Beijing by Aishling

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So we're finally here! I'll backtrack a bit to fill the gaps between the last entry and now.
Sunday 17th February
So i had the worst nights sleep ever on saturday night, nerves i suppose but also Bailey (the dog) scraping at his door. So anyway got up and dressed and said tearful goodbyes to my sleepy sisters Elaine and Niamh. Mam & Dad came with me to the airport, i was flying to dublin to meet the girls and so i was on my own for the first one, i checked in, said some more tearful goodbyes to mam and dad and went on my way. I settled into my seat until i realised that i was in the wrong one! Im so used to just sitting anywhere with Ryanair that i didn't quite get the whole "assigned seat" thing!! Met the girls in the airport and after they said their tearful goodbyes to their families we headed off on our merry way! The flight from dublin to heathrow was a breeze, we arrived in heathrow changed terminals and got some sweeties for the next leg (a ten hour flight to beijing) when it was announced that the flight was delayed by 1hour 30mins. So we headed to the bar nearby and had a glass of wine for ourselves to pass the time. The flight left 2hours late in the end, 6.30pm Irish time and much to our delight we were seated in the middle of a school tour of chinese teenagers, you can imagine my joy!! So there was no sleep gotten on our "overnight" flight!! They were playing snap on the tables, swopping chairs, swinging out of our chairs, oh there was no end to the chattering too! i was like a bear!!

Monday 18th February
We touched down at 12.30pm in beijing and got through immigration no problem and went to collect our luggage. We spent a good 15mins at the baggage carousel trying to fit our rucksacks to us and we probably looked suspicious because some guard came over with his dog sniffing at our bags to see if there was anything illegal in them....of course not so all he got was a whiff of all the shampoo and conditioner jacinta had brought!! Out the door we went then to find our bus to the hostel, it turned out to be very straightforward and we were the epitiment of independence, telling all the taxi-men that "we're fine", "no thanks" etc etc!! The last stop of the bus journey was ours so we pretty much figured it out. As we were getting off the bus we could hear these shouts and turns out a whole load of richshaw driver men were there waiting for people arriving from the airport to swoop on!! off we got the bus and melissa got her boob felt and lucky me (aishling) got both my boob and my bum felt!! welcome to beijing!!! then we had to struggle putting on our rucksacks while they shouted as us....obviously prices but intimidating all the same, we told them again that "we're fine" but a few of them still insisted on helping me put on my bag!! We found the hostel without much hassle and the room was fine. we were wreaked at this stage, it was 3.30pm china time but that meant 7.30am ireland time and we'd been travelling since the previous morning. so it was into our bunk beds with us and had a wee snooze. we woke at 6.30pm as the bar down the hall from us was playing dance music. we got up and headed out for an adventure to see some of the place and get some food. it turned out to be pretty disasterous with most places not having any english on their menus so we ended up in a supermarket which had a lot of vacuum packed meat (well it could have been anything really, the best option is meat id say!!) so we got some bread and crackers and jam and headed back to the hostel for our "dinner"!! On a side note: The most bizarre thing we encountered all day (other than the fondling as we got off the bus) was that chinese people kept on staring and laughing at us when they saw us, i presumed earlier in the day that it was because of our rucksacks....im sure we looked ridiculous but this continued later in the evening when there was no rucksack to blame!! Anyway we headed to the bar in the hostel for two beers, the place was dead so we only talked to ourselves, we headed off to bed soon enough after that, ready for more jet-lag ridding sleep!

Tuesday 19th February

We had planned on an early rise today since we wanted to see Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City and also we'd to have showers but of course the jet lag meant the snooze button was in full operation and we didn't rise out of it til close to 10.30. We all went for our first shower (communal style) together...safety in numbers and all that, they were lovely tho and the curtains means it practically like the gym at home. We headed off then daypacks filled with water, toilet roll, museli bars, guidebooks and cameras! First stop was across the road in the train station to book tickets for the shanghai night train on friday night. This proved to be difficult as we ended up having to gp to 3 different desks before we found someone who could speak some english and sell us tickets! bingo! off we went then happy out with ourselves and our achievements so far for the day!! However achievements were soon forgotten when we tried to walk to Tianamen Square! Our poor map reading ended us up a bit off the direction we were supposed to be headed (the opposite direction in fact!!) and when we stood on a street looking completely lost a poor young guy offered to help and put us back on track! We finally arrived at our location (after a good hours walk id say!!) and were not so impressed with it until we realised that we weren't actually in tianamen square at all!! we were actually in the area surrounding the forbidden city! turns out it was across the road, jacinta had spotted it but of course we weren't listening to her! duh!! The forbidden city didn't seem an option any longer, It was 3pm at this stage and it closed soon so we headed across to Tianamen square for a while and wandered around, the monument holding Chairman Maos body closed at midday so we'd missed that which was a pity so that will be covered when we go back for Forbidden city on friday.....we vowed that we'd be up earlier for the rest of the week!! All thro th day people were staring at us, less laughing today actually (so we can blame the backpacks for that at least!!)....but boy can they stare, in fact we had some people try to take our photo, some sneakily and some pretty obvious! The lack of western people is remarkable tho, whenever we saw somone not-chinese we stared too but it was more in solidarity than amazement!! Anyway after we were exhuated of walking around the square we spotted a restaurant nearby with english on the menu, hallejhau!! so we finally got to eat!! We decided then (around 6pm) that we'd try find some shops and markets, with jacinta's excellent map reading skills....dora the exploer as we christened her.....we did and happily wandered around for a while stopping for coffee finally in Starbucks (i know!!! but we needed something we knew!!) As things were going well we said "why stop now!!!... lets find the bars area and have a drink or two"....turns out while jacinta knows the directions on the maps kinda well, we underestimated the scale of the map and what looked like 2cm on the map took us about an hour to walk! so we decided we'd get a taxi....how hard can it be! 3 taxi men later and we're still on the same corner, we took a turn each, me and jacinta both got men that basically told us to go away once they saw us pointing at a place on a guidebook, melissa got a nicer man who just kept saying something which sounded like "tuna" when she asked him, she was so afraid we got out of that one too! disaster i know!! So we abandoned the idea of a drink and faced a long walk home (we'd covered several cm on the map at this stage!!), by 10.30pm we were back at the hostel, freezing cold and wreaked tired. We booked a tour with the tour guide downstairs for the great wall, an 8am start, no sleep ins this time!! two beers in the bar (which was quite busy with backpackers - yay!) and it was off to bed with us.

Wednesday 20th February
So rose at 7.40 after a bad nights sleep. I was ok with the others were awake half the night. We met our "english speaking "tour guide downstairs in the hostel at 8pm, his english was not good! He headed off then with us following him as fast as we could go at this early hour! We thought at one stage that we might be walking to the Great Wall but turns out it was just to our bus, now we had been consoling our tired heads by saying that it was back to sleep on the bus for the 1.5 - 2hour ride, there we were imagining a coach...imagine our disappointment to see the most clapped out banger of a minivan uve ever seen! on we hopped anyway with 4 english people, a chinese guy and a german guy. 2 of the english people lived in beijing so after quizzing them for some info we all drifted off to sleep. We woke when we arrived at the wall and it was impressive. We'd to climb about a billion steps up to actually get onto the wall before we could start the walk along it, that took about 40mins, very exhausting!! Once we got up it was amazing though, well worth it! We walked along the wall about an hour then to the end of that section (we lost the german guy after about 5mins, couldn't take the pace!). Its a hard climb, going up and down steps the whole time, the views make it worth every pain tho. The weather was perfect as well, cool but sunny so we got great views and weren't too hot or cold climbing. We walked back to our starting point then and got a tobboggan down to the bottom....great fun! It was into a little restaurant then for a "typical chinese lunch", we were a bit apprehensive since the place looked well dodgy but the food was lovely! Full and happy, sore and tired we all hopped back on the bus/death trap for another snooze on the way home. That night we went wandering trying to find somewhere for a few sociables and sure enough came upon a very happening spot called vics, it was ladies night so free drinks until midnight, so we happily stayed there until long after 12!

[b Thursday 21st February
Today we went to the summer palace, it was very pretty, well would have been if it hadn't been so cold! we walked around for hours snapping away until the cold got to us and we headed back to the hostel, tired from last night, hungry and cold. We tried dinner in a restaurant across the way from the hostel and lo and behold there was english on the menu, we stuffed ourselves silly and headed back to the hostel to do laundry and get repacked for the following day.

Friday 22nd February
Today had planned to do the Forbidden city but since we weren't blown away by the emperors summer palace we guessed the winter one wouldn't be too different and so we decided instead to go to houhai which is the lake district. Had a walk here and some nice dinner and headed back to the hostel to make our way to the train station. Insanity is a word id use here! people pushing and shoving their way through but eventually we made it onto the train alive and found our cabin, sharing a 4 bed with a poor chinese man (who was so scared he sat out in the hallway for a good while, dont blame him!!) we read and relaxed and headed to sleep then ready to wake up in shanghai!

will add photos soon!

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