颐和园 Summer Palace

The next week we went to the Summer Palace.

Which made for some good sight seeing and some one really sad story (see below)

Teh Summa Pahliss

Gate Thing

Water Lillies, not Monet's

This lady was doing some traditional Chinese dance while some other retired-looking people played the music. Kind of cool

Me!

Artist (non-hipster)

Being a hopefully-future-engineer, the traffic flow design of this place was attrocious

pretty.

SAD STORY ALERT!

So our tour guide (the same one from Forbidden City, so check the last post if you wanna see him :)
was kind of hustling us along, but every now and then I would hear a whole group of people singing songs off in the distance some where and I really wanted to see who they were and what they were doing.  Well not to long after this bridge (see above^^^) we had a bathroom break. Nature called and so I went to use the bathroom (this is the 3-star mentioned in the Forbidden City post).
When I was a missionary in Madagascar I remember missionaries talking about eating spicy food and "if it burns going down, it'll burn going out".  Well I guess I never had enough spicy food in Madagascar, b/c I never really experienced this.
... welcome to China.  So I'm on the squatter (literally) and let just say... liquid fire... is a fairly accurate description haha.  'Twas bad.  So naturally that took a little bit longer than normal, AND to my dismay I discovered no toilet paper in the stall or my backpack.  Luckily, I found some paper of some sort... but it wasn't quite the same.
By the time I got out, all the group was gone.  I wasn't actually too sad b/c this gave me an excuse to go exploring on my own, which I did.  So I set off in the direction of the singing, and look what I found:

So that was cool.  Then I went to go see the Big Pagoda On The Hill because the tour group wasn't going there and it only cost like... a dollar or two more.  This part had been under renovation when I visited with my dad in 2005, so it was nice to actually see it and see it all cleaned up.

This might be the Buddha that had a very prominent "No Pictures Sign" in front of it which everyone was blatantly ignoring.  

See how HAZY it is?! This is how the weather was about 90% of the time I was there. Aw-Ful.

Symmetry

Again. Le Haze. Le Yuck Le Health Problems

Cool

I've always (since I have such a long history with China and the Summer Palace) been confused as to why this Marble Boat thing is such a big deal.  It's just a marble building shaped like a boat next to the water... I could do the same thing too if I was an Emperor of a vast empire and nothing better to do. Heck I could probs do it if I had like a million dollars or so. Eh, whatevs.

Marble Boat? nah.
DRAGON BOAT! ... of doom.

Chinese Family. Magazine Cover. or something.

SAD STORY CONTINUED:
So by this point I'd completely lost the group because I was meandering at my own pace and taking copious pictures in the smog.  At about this point I was realized (cuz I called some groupies on the phone) that I'd have to find my own way home (take the subway, BeiDa wasn't too far) and so I slowed down even more.  It was also about this point that I realized that my bum was ON FIRE.  Lack of toilet paper was really starting to have caused a problem.  And naturally I had decided to take the long adventuresome way around the park and was about half way there (meaning I was the further I could possibly be from any useable exit). And so I plopped down on the 'grass' in a relatively quiet spot, munched on some munchies I had in my backpack... I think it was dried mangoes, and some nuts and crackers or something and probs some water I had.  While I listened to soothing music on my iPod, and then took a nap.  I'm pretty sure this was a way weird sight for Chinese people, but I didn't really care, I was enjoying myself (and not in pain!).  Eventually though, I got up and kept walking.  Oooh how it hurt.

Umbrellas. Typical.
But this bridge is pretty nifty.

Those bridges look pretty cool, but danged if you have a disability, cuz them steps are steeeeeeeeeeep.

Y U so sideways?

This Bridge Is Really Famous

not sure why, but it makes for decent pics

haha I thought this was funny cuz it kinda of looks like an amphibious assault of paddle boats against the Pagoda

LION.

So Famous.

Baby Soup* Machine
*Forbidden-City-post reference

Rawr.

The End!

But wait.

FINAL SAD STORY!
So after literally several hours of walking around the park with a burning... yeah, so after walking around for hours, I finally got back to the entrance and went outside.
I tried to get a taxi back to BeiDa (Beijing University) but all of the taxi's were being skanks (or more likely I didn't understand what was going on, but all I know is they wouldn't take me anywhere).  So I guess I had a map or my iPod still had a beijing map saved on it from Google or something, but eventually I ended up walking to the subway station (Oh, totally forgot to mention I was wearing my worn out flip flops this whole time).  Which didnt look very far on the map, but I think it was probably 20-30 minutes after all.  Which isn't too bad, unless you just walked around a lake for 2 hours with molten diarrhea.
FINALLY I made it back to the subway (never have I ever been so excited to see one).  A couple stops later I was back "home" at BeiDa and a short (but painful) 10 min walk across campus to my dorm, where I promptly took a shower, noticed my terribly sunburn (but the sun was hidden by the smog!!!) and took a nap.

The End!
for realz.