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Published: September 23rd 2006
Mmm, Scorpions...
Dev munching some crunchy baby scorpions!Greetings all. Hope life is treating you well, we hear the weather is getting chilly in Calgary! Here in Beijing the days are perfect, nice and hot but not too humid. The temperature was 29 two days ago and we both commented that we must be adjusting to the warmth because we weren’t even sweating!
After the first Great Wall excursion we were completely exhausted and sore so we ended up taking two easy days instead of one. The first we wandered around a huge mall called Oriental Plaza which had many stores that we are familiar with back home and loads of high end names. There were even car dealerships inside the mall, for Volkswagen and Audi, and a BMW clothing store. In the basement was a fantastic food court called Gourmet Street where you fill a card with money and then go and pick and choose various dishes from the different vendors and they swipe your card as the method of payment. It was dizzying the amount of different food selections, we definitely want to go back here for another meal.
In the evening we ventured to a night market where there was an endless row of
Starfish on a Stick
I have no idea how you go about eating these, I would imagine the meat would be inside the shell? stalls selling various foods on sticks. Such treats as beetles, scorpions, grasshoppers, starfish (how do you even eat a starfish? I picture them as very hard…) seahorses and sea urchins. You point to a stick and they dunk it in hot oil for a few seconds and sprinkle it with salt. Dev was brave enough to try some baby scorpions as many other tourists stood by and watched with amazement. He claims they tasted like potato chips, I took his word for it. The aftertaste also stuck in his mouth for the remainder of the night and into the next morning!! The next day we spotted more “delicacies” and this time the scorpions were still alive and squirming on the sticks. Gross. Good thing the market also sold normal food like dumplings, beef lamb and chicken kebobs, corn on the cob and pita bread stuffed with meat. I don’t think eating bugs is a normal Chinese thing, we suspect it’s more for the novelty of the tourists. The sight of other Chinese holding their mouths and taking pictures of each other eating bugs tipped us off… And it wasn’t cheap eats either, a lamb kebob was 5 Yuan (still reasonable)
but the silly scorpions were 15! Novelty indeed.
Friday was the day we went and saw the Great Wall again at Simitai. This section of the wall is quite steep offering exhilarating views and magnificent scenery. It’s also rather difficult to get to. Lonely Planet said to get on a direct minibus from Dongzhimen Long Distance bus station and it should cost approximately 20 Yuan each way. We arrived early (before 7am!) to start scouting out the bus. First of all, everyone who owns a car must have gotten wind of tourists leaving from here for Simitai because everyone and their dog was selling rides to the area (for exorbitant prices no doubt). We wandered among the crush of people heading to work and asked various bus drivers who all told us there was no bus to Simitai, we had to take a taxi from Miyun which is along the way. All the drivers were negotiating very high prices so we kept searching for the elusive 20 Yuan direct minibus. Now these drivers aren’t stupid, they know how to trick you, and of course they all tell you that their bus goes to Simitai, then they slip Miyun in
there hoping you don’t notice. We must have sat on three different buses before getting off them and realizing we were being scammed. Frustrated and hungry we walked up and down the “bus station” street about 50 times. 2 hours had passed and we weren’t any closer to Simitai or the Great Wall. Finally, we somehow are assured by a professional looking woman that her large reputable looking bus was heading direct to Simitai. The fare was only 15 Yuan, which sent up red flags in my head because no way would the fare be any less than what the Lonely Planet stated but we were desperate to get to the wall today and avoid the weekend tourist crush. The bus was cushy and air conditioned and was playing some catchy Chinese pop music for the ride. We slowly crawled through Beijing traffic and watched our watches for the time. Almost 2 hours into the ride we are not seeing any “mountains” on which the wall could be and we were a little concerned. The bus stops and the conductor calls to us that this is the Simitai spot. Uh-oh. I knew before we even got off where we actually
were. MIYUN. NO!! There is a group of 5 or 6 people practically standing on the stair of the bus exit ready to eat us up and we get off and the bus drives off deserting us in the middle of this unknown town. Of course we are being badgered to take a damn taxi to Simitai because apparently there is no bus. (I think these people read the Lonely Planet and then all agree that they can make much more money by eliminating the so called bus and just lying and saying there never was a bus…con artists for sure) By this point we are incredibly annoyed and trying not to “lose face” (showing you are upset in Chinese culture is an big no-no) we discuss just crossing the street and catching the damn bus back to Beijing. The taxi drivers are shoving pens and paper in our hands trying to get us to write down a fare (they started out at 400 round trip) and we are blatantly ignoring them and talking between ourselves as to what we should do. Lonely Planet said a taxi from Miyun should be no more than 120 round trip, so I grab
Grasshopper
Definitely not Grasshopper beer! a pad from one of the hands and write down 50 each way. They scoff and laugh and point to the gas station and tell us prices are high. We are having none of it. You don’t want to take my low price fine we are going back to Beijing. We don’t even stop to try to listen to them, we just start walking off quickly towards the bus stop. The woman who seemed to be some sort of translator called to us “FINE, OK 100 ROUND TRIP”. I turn around and look at her and nod my head and she motions for us to follow. Fine. I guess we are headed to Simitai after all (and for 20 less than the guide said! Score…).
We jump into one cab and he starts writing more stuff down on a piece of paper and we tell him 100 round trip. He keeps pointing to the paper and we just say no and open the door to hop out. He quickly says okokok and puts the paper away and drives off before we can get out. The key to good bargaining really is to just walk away and show no interest,
you’ll get whatever you want! We drive through an intersection and turn left where another taxi is just sitting on the side of the road. He starts yelling something to the other driver and stops the taxi and they yell back and forth. We are supremely irritated by this point and wondering what the hell is going on. The driver turns around and tells us we are to get in this other cab. What the… We timidly hop out, pull out our notepad ready to negotiate yet another price but our driver seems to have told this other driver all about us and he smiles this big smile and ushers us into the back. 100 round trip. Here we go. Along the way he stopped to pick up another girl (a friend apparently) and we bounced down the road for about another hour and a bit.
We both rode in silence, a little nervous that we might not be going to Simitai and perhaps we pissed off the other driver and he gave us to this assassin who was taking us somewhere to be robbed…
The time is now noon and we turn down a road where a
Reaching the Top!
Erin looking inspired after climbing what felt like 10 000 steps! sign says Simitai. Horray! We are alive and we made it!! Albeit much later than we intended and now our time at the wall will be cut short but we’re here. We write down the license plate of our taxi so we can find him again at our designated pick up time and head off to enter the gates. This section of the wall is much steeper and higher than the wall at Badaling so we had to purchase cable car tickets to save some time and take us up to almost the very top. This part of the wall was certainly much more impressive than Badaling, once you hiked up the pathway and actually reached the wall. Very unrestored and raw, and to be up that high looking down into the valleys was so neat. The air was also much cleaner here, the sky was blue and there was only a hint of smog hanging around in the distance. This is the section of the wall to see. I believe we were 2100m up, that is what a sign indicated.
We trekked up from watchtower 8 until watchtower 12, where it continues to climb a ways but the
wall is practically crumbled away. There were chains and a sign telling us it was an offense to go further. We snapped many photos and sat and looked around us taking it all in. There were only a handful of tourists at this spot so we even had it all to ourselves at some points. What a hassle to get out here, but now that we are here was it ever worth it.
The few hours we had passed far too quickly and we soon had to make the trek back down to the bottom. Back in the cable car (which I can’t say I enjoyed too much, I hate those kinds of things and this one especially was small and rickety) and into the taxi for the ride back to Miyun. Along the way yet again our driver stopped to pick up three more men. We exchanging glances which said “Oh geez…are we gonna be okay?” because we were both remembering what we had read about South America. A group of other travelers or locals will be picked up by your cab driver, and they drive to a remote area and gang up on you and rob you.
Little restoration
A good example of the path on top of the wall at Simitai. Very little restoration has been done here, making for an authentic experience! For the remainder of the ride we both sat rather tensely clinging to our belongings and praying for the ride to be over. I’ve decided if I could have one superpower it would be to speak and understand every language of the world. It would make situations like this one a little easier, as we were wondering what they were all saying to each other so enthusiastically (hopefully not “Let’s rob these rich looking white people!! OK!! YAY!!!”). After waking up at the crack of dawn and the struggle we went through just to reach Simitai we both had to fight to keep our heavy eyelids open, but the menacing guys sitting behind me was motivation enough. FINALLY we reach Miyun where we are shuffled off and bombarded by minibus conductors offering rides back to Beijing. Instead of taking the 15Yuan luxury coach that we arrived in we opted for the much smaller 10Yuan minibus, which was much more lively. The method that they have is there is one driver, and one man sitting in the front seat who hangs out the window screaming at people on the street. I assume he’s yelling out the destination of the bus because
Watchtower 12
This is as far as we could walk, after this the ruins are very crumbling and dangerous. he seems to yell the same thing repeatedly at people until they finally pay attention to him and shake their head. If someone decides they are heading that way they flag the bus over and it swoops over and stops, collects the passenger, then heads back into the traffic again. We soon learned why a “front man” is needed, as the driver has far too much to concentrate on. Weaving in and out of traffic, driving in bike lanes and on sidewalks, even on a closed section of the road!! Our sleepiness was gone as this bus ride was far too exciting!! It seems that the lines painted on the road are definitely more of a guideline than a law, as people drive in the middle of them and drift back and forth constantly. If you hear beeping you know not to move over and to check your mirror. Or beep back and move over anyways. Beeping and yelling are forms of road communication, the driver beeps at people on bikes, at other cars, at pedestrians, and then the front mans job is to hang out and yell and point at them. What chaos. At one point we stopped to
At the end
This is our first non-self-portrait! There was another young couple up top when we arrived and they asked us first if we would take a picture of them, so we assumed it was safe to give them our camera for a shot together!! pick up two girls but when they entered the bus there weren’t two seats together, so the front man climbed on behind them and started screaming at the other single passengers and musical chairs started while everyone shuffled around. When our bus was finally full we put it into high gear and sped down the road heading for Beijing.
After much excitement and much more honking and yelling we reached our stop. In all coming back from Simitai it took us 3 hours. What an excursion!! And since there had been nothing to eat at Simitai we were both still on empty stomachs and ravished. We trek over to the subway where Dev joins the massive bubble around the ticket window (they don’t seem to know how to line up here, you just shove and push and when you’re close enough to stick your hand through the window with cash you get your tickets) and we jump a train home.
All day we had been day dreaming about the massive feast we were going to order when we arrived back at the hotel. A day of hard bargaining and trekking the wall on no food deserved a feast.
For $12 we got a massive bowl of hot and sour soup, fried beef with veggies, sweet and sour pork, 12 dumplings, steamed rice, 2 big pork garlic ribs and a giant bottle of beer. Delivered to our room! And what a feast it was. Every morsel was scrumptious and delicious and we gobbled it all up. We had planned to head down to the lobby to use the internet and book some hostels for our upcoming cities but we laid down on the bed to rest our full tummies and both promptly fell asleep. Whoops! Dev woke me at midnight to take a shower and put on my pj’s and after cleaning up we both went back to bed for a good nights rest.
Today is now Saturday and we check out of our hostel on Monday. I think we will wander around the “hutong” today which is an area of small narrow alleyways where many Chinese still live. They are very old, constructed after Genghis Khan leveled Beijing. Unfortunately they are being bulldozed at a rate of more than 10 000 homes a year and most are scheduled to be demolished before the upcoming Olympic Games. This
Magnificent!
The Great Wall has been our favorite excursion so far. The views are stunning. is the place to find many street vendors selling delicious food for a fraction of the cost at most other “tourist” markets.
Monday we catch a train to Datong where we plan to spend a few days before moving on to Pingyao. From there we will head to Xi’an to see the famed Army of Terracotta Warriors.
We have rapidly adjusted to life in China and are loving it. The food is amazing and cheap and wonderful smells bombard you at every street corner (although many disgusting smells bombard you as well, depending on where you are walking).
We must go book some hostels now and research flights to India, enjoy the pics we’ve posted!!
xoxoxoxoxoxo
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