I have only 2 words...

FUCK BEIJING!

And in other news, FUCK CHINA in general.

Renting an Apartment, Beijing-style

One thing I find odd about Beijing, is that some things move so slowly, and other things are unbelievably fast.  We went looking for apartments on the first full day, and the agents (who could not speak any English) showed us 4 different places. This only took roughly an hour, but then they would not show us anymore on that day. It appears that, by Chinese standards, flats that look like crack-dens are suitable accommodation for everyone, as the flats that we were shown were truly horrible. Strangely, everyone seemed to be trying to steer us towards getting the cheaper ones rather than the more expensive ones, which I can only assume is because they have been stuck with the rubbish ones for a while and are trying to force them onto foreigners.

The next day, Dan arrived, who is another of Rob and Kate’s friends from back in the UK, and it turned out that he had been let down on somewhere to live, so we decided to all look for flats together. Again, the same agents would only show us 4 flats, 2 of which were ok, the other 2 being of the crack-den variety. After getting fed up of these agents not really helping us, we took matters into our own hands and went to see the estate agents based within the compound where we were already staying to see if there were 2bed flats within the compound. The girl there also did not speak English, but tried very hard to make herself clear to us and got us on the phone with an English-speaking colleague to translate for her. They couldn’t have been nicer. We saw 3 flats within the compound (which is directly next door to both Dan’s school and the one that Allan and I will be teaching in) and immediately fell in love with one. It happened to be the cheapest of the 3, but absolutely amazing.

Twenty four hours later, we had the keys and were moving in. If these seems quick and easy, bear in mind we could’ve had the keys earlier but the owner of the flat was working so couldn’t get the keys to us! There was a bit of confusion with trying to get the agency we work for to come to sign contracts and transfer the rent and deposit, which held things up a little as well, so if all that had gone smoother, we probably could’ve moved in within hours of seeing the apartment! We still have a few small teething problems, the main one being that we are currently struggling to get our own internet connection to the flat, and we are finding it difficult to get anyone to help us sort it out, but we will hopefully be up and running on that soon.

We have ended up being massively lucky. Not only is the apartment gorgeous, and in the best location possible, but also the owner of the flat is a very lovely woman, who speaks fluent English! She has been very helpful already, replacing the old but perfectly functional tv in the front room for a brand new 42” HD one, just to be nice, and also giving us a router so we don’t have to pay for one when we get the internet installed. She has also given us the password to her own wifi so that we can get online while we wait for our connection to start! This has ended up being such a relief, as now we know if we do have any issues with the apartment, we can contact her directly and just have a chat about it, rather than having to go through our company and trying to make them understand the issues so they can translate to a landlord. She also lives in the next building in the compound, so she is literally 5minutes away from us.

Here is a little photo tour of our flat!

This is the road we live on in Shuangjing

Entrance to Pingod Community

Pathway through the compound

Our building

Bathroom

Kitchen, with laundry drying room at the end

Living room, complete with Allan and our housemate, Dan

Our bedroom, which is actually massive, the photo doesn't do it justice

The view of Beijing, from our bedroom window!

Hello everyone! We have arrived safely in Beijing, only 5weeks after we decided to actually come.

First things first, the flight. We flew with Sri Lankan Airlines, and it was two 10hour flights with a 10hour stop over in Sri Lanka (ouch!).  The main thing I will say about the journey is this, it was long and uncomfortable, but the airline itself is great. The planes were old, but the food was actually really nice and the staff were friendly. The stewardesses wore blue saris with peacock feather designs on them and looked absolutely beautiful. The first flight was delayed by about an hour and a half, and the plane had a really old entertainment system – it had 4 films you could watch, but you had to wait for a film to start on a channel before you could watch it. I watched Oblivion (terrible movie) and then couldn’t find anything else to watch so had a nap instead. Then once I woke up, I had to wait 45mins until another film started. Not ideal, but better than nothing!

The stop over in Sri Lanka was not pleasant. It’s a really small airport, with very few facilities, there were only 2 little coffee shops, nowhere that you could really buy food, so not great. We tried to get some rest by sleeping in shifts, but when Allan was asleep I got this weird Indian bloke come up to me. Once he established that I wasn’t going to leave my sleeping boyfriend to go get a drink with him, he started trying to buy my phone and my Kindle off of me. Needless to say this freaked me out, so I had to wake Allan up so we could move somewhere else. It’s something I know happens a lot in Asian countries but I wasn’t awake enough to deal with it at that point!

The second flight was an odd one. The plane was slightly newer, so had a better entertainment system. It was like an iPad in the back of the seat so you could just pick what you want and start it straight away, which made it much easier. This was especially good as it was impossible to sleep on this flight, as it stopped 3 times. Like a bus. I did not know that any flight did that, and from talking to our friends here in Beijing, and the agency we’ll be working with, they didn’t know it either! We took off from Sri Lanka, and landed about 40mins later in Mattala. People got off, more people got on, and roughly an hour later, we set off for Bangkok. This took about 3hours, then we sat there for another hour or so while more people got off, and more arrived, before we took off again. Then it was a 4hour journey to Beijing. It was good in a way as it didn’t feel quite as long because it was broken up by several take offs and landings, but at the same time, I could’ve really done with getting some sleep at that point! One thing that really annoyed me is that, on one of the very few occasions I managed to drop off, one of the not-so-nice stewardesses actually put my seat up while I was still asleep, to serve food to the person behind me, rather than waking me up and asking me to move it. I was NOT happy, as I’m sure you can imagine, but it was the only real annoyance on the whole journey so it was good on the whole.

We arrived at 2am local time, and got through Immigration really quickly and got our money changed up. There was a bit of an issue when we got out of the airport as the people picking us up had come in a VW Beatle and we didn’t think our cases would fit in so we had to shove one between us on the back seat. As we arrived in the dark, we didn’t get to see Beijing on the drive, but what we could see is that the buildings are HUGE! Almost every building is at least 10 storeys high, and it makes the city feel even bigger and more imposing than it already is. We are currently staying in an apartment while we look at other potential ones, but we are considering staying here as it is really nice. When we make our final decision, I will post photos of it!

I will write more soon, including photos and the tale of our apartment hunt!