be seen. Obviously, my facebook has maybe 3 to 4 times more photos as on here, but you get more of the meat of the story on xanga. Here's the front entrance with the Chairman looming overhead.

Heading to the inner entrance of the Forbidden City, I snapped this picture of a man walking around with his shirt tucked into his armpits, belly exposed. People did this often enough to notice it in Beijing, which I suppose is efficient in cooling down oneself. I also saw several babies with pants where the butt region can just open up, so babies can squat and drop the deuce (though I never actually saw it happening). I don't know what's up with that.

Panoramic on the way to the Hall of Supreme Harmony (Tai He Dian)- the first and probably most well-known of the large halls of the Forbidden City.

I believe this is where they film most of the epic period-piece Chinese movies (though most likely not on site).

The interior of the hall.

Going through to the next large hall. There are a few of these, so I'll spare you the slightly redundant photos.

One of the tapestries/paintings in the museum in the Forbidden City.

This statue is all "ROFLMAO"

Tiananmen Square was actually pretty underwhelming. The square is without a doubt the largest square I've ever seen, but that's pretty much it. Nothing going on. I don't know what I was expecting though.

Tino joked about getting those little firecracker tanks and a lego man and re-enacting Tiananmen Square, but we did not want to die that day.

We headed on back to the hotel after Tiananmen. Here's a picture of the bathroom. It's quite luxurious.

The bidet that I never used.

The most poorly-designed shower I have ever seen. See that shower head on the ceiling? Notice how there are no shower curtains? Every time anyone took a shower, the floor was covered in water. Later on, I would try to squat when I showered to reduce splashing water outside the tub, but still.

Also, there was a TV in the shower! I would watch the asian music channel every day I showered, just because I could.

This faucet heads look like Aladdin's lamp.

Here's Vincent looking like the archetype for every married man with child, holding Tinou's purse and Sofia's lunch box filled with a bunch of toys/books/distractions.

So because of the flight delay in Jersey, they gave everyone $8 flight vouchers, good for food anywhere in the airport. It became a game of The Price is Right, trying to figure out what you could buy without going over $8. I settled on bags of beef jerky from the convenience store, which conveniently cost $7.99. During boarding, I noticed people had placed 2 $8 food vouchers on top of the recycle bin. When there were 5 people left in line to board the plane and no one was looking, I dashed over and took the remaining vouchers and bought 2 more bags of jerky. That jerky was well worth it, eventually following me across America on my road trip. Hey, we're in a recession, you know.

The trip to Beijing from Houston runs some 18 hours. You get three meals on the way there and you get to catch up on a lot of movies that you would never consider watching. For this flight, Duplicity (not bad, but predictable), X-Men: Origins (not as bad as everyone said it would be), Look on a Star (absolutely terrible), and Escape to Witch Mountain (not bad either). International meals are pretty decent compared to the dry turkey sandwich they give you on the chance you happen to be on a flight with a meal on a domestic flight. This here's some beef and the salad even has some smoked salmon on it.

Mid-flight snack. Between movies, passing out, and eating, I can't see how this is much different from your average summer vacation.

Fruit appetizer, noodles sauteed with yellow chives and bean sprouts accompanied by mushroom dumpling and shrimp dumpling. Dumplings weren't great, but hey, they're on an airline so I give them some slack. Oh yeah, and that yellow thing is Chinese wife cake, which I have no idea why it's called that, but it's dry and more cookie-like.

The hotel is on Beibingmasi Hutong, an alleyway halfway down the busy shopping strip of Nanluoguxiang. After I had refreshed myself, I was feeling much more chipper and ready to start exploring. This was a laundromat in the neighborhood we were staying at- the place is fairly touristy with a foreigner's hostel nearby.

Lights illuminating a temple at night.

Tini and Ed knew the owners of this French-Vietnamese restaurant and would be getting their wine for the wedding through the owner, so this would be the introductory meal for the family.

It was somewhat cool that evening, so we dined on the top patio that evening.

The first dish wasn't really a familiar Vietnamese dish, but it was chicken in a distinctly asian sauce.

The pork that followed tasted similar, but that's only because it was in a similar sauce. There were several other dishes, but I was too tired to take any more pictures and it was too dark to begin with. Overall, the food was just okay, but I suppose in terms of Vietnamese food in Beijing, this was pretty good.

I've been wanting to check out this place for some two weeks now, so Seo and I decided to finally eat here before I dropped her off at the airport.

Go eat here during lunch- the menu is dirt cheap. These are the lunch specials, but there's lots more to choose from.

Bleu cheese and chicken balls. There's some jalapeno in them too, so there's a bit of spicy kick, but it ain't that bad.

Bulgogi pizza with pieces of kim chi. I love these pizzas because the crust is thin and crispy, which doesn't take away from the unique flavors.

Green curry chicken pizza. Probably my fave item here. I love green curry in thai food, and this is similar, but in pizza format. The bamboo shoot pieces are a little large so they come off in a big hunk when you eat it, but it won't detract me from enjoying it.

Peanut butter, marshmallow, banana, and chocolate pizza. This sounds a bit much, but it came out pretty tasty and works well. Slices of banana are pretty thin, the marshmallows taste like they're lightly toasted- overall a pretty good dessert pizza.

Seo, our korean cultural ambassador, took me, Melissa & Thomas, and Tramanh out for Korean sashimi. How much different could it be from regular Japanese sashimi, I wondered. I was about to find out.

One thing, the billions of sides. They came out fast and furious, and I scalded my mouth on several items to try to make room for the ever-coming onslaught of sides. The initial assortment- I'll go through them individually.

Creamed corn with peas. Similar in taste to the roasted corn that you get at Fiesta, but with a sweet cream in it that was pretty good.

Your typical steamed/grilled vegetable sides.

Unagi, I believe. I should upload these things immediately since I forget everything so quickly.

Tempura shrimp with udon noodles. I should have eaten this first so the tempura would still be crispy, but I was too busy scalding my mouth with the corn.

Conch, prepared kim chi style, I think. Conch has a chewy consistency and is mostly flavorless (kind of like escargot of the ocean). I always think of Piggy from Lord of the Flies when I hear conch.

Tempura fish. All these had a belly full of eggs and probably my favorite dish of the night.

A small salad with some sashimi in it.

A fishy congee.

Octopus, boiled. I was expecting something more oceany in flavor, but it had a light flavoring to it that was better than I expected.

Oyster, more conch, and the thing that I can't remember, which wasn't bad, but it had a weird... spinal column in it that was tough to chew. The textures were alien.

The main course.

Flounder, tuna, escolar, uni, sea squirt, and sea cucumber. The most unique taste was the sea cucumber, which had a toddy palm seed-like consistency and a... well, the girls described it as tasting soapy. I think you just had to get used to it. The sea squirt was definitely larger than I expected and much saltier in taste and smushy in consistency. I think you guys have had the rest, so no need to mention them.

Octopus, clear noodles, and boatloads of spiciness.

Shrimp tempura and tempura raw noodles.

Fried rice

Soup with the broth made from the fish they used for the meal.

Orange and grapefruit for dessert. Overall, one of the most unique meals I have had in quite some time. Thanks, Seo!

I gave them the photos shortly after taking them.

But, of course, most of the time people just post two or three photos. Understandable.

I know I should probably do the same. But, I mean, I spent time forming each photograph into its final form.

So I'm just posting them on here since it'd be a shame if pictures went unseen.

I suppose it'd be like painting a portrait that you just immediately hid away in the attic without showing anyone after you've finished.

Not every photo turns out great, but, still, it's a snapshot of life.