Belly dancers, snakes and wild music! | Beijing | May 29, 2005 20:07
I first found out about this place about 6 years ago when it was a much smaller place. I went there again a month ago and found that although the area of the restaurant was the same, they have now packed in many more tables.

Afunti is a cross between a beer hall and a kebab house! All the long tables are tightly packed together because once everyone has eaten, you're allowed to get up on them and dance! The highlight of the evening comes when a pretty slim Uighur woman appears on stage in an exotic costume with a snake wrapped round her neck to perform a stunning Arabian Night dance!

The crowd cheers her on and not long after the host invites people on stage to dance with her. There are various competitions in which you can act the fool, have fun and maybe win a hat to take home with you...no, unfortunately...the girl doesn't come with it!

There are so many dishes to choose from and some of them can be quite expensive, so I suggest you choose one of the set meals they offer. The cheapest starts at 100yuan per person and it is wonderful food! Middle Eastern pasta with veg in tomato sauce, roast lamb on skewers seasoned perfectly, fruit platters, fish, pitta bread , and anything youre not too keen on from the set menu, can be swapped with an equivalent valued dish from the main menu.

There are also different types of beers, soft drinks, spirits and cocktails.

The No. 2 Travelling Bus | Beijing | May 29, 2005 17:53
I had some friends coming to visit me so I thought I'd take them to the Great Wall. The No. 2 Travelling Bus also included the Ming Tombs, which my friend wanted to visit, so that was ok. So we arrived at the bus stop (near the main Beijing Railway Station) and chose the 'luxurious' bus to travel on for 50yuan round trip. At 9.30am we all chugged away on our sixteen seater minibus! All of a sudden, the tour guide switched on his microphone and shouted all of Beijing's history down it! This carried on for an hour!

We arrived at our first destination...a desolate area of land with no-one in sight. He may as well have shouted down the microphone 'WELCOME TO THE FIRST SCAM OF THIS TOUR'! Everyone paid their 45yuan entrance fee and marched in. We refused to pay as we had no idea what it was as it was behind tall locked gates! After 10mins and out of pure insanity (or because the guide told us we could not wait in the bus if we didnt enter!), we paid the 'shark' and went in. We were presented with an english speaking guide, who deserted us after a couple of mins because she didnt, as it turns out, speak ANY English at all! We were told to peer into shop fronts which werent in fact real shops anyway, just models and then hurried along to the main event!

We did eventually make it to the Wall, but only after stopping at a dried fruit wholesale store, an uninteresting part of the Ming Tombs, a highly overpriced canteen, and a jade factory four hours later!

At the first stop we went to, I really think you should stick to your guns. There is NOTHING of any value behind those tall gates, it is a complete rip-off and 'the show' was the only interesting part out of it all! Well not interesting, but different...

A show, put on by the local bandits, outcasts, and just plain weirdos from that area consisted of knife swallowing, cigarette burning on the tongue, lifting bricks up just using his ear, and producing a mini silver ball once swallowed, from any hole of the man's body..lucky for us, he chose his eyeball!REALLY disgusting! And on top of that, we were made as foreigners(not the Chinese)to make a contribution afterwards!

Take your own snack food! The canteen food looked awful and really was just leftovers from every restaurant in that neighbourhood I think! We refused to pay 20yuan to eat there, thinking we would wait for the Great Wall and buy a snack there. Remember...they want commission, so dont let them push you into anything you dont want to do. Of course, they took us to a part of the Wall that very few tourists visit, so there was only one shop selling crisps, so that was our lunch!