Beijing, The Great Wall, and getting to Mongolia

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The train ride from Chengdu took 2 nights and a day and we arrived at Bejing West train station on time at 6am Monday morning. I spent alot of time catching up on sleep and the rest of the time reading. I couldn't see out the window from my bed but when I emerged to ground level to eat or something the scenery was nothing to get excited about.

I actually managed to find a bus (thankyou Beijing and your everpresent Pinyin) to the main train station (we came in to the West one) and I checked into a very dull and expensive hostel which is really a hotel with some rooms converted into dorms. I picked it for the location though which wasn't as useful as I thought in the end. After checking in I walked to the Mongolian embassy only to find it closed. For once I turn up in the capital on a weekday for visa applications and it's a public holiday(not listed in the lonely planet). You might wonder why I even carry that massive book around since all I do is complain about it but at times its increadibly useful. We have an intense love-hate relationship.

After my embassy visit I hired a bike and rode around. Beijing is nothing like I expected. There is so much space and I wonder where the 15 million people are hiding? I guess I never found 'the centre' or I might feel differently. Even the traffic wasn't that bad. It was much more under control than in Chegdu anyway. I rode around the outside of the Forbidden City and then to Jingshan park just behind it which has a few pavillions on a hill with really good views of the city and other parks in the area. There was also the usual Chinese park activities going on - music, dancing, strange exercises, and the tour groups. The minute I see a flag and a loudspeaker I run in the opposite direction but this normally just leads me straight into another one.

After Jinshang park I went to Beihai Park which has quite alot of temples and also a hill with nice views. Most of the park is a lake and full of paddle and even motor boats. I was a little temple and parked out after this so I just rode aimlessly around for the rest of the afternoon. I also went to Tiananmen square which really is massive- and probably the only impressive thing about it. There were alot of people there but still so much space everywhere! Security presence is pretty full on there though and your bags have to go through the x-ray machine before being allowed on the square. I made a useless trip to the trainstation also to try and buy a train ticket to Erlain on the Mongolian border. The lady at my hostel insisted there is a train every day but after being sent to 2 different lines and waiting almost an hour I get told there is no train on the day I want to leave.Great, bus it is then.

The next morning I went to the embassy an hour before it opened only to find out this was not early enough and there was already a decent line. I still got my application in but I had to wait about an hour and a half after it opened before it was my turn. It wouldn't take that long except all the Chinese people in the line are actually agents and have at least 5 applications each to put through. There is a big sign that says applications through agents will not be accepted but this obviously wasn't enforced. I also found out that the urgent processing is not same day, but in 24 hours which really screwed things up for me. I'd already payed for a bus trip to the wall at Jinshanling for the next day and because my visa was running out a day or 2 after this I would have to cancel it (the trip to Jinshanlng). The lady I booked it through managed to convince me to go to the wall at Mutianyu instead since we would be back in the city in time for me to pick up my passport (the bus doesn't return from Jinshanling until 6pm). After this I wasted a good few hours getting to and from one of the many long distnace bus stations to book a ticket but left empty handed since they only sell tickets on the day of departure (or so they told me).

I went to the Forbidden City in the afternoon and stayed until it closed which seems to be the best time to be there- far less people and most of the tour groups have gone. The main halls are always packed but the place is enourmous and there are lots of small areas around where you can be all alone, if only for about 30 seconds. After this I went for a long but failed internet hunt on the way home and stopped for dinner at a 'fast-food' hot pot place. I thought since you get your own hot pot that the orders would be more likely to feed one person (rather than 1.5 or 2 in a standard Chinese restaurant which has been turning me into a bit of a fatty) . I made the mistake of ordering both spinach and bok choy to dump in my soup and got two enourmous plates piled with greens. Maybe this is a good thing - I should stock up on fresh vegetables now because I don't think I'll get too much in Mongolia. Beijing was HOT! About 35 degrees and all I wanted was to go back West to the cold and clean mountains.

I got picked up at 7am for the Great Wall in a minibus full of other foreign travellers. We got there a bit before 10am and had to meet back down at the parking area by 1 pm which was not enough time for me in the end. You can take a cable car up but we all took the stairs. Lucky I was a well trained stair master after Emei Shan. For the first time in China the number of foreign tourists far outweighed the Chinese ones and I didn't see or hear a single Chinese tour group. There were also not nearly as many people as I expected which was also a nice suprise and made for much nicer photos. It was a clear and sunny day too but too hot! I walked to the end in one direction then to the other. The other end was much further and I really had to rush. The best part was past the 'restricted' area which I only entered because there were other people there and even some hawkers selling drinks under their umbrellas. This area was even quieter (although much of this part of the wall was because it required some serious uphill climbs to reach) and not quite as restored as other parts.

Once I got to the area where the resticted sign should be placed (where most of the wall has crumbled away and there is dirt and trees growing) I pretty much had to run back down to the car park. I got there at 12:57 puffing and drenched in sweat and met everyone else who had all clearly been waiting for me for quite a while and looked bored and annoyed. We had lunch (included in the price) then headed back to the city. I grabbed my luggage and got to the embassy just after it opened at 4pm, greeted with an enourmous line that was not moving. I know popular embassies have long lines for visa applications but never for picking them up. If everyone in the line was just picking up their visa it would have taken about 10 minutes; instead it took 1.5 hours. The line was full of people trying to get an on-the-spot visa and who knows what else. The last bus to Erliane laft at 6pm and it would take at least an hour to get there. I thought I might make it if I took a taxi the whole way but I couldn't even flag one down - they were all busy!

Pissed off that I'd dragged my bags around to the embassy and back for nothing I went back to my hostel. I then spent another hour in one of the lines at the train station and bought a train ticket for Hohhot that night. It's abit of a detour West but I knew there were morning buses from there to Erliane and I was desperate to get out of Beijing. So desperate that I bought a 'standing' ticket since all the seats were taken. The train left at 9pm and was cram packed. Just picture how packed suburban buses and trains are in a city in peak hour - this is what it was like only it was a 10 hour trip. I found a spot right outside the toilet and had just enough room to sit in an upright fetal position (which made my bum go numb within 10 minutes). There was a constant steam of people going to the toilet not to mention the food carts that came and went constantly making everyone stand up to let them through. Needless to say I didn't get any sleep. We arrived in Hohhot just after 7am and I hopped straight on a bus to Erliane. The soft seat was absolute luxury and although the secenry was pretty amazing I couldn't keep my eyes open for long.

The bus took 5.5 hours then I had to wait an hour for another bus going to the border town on the Mongolian side. It was the busiest border crossing I've done with huge lines of trucks and jeeps but the bus was allowd to skip these ques which was nice but getting through the Chinese side still took for ever. We got to Zaman Ude just before 5pm and I thought the train to Ulaanbaatar left at 5:15 so I was racing around changing money and buying a ticket. It would have been nice if the ticket office was somewhere obvious, not on the second story of the bank building. I spent 10 minutes running round looking for it and asking random people saying the word 'ticket' in as many languages as I know, hoping one of them would be the same in Mongolian. I finally got a ticket and got on the train which sat there for another half an hour! The train was also packed but I still managed to buy a sleeper ticket. The sleepers weren't exactly Chinese standard - no white sheets, pillows and doonas but it was a bed. The problem was there seemed to be 3 people for every 2 beds - until I realised the area I thought was for luggage storage was actually the top bunk. Luckily I had the middle bunk so I could go to bed before all the Mongolians crowded around the bottom bunk finished playing cards, moved all the luggage onto the floor and also went to bed. I slept quite well but still felt disgusting when we arrived in UB abit after 9am the next morning.

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