You Won't BELIEVE Beijing | 16 Minutes of Travel

Okay, it's our last day on the boat. The boat's not moving. We're getting off soon. Happy dance.

Happy dance.

It's 5 AM. I've never been so excited at 5 AM. We're gonna get breakfast. Hopefully it's open at 5 in the morning. Then, uh, then get off. Yes! And head our way towards Beijing. Okay, we made it to the Tianjin station and it's— a chaos zoo, but Nina saved us being able to translate everything. And we're stopping for some lunch, kind of, kind of lunch. What are we eating here? What's this?

This is the meat bun.

Meat buns.

And this is the beef brisket noodle soup.

How is train station food, babe? Here we go.

This one's not that good.

Not that good. Okay, good. Better? No. Just got on the bullet train, about to take off. I mean, how long?

Half an hour?

Half an hour we're gonna be in Beijing. We are here in the Beijing train station and of course we need to go to the Starbucks because I am crashing. So that train took like half an hour to get here, hit almost 300 kilometers an hour, and I'm gonna get some coffee, then find the cab and make our way to our Beijing Airbnb location. Once again, the Starbucks in China doesn't let us get free Wi-Fi without a phone number from China. Boo Starbucks. How do we feel about that, Nina? Not happy. Okay, we've arrived at our Beijing, uh, apartment. It's a pretty cool place. Yeah, just left. What was the guy's name?

Uh, Jason.

Jason, super friendly, got a lot of stuff organized for us. Nina's going to take us on the tour. Okay, this is the bedroom.

Hey, get up! This is the makeup table. Did you hear the makeup remover sponge?

See, we don't even know what that is.

And then he also has the Q-tips.

Oh, cool. Okay.

Yeah. And this is the washroom.

The washroom.

The washroom is separated from the bathroom.

It's the Japanese one where it has all these different options on it. I'm gonna do the wash. I want to feel what that's like.

Really? You're gonna do it?

Why not?

Okay.

When you're in Beijing, you gotta act like a Chinese person.

No, this is Japanese stuff, okay? Just— it's a small kitchen.

Whatever, it works.

But it's— it's—

look at the range.

Yeah, look at this. Is that a fan? Yeah, it's a fan.

That's messed up.

It's very clean, actually. He gave us some green tea if you want some tea. And the filter—

Right, we can't drink the tap water.

You cannot drink the tap water. And then toaster if you want to make some bread. And he got us some snacks.

Alright!

Juice and egg rolls.

Yeah, he said he loved egg rolls.

Yeah, he loved egg rolls.

I like this dog. Look at this dog pillow. Bathroom!

Bathroom!

The tub is a wooden tub with a shower. Oh, and a rain shower! Did you see that? There's 2 shower heads.

Yeah.

Nice. I might sit in there.

No, but you know how many people have been using this?

Oh, and show the ceiling. So here you can hang your wet clothes. It's got this little device that lowers it so you can hang your clothes easily. I thought that was pretty cool. Okay, that's a tour of our place. We are trying to figure out the Wi-Fi situation and how to access Google because I don't have any access to my emails. I need to let people know, hey, when I'm coming home to get my ride. And then we're going to go explore Beijing. We'll see you soon. We're going to head out soon, but before, I have to go to the washroom, and I'm going to check out the new Japanese wash your butt feature. I just got out.

How was it?

I kind of feel violated.

Hahaha.

Welcome to the streets of Beijing. We're heading towards the Forbidden City, I think. We got our map, our first purchase. Nina got into a huge fight. Fight over it.

I'm not letting you fight, but she was yelling at me.

Yeah, first she said it was ¥3, just ¥3, and then look how beat up it is at the top. It's already been used. Then she said it was ¥5 for the English version. For the English version. Anyway, we got our map, we know where we're going. Wow, very cool. Holy cow, this place is huge. That was the outer court where they would hold all of the events, public ceremonies. Now we're going into the inner court where the emperor and his family live. This place is huge. It's just building after building after building after building all the way around. This is the exit of the Forbidden Palace. That was a lot of fun. I almost passed out on the street a couple times. I haven't eaten in I don't know how long, hours and hours. So we were on the hunt for food, couldn't find anything, so we just stopped at a McDonald's just to get a little bit of a sit-down break and something in our bodies, even if it's not the most healthy. But yeah, that was scary. I almost passed out. On the street, had to stop, was feeling dizzy. So I don't know, I don't know what's going on. We're gonna have dinner and, uh, and then keep going out and exploring. We're on the Wangfujing shopping area. It's all pedestrian, surrounded by huge shops everywhere, and I'm still feeling, uh, pretty woozy, running a fever. So we're gonna, we're gonna head home, call it an early night, plan out the map, and then start start again fresh tomorrow. Okay, we're here in Beijing. We had a great sleep. I am no longer—

You have a great— You had a great sleep. I didn't sleep well.

Nina didn't sleep well, but I had a great sleep. I'm feeling really excited today. I no longer have sea legs. I'm not fainting. I'm not hallucinating anymore. This is amazing. We're gonna go explore explore some more Beijing today. Uh, hopefully be able to spend a full day out wandering around. We asked our host where the best place to get breakfast was, you know, some authentic Beijing breakfast, and what did he say?

KFC.

He said KFC. It's not the usual KFC that you have in North America. They have congee and a bunch of stuff. So I guess we're gonna look for a KFC for breakfast and then, uh, explore explore Beijing. We were supposed to go in to see Chairman Mao's body, but, uh, they wouldn't let us bring any bags in. They wouldn't let me bring my camera bag, and they wouldn't let Nina bring—

no, I can bring my bag, but just I can't bring the camera in.

Oh, they won't let us bring our cameras, and we're supposed to check them, uh, back there. I don't know if you can see that, the area covered in tents. Anyway, I don't I don't feel safe leaving my $2,000 camera with them. So we're not going to go to the Chairman Mao. We're going to continue on our tour. Look for a Starbucks. What do you think? Yeah? Okay. Look for a Starbucks and see what happens next. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So we found our noodle place. Yep. And I had to pull out the camera because Nina's looking extra pretty. So it's cool here, they give you a package of a chopstick and a napkin. She's got a beer coming. What kind of beer is this?

Yanjing beer.

What is this? Oh, this is the mix, mix your own noodles. Cool. The place we ate at was super fresh noodles, and you can see why. They make it fresh here on the spot before it comes to your your plate. It's cool. Alright, next up, after a long walk, we're entering the— one of the largest parks in Beijing to see the Temple of Heaven. Okay, we're leaving the temple and are on our way to the Echo Wall where I assume we're going to hear our echoes. I think it's kind of a—

people trying to make money—

kind of a ripoff on the marketing. This whole thing is surrounded by a little wall and it doesn't really make a huge echo. There's some people who are clapping, but you don't really hear a massive echo as it goes around. It's very little.

You can kind of hear it, but not much.

It's some rip-off marketing, people. Calling it the Echo Wall and there's very little echo. Anyway, it looks pretty enough. We're going to continue on. Now we're heading towards the last part, the Circular Mound. One thing that's crazy in Beijing is the pollution. Look at the sun. It's not behind clouds. It's hard to see because there's so much pollution here that you can't see anything. We are here at the Pearl Market, which is a huge shopping area. I don't know if you guys can see, it feels like there's a, uh, just a haze over the whole city. You look again, look at that sun. It's just hazy. There's so much pollution here. It may be the most polluted city I've ever been in. My throat is starting to itch. How's your throat? Is your throat okay, babe?

Little bit hurting.

Yeah. That may be because you're yelling at me too much.

I don't yell at you.

But my throat hurts because there's a lot of pollution. We didn't end up buying anything at the Pearl Market, but the salespeople were super aggressive and pushy and like throwing stuff in your face and rubbing stuff on your skin. And I had to shush a couple of them. So that was fun. So we didn't buy anything, but we're getting hungry and we are gonna go find some Peking duck because when you come to Beijing, you have to get Peking duck. It's a national treasure. So we're gonna go to one of the famous Peking duck places. Hopefully they have space and we're gonna enjoy some food.

Try the skin with the sugar.

Okay. Oh, just on its own?

Yeah, just on its own. Okay. It melts in your mouth.

So all of that worked out to only about $50. 50 bucks. Under 50 bucks.

Yeah, around 50 bucks.

But they wouldn't take my Visa card for some reason, so Nina paid for it. Thanks, Nina! What a great dinner! Yummy! We just picked up a Chinese hat. Oh, there you go. For Hayden. And it has the little thing, tail at the back. And we walked into the store and— oh, that's too big for him, too small for me. Oh, whatever. We walked into the store and said, uh, how much does it cost? She said 30 yuan, which is—

20 yuan.

Oh, 20 yuan, is that it? Yeah, 20 yuan, which is like 3 bucks. And then we just walked on by and she came back and said 15. And we hung around there for a little bit and Nina asked me, said, what do you want to do? You want to take it for 15 yuan? I said, you know what, let's I said, let's just walk out and see what happens. So we walked out and she said 10 yuan.

No, no, no, she didn't say that. She asked me how much would you want to pay, and then I said 10 yuan.

Oh, you negotiated that! Oh, and I totally messed up that story. Okay, good. So we got it for 10 yuan instead of 20 yuan, which is like $1.50 or something. Anyway, look at that hat. I think he's gonna go crazy. Where's the tail? It's here. I think he's gonna love it. Anyway. I really wanted to try a grasshopper or a scorpion or something. But after seeing them move on the stick, I got grossed out. And then Nina reminded me that a lot of these people—

They probably use the sewage oil. Something like that.

They— we saw this happening in— where is it? In Shanghai.

Yeah.

Where they open up sewers.

This woman—

This woman is sitting there opening up a sewer of taking buckets of oil off the top of the sewer, the sewer water, and they use that to cook for the street food. Oh, that is some nasty stuff. And so that combined with the thought of eating it, eating that thing that was moving, it's like, okay, I don't know, I'm getting grossed out. I can't eat this. Anyway, there's a lot of gross here in China combined with the smog. Let me show you the smog. Look at the fog. Can you see that pollution? And anywhere you go, there's crazy pollution. Anyway, it comes into your throat, makes you want to cough. There's a lot of grossness here, but there's also some fun. Every week I share my best information to help you fuel your business forward in my newsletter. Check it out below. Hi, I'm Jason J. Rosz Fonsica of RoszOnline.com, and I want to say Evan Carmichael's newsletter is consistent fun, inspiring, and it's the only newsletter I prioritize and look forward to. Period.