Beijing Discovery Tours

Obviously I haven’t been keeping up with this blog lately, not that anyone noticed or cared, but it has been an interesting past month. The Beijing Summer Olympics 2008 were enormously successful, and I am not sure that I have ever had so much fun in my life! Personally I was able to attend 9 events, including basketball, field hockey, baseball, boxing, diving, and beach volleyball (that was probably the most fun event of them all, the gold medal game between the USA and Brazil). I was fortunate enough to meet the head baseball coach of my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, and watched the last half of the USA vs. Japan (USA won in extra innings) with Coach Frank Anderson, who is not only a great baseball coach but a great human being.

I met the movie actor Vince Vaughn in a nearly-deserted bar in Sanlitun, and he was gracious enough to take a picture with me even though it was very late.

All in all, it was an incredible experience and I feel very fortunate that I was able to experience such an incredible Olympic Games in my adopted hometown of Beijing. Not only was it a great Olympic Games for me on a personal level, it also seems that such positive exposure around the world has increased interest in people coming to China, and we are getting many inquiries about tours of Beijing and tours of China. It is great to see that Beijing presented such a positive image for the world, and that we will be able to show many more people what an amazing city Beijing truly is.

I have never had so much fun in my life as I have had over the past three weeks in Beijing - great events, great parties, the entire atmosphere of the city was something like I have never experienced before. We don’t often get celebrity sightings in Beijing, but stars of both the athletic and entertainment industry were everywhere. My coolest “brush with greatness” was meeting Vince Vaughn at this little bar last Saturday night - it was late, but he was gracious enough to take the picture with me rather than telling me to get lost, so I have a lot of respect for him for that! I hated to bother him but it was one of those moments where you just have to do it or regret it forever.

It also seems that the coverage of the Olympics has been very positive for Beijing, and my company Beijing Discovery Tours is getting a lot of inquiries for Beijing - Xi’an tours and Beijing tours in general.  So although initially the Olympics seems to have hurt our business, it also seems that tourism due to the extra positive exposure from the Olympics will have a positive effect on tourism to Beijing and China in general.

What a great time it was to be in Beijing this summer, definitely worth all of the hassles, increased security checks, etc. I didn’t approve of some of the things that were done (many of the blue-shirted volunteers were actually either police or army members, they were pretty rude when clearing venues after the events) and transportation between venues was horrifically hot, crowded and inefficient, but overall, it was an incredible experience and I am so glad that I was here to be a part of such a huge celebration in my adopted hometown.