By Al Wong This is my experience in Beijing, China in the Summer of 2009. If you came to this webpage first, it's better if you start from the beginning of the story. Friday, July 24 Peking Duck 8:39am At the Jade Palace Hotel in Beijing. Took a shower. Finally going to sleep. Blowing off today's tours of the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven. I've seen them before and, at this point, sleep is more important. Dinner meet at 5pm. 3:23pm Got up around 2:30pm. Feeling MUCH BETTER! My knees don`t hurt and the bottom of my feet have less pain. This makes standing and walking much more bearable. Just repacked my stuff. I want to wash some of my dirty clothes and decided to have this hotel launder a couple of shirts and short pants for me. Also got on the Internet. They have Internet in the room but you have to pay for it. It just started to rain heavily outside. Big thunder. Peking Duck 9:48pm Just had a great Peking Duck dinner! It was good that I rested today because I feel much better. The Nightclub Incident Roy told me he was going to get a massage at the hotel later tonight and described the walk to the massage place was interesting because it went through the hotel's nightclub. That got my attention so I decided to walk with Roy to the massage place. The place is in the basement of the hotel. So we took the elevator to the hotel's basement. We did walk through an empty nightclub with no customers and then by the swimming pool before coming to the massage place. I got a bad vibe walking through the nightclub. The employees were not friendly there. This was further enhanced when I left Roy at the massage place and tried to walk back through the nightclub. They wouldn't let me inside. I was led around the outside of the club to the elevators by one of the hostesses. I questioned her why I couldn't walk through the club. I was a guest of the hotel after all. I was wearing normal tourist clothes so I was not dress inappropriately. Her English wasn't good so I couldn't get a coherent answer. She was a tall, attractive young woman but had this 3 inch scar on her neck like she had been cut by a knife. There were semi-fresh suture marks on the scar. That nightclub looks like it might be a rough place. :) I was thinking of making an issue of it but I was still kind of tired from Huangshan and I just had a big Peking duck dinner. Maybe tomorrow night I'll visit the nightclub and see what they do. (As a side note, I saw the same hostess the next night in the hotel lobby taking reservations for the nightclub. She finally realized I was a hotel guest and was embarrassed to talk to me.) I took a few pictures of that shark aquarium in the hotel bar on the 1st floor. There's at least 3 sharks that are 3 feet long in there! I keep forgetting to mention I bought this walking stick to help me climb Huangshan. It`s been a life saver since! I`m going to name the stick, Mr. Sticky :) Getting yet another 6am wake up call for tomorrow. At least we have more time to sleep! The Next Day China 2009 My Writings Al's Wild Web Page