Human traffic Jam

lines of cars lines of people

Beijing has a dense district of wholesale electronics part distributers, selling just about anything

one could possibly want

vintage knobs

caps

No matter where you stand, Mao will always be making eye contact with YOU

visiting Tiananmen was the first time that I felt like I was being watched. I would guess that at least 20% of the people there were undercover guards. They looked extremely cold and bored. Apparently the chinese today dont know the details of the massacre. The chinese have been led to believe that the government stamped out a violent extremest group's illegal demonstration.

Forbidden City

Daily routine

the place was crawling with these plastic army men shooting plastic guns, and carrying huge Chinese flags.

Chickens at Green Cow Farm

mobile chicken coops

Green Cow Organic Farm

I got to tag along to visit this "organic" farm on the outskirts of Beijing. It is not able to be completely organic since the air pollution is so bad. Afterwards we were invited to visit the restaurant that was associated with the farm. It was really refreshing to eat some food in China that I was able to actually visit where it came from.

This dog thinks he is a pig, all of the pigs were making dog sounds...

mmmm...

around Beijing...

Riverside in Beijing

Lotus Pond

This is the "mall" near my house. I am looking down from the second floor

I have been taking this little yellow bike all around the city on aimless rides

Kanbashi city museum, to be completed sometime....

The city has been built from the desert up in the last five years. Funding came largely from the city government and private developers. Maybe they forgot they were building a city in the middle of Inner Mongolia, where the temperature drops below -40 in the winter and goes over 100 degrees in the summer.

I spent the day at the police station trying to figure out how to add a visit onto my chinese visa. They let us hang out in their city emergency planning and strategy room. They had a cool tv

Back in China! we found this cheap little "pleasure place" where you can buy a shower and

a full body exfoliating scrub down and massage for 25yuan= 3 USD

every time somebody came through the door the steam would instantly turn to stage smoke!

Spencer and I made our way to Kangbashi, a still be developed ghost city built to house one million people

but so far only 30,000 people have bought property there, of those 30,000 perhaps 10% have actually moved there. At least that is how it felt.

headed back to the border of China, the dining car was packed. We sat with a couple

who had been "cut-off" by the server because they had already had too much vodka. They slipped us 10,000 Tugrik

to buy them another bottle on the DL. We did and they ended up making us drink most of it. Thankfully the Mongolian vodka is actually really delicious, we sampled Chinghis Khan Vodka

the bewitching hour

the sunset as we pulled away form the Mongolian Capital

Spencer admiring the landscape

Mongolian national fast food, some of the best stew I have ever had. Mongolia doesnt really

have industrialized agriculture so this meal was more like Mongolia national home cookin

Ulaanbaatar has a pretty big population of homeless children. They live in the sewers to keep warm

the central heating pipes for all of the big buildings run underground, and keep these cave homes warm in the winter

the days in Ulaanbaatar were outrageously cold we could only be outside for a short time, this is after only being outside for a few minutes the cold while we were there reached a low of -40c

I am wearing all of the clothes that I am traveling with, definitely not enough to stay totally warm!

The overnight train to Ulaanbaatar was an old Russian model, this is the first leg of the TransMongolian

Railroad which is the western route of the Trans Siberian Railroad.