Ni Hao!

So I arrived in Beijing on 30^th October however its taking me a while to write this, I didn’t start until 10^th November and its now 14^th November where I’m going to finish off up to date as I’m sitting on the boat cruising down the Yangtze river and everyone else is off taking an afternoon nap.  I think when I publish this on the blog I’ll do it in stages otherwise its an essay for you to read in one go!

I can’t believe how long it took me to fly to Beijing from Hong Kong what with my connection in Singapore – I was exhausted!  My taxi driver didn’t seem to know where the hostel was, only the area, but of course no English at all.  Thankfully I had gotten them to write out the address in Chinese and underneath was the phone number so he called them and as it turned out was about 30 seconds away.  I couldn’t have picked a better hostel (well I don’t think – it was an improvement on the Hong Kong one by a lot anyway but I’ve plenty more to experience!).

My room was nice enough with a window and a bathroom with a working hot shower!  It was relatively late so I just ventured into the lounge area and got chatting with a few people.  I found it surprisingly easy – you hear a conversation and just sort of join in!  I hope that all the other hostels will be the same and everyone will be just as friendly as it seems easy to meet new people if it is the same as this everywhere. 

I think that evening I was chatting to a welsh girl (I can’t kind of remember her name but no idea how to spell it!) and a girl from Canada and a guy from India – Caitie and Gulam.

The next day I decided to attempt to explore a little bit of Beijing – and not very successfully!!  Its enormous – some of the road signs are in english letters but a lot of the small roads (you know the ones you use to orientate yourself) are only in Chinese characters and aren’t even on the maps you buy!  I managed not to get lost but was out for about 3 hours and wasn’t quite sure how to even find my way back to the Hostel – I made it back – but more by luck than judgement! 

I started walking and found my way into a park where I saw people dancing, playing cards, and generally walking around but it was so pretty and nice

   

My biggest mission for going out was to buy a hairdryer – Beijing was so cold I couldn’t go out with wet hair so decided it was time to buy one J  Well its certainly an experience buying goods in a communist department store.  I finally managed to find the electrical department, chose a hairdryer, then the girl on the counter writes out this slip of paper thing and hands it to me.  I look at it, then her, and think, ok – what do I do with this!  (there’s no price on it for me to pay or anything) so I stand there and have to mimic a I’m clueless sign please help me (yes yes I know -  not very hard for me to do!) She finally works it out and takes me over to another counter where I have to queue and pay.  So I do, and the woman hands me a receipt – again it’s a “ok what do I do with this? I just want my hairdryer”.  The miming gets harder here as she doesn’t understand my shrugs and thinks I’m just questioning the receipt.  I end up standing there mimicking drying my hair and attempting to make a noise like a hairdryer!  Eventually they understand and walk me back round to the ORIGINAL counter where I hand them the receipt and they finally give me my hairdryer.  I think the whole process took about an hour!

I found the tea shop after that which is in my guidebook and I was only going in to look around but this salesgirl started walking next to me.  I do mean next to me.  She didn’t say anything at first and then when I realised she was following me around I said hello and she started talking and then took me over to try some different teas.  Well I’m afraid to say that after trying all the different types of tea – I’m still a standard English tea with milk drinker. They were good – but not my cup of tea! Boom boom!!

I also managed to find the Wang Fu Street Snack Market – an interesting experience, packed with locals, smelly, busy, noisy.  I saw plenty of scorpians (still alive) on sticks not to mention all the other weird and wonderful creatures – no I didn’t try anything! I’m not that adventurous!

  

I was so exhausted trying to find my way about I decided to try and head back to the hostel and managed it – but I have no idea how! I was so tired after all the travelling in India and sightseeing in Hong Kong I thought hibernating in the cosy hostel was a good idea. I chatted a lot to a polish guy called Karol – very interesting man as he had been living in Hawaii for the last 5 years doing specialist underwater diving filming and specialised electrics for very posh houses – his stories were really interesting – like if he got called by a client needing a repair on their system and he was in China – he would tell them to find a way to get him there and more often than not they would send him over to the US on a private jet, and then back again! I was VERY jealous!

That night I ended up having a few beers in the hostel with Caitie, Gulam and some other guys that were in there, an English guy called Nick looking for a teaching job and another Canadian called Christopher who was teaching Maths. Was a very funny night and we ended up staying up till about 4am – although some of them didn’t go to bed till about 6am I heard the next day!

Well the day after that it was due to snow – so perfect for hibernation mode and hangover – although it wasn’t too severe. I unfortunately couldn’t spend as long as I wanted to in bed as I had to get up to check out of the room. I hung out at the hostel until the late afternoon and then got a taxi over to the new starting hotel for my tour. It’s a nice hotel, apart from the rock solid beds – although those ones have been the worst and hardest so far in China.

Claire my room mate for the China tour was in the room already – well her stuff was, but she soon arrived back after I did. She’s from Scotland, 31 but living in Streatham in London.

So my group is:

Claire my room mate, Suzanne from Austria, about 35, Reikia (I think that’s the spelling!) from Canada, also about 35, Shelly from Canada, 35, Wallis from Canada but originally Hong Kong, Maria and Martin, 19 from Denmark, Crysta from New York – about 38 I think, Andy from Nottingham, 30 so quite a mixed group but all around the same ages.

Our guide is Olive and at first I thought she was quite stiff but nice, however as she has got to know us all we’ve found she’s lots of fun and a REALLY good guide and really nice.

We headed out for our first dinner, I have to say I can’t remember what we eat but it was very good – Olive ordered for us and got some great dishes – I think she is used to ordering for westerners and knows what sort of things we like. A few of us had a beer although it was very strange as I hadn’t quite finished mine and although we had paid the bill I thought we would sit for a few minutes after the meal (as we would normally do at home) but no, the normal thing over here is to pay and then get up and leave straight away – they don’t hang about after eating over here!

So it was back for an early night as the next day was the big challenge – the Great Wall of China!

We drove to the Mutianyu section of the wall – not one of the “normal” tourist spots which was great as it was relatively quiet – no hawkers hassling to sell us stuff – well apart from at the bottom, and not that many people at the top as you can see from my photos – hardly anyone else in them! I think it also helped that it had snowed so heavily the day before and it was FREEZING cold and quite icy on the wall! It was worth going in those conditions though as it was so beautiful and Olive said she had never been in the Winter before so hadn’t seen snow on it either (it doesn’t normally snow this early in Beijing.

So – the hike up the wall – OH MY GOD!  Olive said it takes about 30 minutes to climb up to the wall – there is a cable car that goes up but everyone else was walking, plus I did think that was cheating a little bit.  So, we all start off at quite a steady pace, it was hard but I managed to keep up for a bit, but there was some very fit people in our group and they kept on going at the same pace and I just couldn’t do it so thought, that’s fine, I’ll do it at my own pace and as long as I make it to the top that’s fine!  I think it took me about 45 minutes, maybe an hour to get up there and I was SHATTERED!  It definitely wasn’t easy but I have to say it was a great achievement to have done it and something I’m not going to forget in a hurry – not the pain the day after! 

The views from the wall of the surroundings and the rest of the wall is just breathtaking and definitely something you have to see at some point in your life. Walking along the wall was quite difficult as well – it normally isn’t too easy as its very up and down and steps on the wall as well, but it was made even harder because it was still covered in snow and ice in a lot of places.  It made for very tricky walking conditions. Olive told us that we were going to walk to point 20 I think which was the furthest point you could go on our section before tourists couldn’t walk any further, I made it most of the way but it got so icy that I decided not to bother going to point 20 as most of the views were the same all the way plus at the end there was probably another 100 steps to climb – on top of what I had already done, I thought that was enough!  I ended up chatting to another group of people on the wall who were all travel agents on a trip and ended up being their photographer with about 10 cameras hanging off my arm taking group photos of them. 

So there was an option to take a cable car back down and as I had done the hard bit walking up I decided to challenge my fear of heights and take the cable car back down.  Wasn’t as bad as I though – the cable car was all enclosed and it hugged the mountains so I wasn’t really comfortable with it but it was ok – Mum you might get me up that cable car in Benalmadena next time I go now!

    

That night our reward was our Peking duck dinner!  YUMMY!  We had the normal duck but loads of other dishes I can’t remember but you can see some of them in the photos.  We took a walk after that though another night market where Andy decided he was going to sample some of the odd foods and chose a starfish – yuk!

It was back for an early night after being exhausted from the wall and ready for a full day sightseeing the next day.

So we started off the next day going to Tiananmen Square, then the Forbidden City, then for a walk around the Hutongs and then to the Temple of Heaven.  A very very full day.

I have to say that Tiananmen Square was kinda cool to see but it is mainly just a very big square.  There was an enormous queue to see Chairman Mao’s mausoleum – you would have to queue for about an hour or longer to get in to see his body – so we decided not to bother – ha ha.   There amount of Tourists in these places is amazing.  Its mainly Chinese and not westerners but its just overwhelming.  They are all in massive groups, usually wearing something matching – very funny, and then they all line up in their groups when their guide gets them together to go somewhere.  But then they just bundle you when you are near the entrance to something.

 Overall on mass I have found the Chinese to be quite rude, pushing and shoving to get in somewhere, a LOT of spitting (we didn’t really see any in India) and not very nice – it doesn’t make for a pleasant experience sightseeing as its quite stressful – more so than India, although I’m not sure how much of my negativness is from being tired.  However when you are in other situations like on the boat or the sleeper trains (which I will come to) they are much nicer and very friendly and welcoming.

So we had to leave Tiananmen Square to go into the Forbidden City which was just a mad crush over this bridge – you can see from the photo all these heads – it really was like this – and I only got this photo from putting the camera above my head and just clicking.

 So what can I say about the Forbidden City? I think my overall impression was – it was ok.  My enjoyment was marred again by the huge hordes or people and crowds.  You couldn’t get into the buildings so you had to go to the doorways to see inside and take photos from there.  Not as easy as it sounds as you have to push your way in to the front to see it and take a photo and you can’t linger and appreciate what is inside as you get pushed out the way again.  Not fun.

So after the Forbidden City a few of us decided to try and find the old Hutong areas of Beijing to see the traditional housing.  Most of it has been torn down and blocks put in its place now though, or re-built but more modern.  We did find the preserved areas in the end however they weren’t as pretty as I was expecting, but the little alley ways were interesting to walk around.

We headed over to the Temple of Heaven quite late in the afternoon but it was pretty cool as we got to see a really nice sunset and the building was really nice. 

The next day we were free until the evening to take the sleeper train so some of us headed to the Summer Palace – we took the metro which as like Hong Kong, puts the London tube to shame.  Really clean, air conditioned, very frequent and so cheap! About 30p for a single ride anywhere. I hadn’t looked up anything about the Summer Palace so when we got there I really didn’t realise just how big it was – an enourmous complex of different buildings and grounds and gardens.  I think out of everything in Bejing it was my favourite place as for the most part it was quite quiet with not too many people, as well as being really beautiful to look at. 

                             

So after 3 very busy days and lots of walking, I was aching all over and we made our way to the sleeper train. I have to say that China is definitely a more active tour than our one in India. In India we had life easy – the bus took our big bags on to our destination earlier and we only took a small daypack on the sleeper train, we didn’t really have to carry our bags much – but here in China its very very different. We all had our big bags to get on the train and the stations are madly busy – much more hectic than India. Once we got into the station we had to make our way to the waiting lounge which basically involved climbing over loads of people to try and find a spot for our little group to perch.

Then when they announce the train its like another mad rush to try and get on – everyone has tickets and reserved seats/beds but its like they all have to get on first. I am just about getting used to it but its really annoying as you have to push and shove back to stand any chance of actually getting through the ticket barriers and on to the train.

The trains were very much like the Indian trains – however I did think that the Indian ones were cleaner – I think because they were more basic, for some reason on the Chinese ones they decide to put horrible dirty carpets down, weird ruffle patterned covers on the beds, table clothes on the little end table, it all ends up feeling grimy. Unlike the Indian trains, these ones only have squat toilets…..so I spent 3 weeks in India not using a squat – and so far in China I can’t even remember the amount of times I’ve been using the squats! Of course, they aren’t that bad, I knew they wouldn’t be, its just easier using a western toilet, but the squats are generally quite clean here so its fine. The train journeys we are taking in China are also a lot longer than the one we did in India. We got on the train quite late – about 8pm I think, lights went out about 11pm and then the next day we didn’t get to Shanghai until about lunchtime.

And thats all for now folks....next installment Shanghai!