31st of July, Beijing. Because I promised myself to post smaller blogs and more frequently, I log in quickly from a Sony shop just of Tiananmen square. The shop itself is huge and supersophisticated. The Sony Viao laptop that I am using now costs a 1,400 euros so to my surprise not cheap at all. Like the shop, every building and street around Tiananmen square and the forbidden city - we saw the sites from the outside today - is humongous.

A few things that happened to us in Beijing already are, we couchsurfed our first night (not through the website yet, just through a Mongolian guy we met on the bus), yesterday's big thunderstorm and the hitchhike home by a friendly Chinese that doesn't speak any word of English, at the forbidden city we get approached twice by Chinese students inviting us for thea, and probably the main thing of all that happened in Beijing is, the extension of our Chinese visa. Not peanuts but we did it !!

2,5 hours we spent in the HSBC branch in Beijing to produce a compulsory financial statement (you need to show that you have 3000 USD in your account, good for 100USD/day on your Chinese Visa), 2,5 hours we spent in the PSB (sort of an embassy), and we spent a lot of sweat doing it. The woman that helped us in HSBC in Beijing has a few extra grey hairs now, I can tell you that. HSBC China and HSBC UK are two different banks so do you smell what was over our heads. HSBC China cannot see our account on their system, HSBC UK has to fax it, HSBC China cannot be liable for HSBC UK but they do have to give us a stamp otherwise the Chinese embassy does not except it. They gave it after 2,5 hours of wining and the stamp said that they don't take any responsibility. In Belgium we say there is always a backdoor. :)

Next friday we will get our passports back and we can stay in China until the 31st of August. Disappointed, because we wanted more days in order to go to South Korea and Japan, we are less unhappy compared to previous Chinese Visa experiences. We will stay in Beijing for a while and do small trips around the region. I leave this blog for now so I can write the Flemish translation.

PS: The Chinese students - majoring in English - I talk about, invited us for a drink and brought us to a very expensive place. 3,5 euro for a jasmine tea, we passed and they felt insulted. I said that if they felt less embarrased if we walk out, we will. Surprisingly they said yes, nice to meet you. So we walked out. We felt like meat, hehe, English meat. Have a good one !