Brrrrr - Beijing (Day 35 - 39 by Chris)

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Wednesday 21st October 2015

Leaving Shanghai was easy enough. We took the Metro to the train station, and hopped onto the super fast train, which is basically the Chinese version of the Shinkansen in Japan. We had booked our ticket in advance through www.chinatravelguide.com which we found was an easy to use, English speaking travel company who can assist foreigners in buying tickets etc, for a very small fee. They'd booked us 2 seats on the 1500km journey which only took us 5 hours direct to Beijing. Before the high speed train, this journey would've been an overnight sleeper train jobby. The journey was fine, despite being sandwiched between a family with small children who were making the long trip back to Beijing. Despite the other carriages being very quite, we seemed to have landed the nosiest AND the nosiest seats. Its worth mentioning here something that we have noticed in China which we find very strange. At first we thought this was just a wardrobe malfunction, but it turns out they are produced this way. This is that small children wear trousers with a cut running all the way under their crotch so to expose their bums and other things. We couldn't figure out why so many children were walking around the train and streets with their bits out. We suspect that its something to do with potty training, as they don't wear nappies. Strange.

We arrived in Beijing, Chris in shorts and Gemma dressed a little better for the weather. As we were pulling into Beijing I was in 2 minds as to whether the stuff outside was smog, or fog. It was fog, and Beijing was freezing. All other passengers were dressed in coats, hats and gloves and there I was in shorts and t-shirts. As if I didn't get enough strange looks as it was! I went to the toilets in the train station with my backpack and layered up with multiple t-shirts and the only warm items of clothing I had, jeans and a hoody, both of which I would not take off for the next week or so.

We found our hostel quite easily, staying at Beijing Saga Hostel for 5 nights and costing us £11 each per night. The Hostel was well rated for location and friendly staff, both of which we would agree with. Over the next few days though we found out that the rooms could have been a little better, but nothing to write home about (which I am kind of doing now....). On arriving, we checked in and settled in for a night of planning the next few days. Our colds had taken hold and we weren't feeling very well at all. We bought some instant noodles and sat in watching 'Lost', which we had put onto our laptop before leaving England.

Thursday 22nd October 2015

We were running out of clean clothes so decided that we should spend the early part of the morning washing our stuff. The Hostel didn't have washing machines but did have a laundry service. They didn't have driers and would hang clothes outside to dry, but with the temperature being approx 10 degrees they were never going to dry. As a result we spent the morning in our wet-room hand washing everything and then hanging them out to dry on our travel washing line which has come in very handy. Those wet clothes would spend 3 days on that washing line trying to dry, which goes some way to explain how cold our room was.

Layered up in the dirty clothes we couldn't do with being wet and out of action, we left the Hostel and decided to walk the 15 minutes to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. We chose the Hostel on account that it was so close to these major attractions and it would be a quite walk to get there early doors and avoid the crowds if we stayed elsewhere. Turns out using me (Chris) as a guide isn't the best way to find places, as again I seemed to get us lost. We managed to walk off the beaten track through some very local streets for local people and along the way received some very strange looks.

Upon finding our destination 1.5 hours after leaving we realised that no matter what time of the day and which ever month of the year it is, this area will always be jam packed. It-was-heaving! we walked along Tienanmen Square which is directly outside of the Forbidden City and offers a great view of the entrance, above which is a huge portrait of Chairman Mao. Something which we realised is a, not so subtle reminder to the Chinese people, that although you are about to enter a Palace of the former emperors of china, you are now in fact in a communist state and above your head is a huge picture of the man that created the Peoples Republic of China.

We entered the Forbidden City and paid for an audio guide to provide some historical facts to make the walk around a little more interesting and factual. This guide cost about £6 each and worked on GPS so upon arriving at a place of interest you had to do nothing but listen to the women's voice. Turns out that the GPS was crap and we were being told information about stuff at least 100 metres away and by the time you'd got there, she'd started talking about something else another 100 metres away. Bloody waste of money.

We spent about 4 hours meandering our way through the huge City and the hoards of tourists looking upon buildings which were used only 100 years ago before the last emperor was overthrown and stretch back almost 700 years. We felt we had had our fill of history for the day so upon leaving the Forbidden City (you enter through the south gate and walk through and exit by the north gate) we walked across the road to a park which offered great views over the Forbidden City from a hill on top of which was built a Buddhist temple. We were hungry so before the mini hike to the top we stopped at a street stall to buy the biggest sweet potato you have ever seen. These things were the size of a head. We sat on a bench and ate our sweet jacket potato from the paper bag it came wrapped in. Nice, warm and filling.

After the walk down the hill and taking some great shots across the Forbidden City we walked through the dark streets to a place called Hou Hai, which had lots of restaurants and bars surrounding a lake. This place was extremely tacky and catered for tourists, foreign and Chinese alike. Each bar was lit up in neon and had no one inside other than either a man or a women sat on a stool on the stage singing with a smoke machine behind them. Outside was a teenage boy trying to usher passers by into the empty and no doubt expensive tourist trap. No thanks. We did however enter a restaurant that was very busy. All the other customers were local other than Gemma and I. We ordered from the picture menu like children and ate our noodles and rice with egg and tomato dish whilst everyone else had Chinese hot pot. We paid up and left and went back to the Hostel to sleep.

Friday 23rd October 2015

We had booked a visit to the Great Wall through our hostel as they did many excursions, and the part of the wall we wanted to visit was quite complicated to get to using local buses, or so we had read. Instead, we paid a quite expensive £26 each for the day trip along with about 20 other bleary eyed tourists. We met in the bar area of the hostel at 7am for our pretty poor American breakfast which was included in the price. We arrived early so got our brekkie in good time, although the scrambled eggs were cold. We felt sorry for the poor girl waitress who was being moaned at by the 20 other tourists who had not received their breakfast by the time the bus had arrived. Some of them had to take their fry up away in a plastic bag. Pretty crappy service.

We took the bus 1.5 hours north west of Beijing to the part of the wall called Mutinaya, which of the 3 main parts to visit is the 2nd furthest away and is a mixture of original wall which is falling to pieces and reconstructed wall (using original pieces) and as a result of being quite far out of the city isn't the busiest. When we arrived we took the cable car to the top and were given 4 hours to walk along the wall with instructions to be back at a restaurant by 13:40 for lunch. The cable car took us to the main entry point of this section of the wall, which was tower 16 (the wall has lookout towers all the way along). We were told that the end of the reconstructed (safe) part of the wall stopped at tower 26 and that there was a sign which stated no tourists should venture beyond. Our guide said it was our choice whether to go any further but that if we did we would be walking on the original, untouched Great Wall of China. After a good 1.5 hours of walking through tourists, school children up and down steep parts of the wall and taking in some stunning scenery of the wall snaking its way through the autumnal trees, we came to tower 26 and the sign. We walked passed the sign and instantly the crowds dissipated. There were only foreigners here, all of which were clearly only interested in the untouched wall. We stopped here for a while after walking past a couple more towers and ate an orange whilst sitting on the wall taking in the beautiful surroundings and in the distance watching hundreds of people walking around the busy part of the wall. Absolutely exhausted and our legs burning (the wall is built over a mountain so the climb is literally up and down) not to mention the aching in our lungs as we are both full of cold and should probably be wrapped up warm indoors with some soup, we turned around and walked 1.5 hours back. We took the cable car back down and to the restaurant where the rest of the tour group had sat down for a meal.

After arriving back in Beijing, after a 4 hour journey back (it took 1.5 hours there - Beijing traffic is unbelievable) it was dark, cold and we were exhausted. We showered and then slept to recover. Our clothes were still wet on the washing line. We'd have to wear the same smelly clothes the following day.

Saturday 24th October 2015

We treated ourselves to a few extra hours sleep as we weren't feeling well and this blinking cold wasn't shifting. We spent a few hours on the computers in the hostel planning the next few days, booking train tickets and accommodation. We left the hostel at about 3pm and headed to the Temple of Heaven which is where the emperor would visit once per year to pray for a good harvest. We spent an hour or so walking around and then left to find a night market which wasn't too far from our hostel and sold a whole array of weird things such as scorpions and tarantulas on sticks as tasty snacks. Despite wandering around for an hour we couldn't find it so had some noodles with scrambled egg from a little restaurant close to the hotel. We then had some more sleep as we were feeling rough still. Our clean clothes were still wet!

Sunday 25th October 2015

For our final day in Beijing we traveled on the metro across the city to the Summer Palace which is where the old emperors would spend summers (funnily enough). Whilst on the train on the way there, we were both engrossed in our kindles when a young Chinese couple entered the carriage. Most seats being taken, the girl sat opposite us and the guy sat next to me. He kept leaning forward and staring at me and then saying something to his girlfriend. I thought nothing of this as we are always being gawped at by people. What i didn't expect though was for him to stroke my beard! I wasn't sure what was going on and my auto response was to hit him, however I managed to stop myself and gave him a bit of an angry glare. After couple of seconds reflection I realised that they don't see many beards and he was probably wandering what it felt like. I then turned and stroked his clean shaven face and he nodded as if to say he cant grow a beard. He then sat next to his girlfriend and they giggled as they looked at her phone which she had clearly used to take some not-so-discreet photos of the blond and the bearded foreigners. Another odd experience.

We successfully found the Summer Palace which is quite big and had numerous halls and temples built around quite a big lake. When we arrived about 2pm it wasn't very busy and we were able to walk around without many crowds. After walking through the various sights we headed toward the exit and it was like the whole cast of Cocoon (classic 80's film) and their mates had been let out on day release from the old peoples home. As we were walking towards the exit we were stampeded by literally hundreds of OAP tour groups. All of them wearing either a baseball cap, t-shirt or backpack associated to their tour group, done so that they could be distinguished amognst everyone else. The thing the different tour groups didn't discus though was the colour of these differentiators and everyone had the Chinese colour of red, so they all merged into one wrinkly mass of red, all heading towards us. We managed to escape this possible massacre and exited the Summer Palace and upon doing so realising that the entrance price drops after 4pm, hence the gaggle of OAPs and other tour groups entering the Palace.

We decided that as it was dark we would head to Tienanmen Square for some night time views of the Forbidden City. A good decision as the entrance was all lit up and offered a different feeling to the day time view. Whilst taking pictures of the entrance and the Chinese and Russian flags that lined the road outside, a middle aged Chinese lady came over to us and mimicked taking a photo. We assumed, as had been the case quite a lot so far in China, that she wanted a selfie with us. Rather than standing next to us, she snuggled in-between us both and took a big smiley picture. Again, something unusual to mark down.

On walking back to the Hostel, this time taking a more direct route to the journey on our first day, we randomly stumbled across the night market that we had been trying to find the night before. We walked through the crowded street and looked upon lots of creepy crawlies deep fried and on sticks, some things such as the scorpions weren't even dead and wiggled on the sticks. Suffice to say we didn't purchase anything and after a good 15 minutes of walking up and down we left and headed back to the hostel to sleep. Our clothes had finally dried!

Tomorrow we depart Beijing to an ancient town called Pingyao. Hopefully it will be warm.....

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