20 Minutes

My last trip to Beijing, I was very impressed by our local guide. Her nick name is Yuli, and although she's from Beijing, she's very fluent in speaking Bahasa but with funny chinese dialect.

We spent our tour for 3 nights. After 2 days passed, we realized one of her habits when she guided us. After/before visiting a tourist object, she will tell us a story about Chinese Kingdoms at the past, from one dinasty to other dinastys, and how Chinese people were suffering for food. In the other time she would inform us about some travel tips in China, especially in Beijing. We shouldn't shop at the pavement or on the streets because the seller usually would fool the foreigners (if you ask the price or bargain the price but you don't buy it, they will force you to buy it. or if you pay with high amount of money they will give you the exchange with other country's currency which similar with yuan.). She said that we shouldn't use body shampoo when taking bath/shower during winter time (but as I live in 2 seasons country, i feel uncomfortable if i don't use soap/shampoo). She also sounded us off some Chinese pop songs several times when she had nothing more to say.

And.. above all.. she would close her information with "alright, ladies and gentlemen, you can have some rest before we arrive at (the object). We'll take around 20 minutes more if there's no traffic" (in Indonesian)

At first, we didn't mind about the miss-time-prediction that Yuli informed us. But after several times she said "20 minutes", we started to think that she might be confused about the traffics or the distance of the places, so she would just inform us the not-so-long and not-so-short time which is 20 minutes! There was also a time that we spent only 7 minutes more after she said 20 minutes.

Since then, after we got home, every time one of our tour members ask "how long?" we would definitely answer "20 minutes!"

Great Wall