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Published: June 12th 2010
Sorry its been ages since we last wrote but its been a nightmare trying to find a decent internet connection at the moment, and its even more impossible trying to work out how to upload pictures on Chinese computers
Anyway, we've now been in China 3 weeks and its been completely non-stop. After a night sleeping on the floor in Kuala Lumpur airport, we finally made it to Beijing - its mental there. We straightaway got ripped off by a taxi driver but eventually found our hostel just North of the Forbidden City. It was a pretty cool hostel and the beer was amazingly cheap - also the staff spoke pretty good English which was a suprise and made our lives a lot easier.
So the first couple of days we spent wandering around Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City ,the Summer Palace and the Olypmic sites. Unfortunately we didnt make it to see the bloke who formed China (Chairman Mao) mummified remains because the queues were hours long but we did get to laugh at the ridiculous Chinese tour groups who all wear the same hats and follow a tour guide with a massive megaphone
While in Beijing
we also went to the Great Wall and did a damn hard 10k walk along a semi-restored section of it, went to see some Chinese acrobats (where one trick involved a kid riding a bicycle with his face, while balancing on a swinging tightrope - crazy) and had a night out on the sauce with some people from our dorm which involved a local restaurant setting up a table in the middle of a road and serving us all sorts of stuff we didnt recognise or have a clue what we were eating - considering the things we have seen being sold on the streets perhaps its better we dont know!
After a great 6 or so days we decided to leave the comfort of Beijing and go to a couple of random places on the way south. First stop was a place called Datong where we saw the Hanging Monastry. Now this is gonna sound rubbish if we cant work out how to upload some photos but basically its a monastry built into the side of a mountain and is very very impressive. On that day we also went to see some Buddhist Caves and enormous buddhas. They
were very impressive but it was slightly strange that they are currently building a palace in the middle of a lake near them....we guess so they can charge extra in a few years but it makes you suspicious about the age of other palaces in the country!
It was about now we realised that we were swiftly becoming celebrities. People asking us for photo's, posing with us and later on, even asking for autographs I kid you not!!
Ok, then we went to a place called Pingyao which was so chilled out it was ridiculous. And my word did they cater for westerners. We're talking English fry-ups, sweet and sour everything and sit down toliets.
Hmmm then where...we went to Xian which is where the terracotta warriors are, but we were both a tad disappointed - i think because we have seen it a hundred times on the tv and already knew what it looked like - and also because they had moved some of the better models to Shanghai for the World Expo that is going on at the moment. Xian also had KFC which we visited a number of times.
Originally we had wanted
to now head towards Shaghai but because of the aforementioned Expo we were having trouble finding somewhere to stay at such short notice which meant our plans had to change. Instead we decided to do a cruise down the Yangtze River but in order to save some money we went for the Chinese tour. On our boat was one Canadian and im guessing 200 Chinese. Now we really were celebrities, they wouldnt leave us alone, but it was all so friendly. They bought us beer, asked us to join them for dinner and made sure we were with them for the various excursions from the boat which included a rubbish Ghost City (which we thought was going to have loads of history behind it but was only built in 1994!!), a tour of the "3 Little Gorges" and the "3 Gorges Dam" which is apparently the Worlds largest. They also taught us various Chinese words which we guess are rude but there was no real way of knowing
We finished the tour this morning and are now waiting for a 30 hour train journey to a place called Kunming tomorrow night. Luckily we have managed to book a soft
sleeper which at least means we have a lock on our compartment and enough room to sit up. One of our train rides last week was on a hard sleeper top bunk. It was ridiculous - there was about a foot between your face and the roof of the cabin and as for getting up and down the ladder...
These train rides have been the source of quite a bit of amusement because the Chinese also have standing tickets - the people who have these are constantly looking for empty seats but of course have to move if their proper owner comes along. We were watching a family on one journey who were sitting on a bottom bunk when the little kid who was probably only a few months went to the toilet on the seat. Within 2 minutes a bloke came along as he had a ticket for that bunk so the family moved but made no mention of the fact that this new guy was going to sleep in their childs urine. ...lovely stuff. Oh and we got busted once when we assumed nobody could speak English so were commenting on some guys disgusting eating habits but
later found out the girl next to me was completely fluent in english!
We've heard that down south there are some serious floods at the moment and as the infrastructure is pretty basic anyway we are not expecting to be able to email for a while. After that our plan is to loop round to Hong Kong. Also as a quick note, we're not purposley being rubbish with facebook, its banned in China! We've found a proxy site to get around the ban but can only view it, not edit anything....very frustrating as we cant comment on anyones pages or photos!
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Anne
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Hello You Two!
Hey Tiananmen Square never so looked so glamorous till Sarah got there! Can't believe you are so brave - to eat whatever! The Chinese beds are rubbish - hard blocks of cement or wood! At least you are both well this time. Aren't you missing civilization? (I mean Guernsey). Can you watch the World Cup? England is currently 1 all with the USA.....Bye 4 now Anne B