Day 4 ~ Tuesday 25th August, 2015

Vicki's Day Out ~ Summer Palace

As Steve was now at his Genelec Training, it meant I had the whole day to kill on my own. So I braved the Beijing subway all on my own and found the “Summer Palace”. This was a long way from the Hotel – totally other side of the city. It took a good hour and a half on the subway to get there.

After an initial hick up leaving the station (I didn't follow everyone and didn't find the entrance) – so I went where the crowds were and found the entry. I came in via Entrance D – North Entrance. RMB60 (AUD $15) entry.

This meant that I had to scale the enormous steps up to and over the “mountain” with a view down to the lake.

It must have been 40 degree's in the shade, and 100% humidity, and I was wearing my hiking boots and my soft shell hiking pants (for alpine weather), so I wasn't coping at all well. I thought I was going to pass out of heat exhaustion at one stage. With many stops along the way, I was there for a good 3 hours, and didn't get near the lake….or see half the sights. But it was ok, I was feeling awful so I headed back to the hotel.

Here are some images from the day walking around the Summer Palace.

So I crashed out and slept. By the time Steve got back to the hotel around 7pm, I was sick as a dog, and coughing and I had high fevers and shivering. So Steve bolted off to the front desk to ask for medicine in Chinese and then he was off walking (running) the streets to find a Western Medicine Pharmacy. Apparently he was well in the back blocks with the locals giving him weird looks. Nothing is sign-written as we know it, so Steve found a shop that had boxes in the window and it looked pharmacy like, so he entered only to find it was a sex shop, with huge dildo's in front of the boxes!! LOL!!! Needless to say he didn't buy anything from there and he finally found the “chemist”.

We still aren't exactly sure what medicine I have as it is all in Chinese, but someone from Genelec who knows Chinese said it was good for me. I honestly didn't care, I took two and slept like a baby only waking at 1am to take another 2. 

I woke up feeling better, the fevers had gone, so had the leg cramps and whilst I wasn't better completely, I was definitely better than I was. Just “cold” symptoms remained.