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Published: October 19th 2012
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Our train left UB 7am – this was the last leg of our Trans-Siberian railway adventure awwkkkk! This time we were sharing with a Japanese man called Takahashi (we called him Keith). He was the nicest man you could ever met – he shared stories and videos from Japan. He’d recently bought 10,000 acres of land to farm in Mongolia and was on his was to buy an electric bike from China. We joined him in the restaurant cart and played poker with him and another Mongolian guy. Keith was so kind and paid for all our food and drink for the whole day…he said he remembers travelling/ being on a budget and how hungry he was. Thanks Keith!! Also bumped into a couple from Bangor – small world!
Arriving in Beijing is a shock to the senses. Beijing is sooooo big – We thought the train was going to be early but we travelled through the city/high rises for about 35 minutes before arriving at the central train station. Stepping off the train we were overwhelmed with people, lights, sights, smells and Chinese stuff. By the time we walked from the station to the hostel we fell
in love with Beijing. Such a beautiful beautiful city – so different from anywhere wed been.
After checking into the hostel we treated ourselves to a slap up meal and beers – for six squid! We met a few people and headed out to see Beijing at night which looked even more beautiful – everything is lit up and such an amazing buzz! We headed to the night food market where they sold everything on a stick – maggot, cockroach, star fish, scorpion (live or dead whichever you prefer). Phil treated himself to some squid balls.
Wednesday we headed to the Forbidden City which was a half hour walk from our hostel. Basically a city the emperor built for himself and his servants – he was good to himself like that! This place is bigger than Belfast. It was pretty cool to see – proper china with all the oriental style buildings – but after 8 hours walking we were glad to be back in the hostel for our £1 beers – well deserved I think!
Thursday we rented ourselves some sweet bikes – mine was called Alice and was blue
with a cute basket with a butterfly on it – I think I fell in love with Alice. We cycled out to the Olympic Stadium aka the ‘Birds Nest’, which wasn’t even on our map, but clever clogs us found it no probs lol. Cycling is def the best was to see the city – so much fun. Olympic Stadium was so cool – there was a big park surrounding it which was really nice. We had a look round the inside of the stadium and ran into a big group of media – turned out only Jackie Chan was doing a film launch – so we got a few pics and showed him some of our karate moves – wax on wax off!!! Got totally lost on the way home and rode through Beijing in the dark – was such a fun day!
We’d arranged to go to the Great Wall with a few friends from the hostel. We started our hike from the Simatai section to
Jinshanling Great Wall and walked three miles passing through 22 towers. We thought this would be a relaxing stroll along the wall taking in the views but it was an exhausting
three hour hike up and down rubble pathway with some sections being so steep we had to crawl up them. Not suitable for high heels - although one guy in our group managed to do it in a pair of flip flops! The views from the wall didn’t disappoint – couldn’t believe we were actually on the Great Wall of China!!
When we got back from the Great Wall we headed out for some Peking Duck – when in Rome!! There were 10 of us in a group and luckily one guy spoke Chinese so ordered us duck cooked everyway imaginable. And we got to use one of those spinny-round tables and chopsticks!!
After a late start due too much duck we headed to one of the markets to test out our bargaining skills, first on the agenda was a nice new knock off phone for Phil.. it was a tough choice between the “Samsack s3” and the “IPhoneo 4s” but because the samsack was “real good phone sir.. real good”, after some hard negations which mainly involved us walking away and the girl running after us saying “you killing me sir.. okay okay!!”
We struck a deal for £80 from £150 (probably still ripped us off although the phone seems to be pretty good copy and hasn’t electrocuted him yet either!). One girl chased me down the store and tried to drag me by the arm back to buy some shoes! Excellent customer service! Amazing how much rip off stuff they sell here – I guess they have to put the people to work somehow.. they also have a sign above the market as you leave saying the vendors respect international copyright laws! Lol!
The last few days we visited a few other parks, another market, watched an acrobat show (seen a girl falling flat on her face – ouch!! ) and the Temple of Heaven – a temple complex the emperors went to pray for good harvest. The biggest temples roof was constructed without glue or nails – I think the guy who built our house may have been in charge of construction on this!
We know this blog went on and on but Beijing really was an amazing place with so much to do – anyone would love this place – we didn’t want to
leave!!
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggh speed train to Shanghai next.
Slater dudes.. Phil & Alana xx
PS no Facebook in china 😞
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