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Published: March 6th 2011
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The Beijing Skyline
Not in the highest building, but we still got some pretty amazing views... As accommodation was so expensive in Shanhaiguan, I decided the next day to head on to Beijing, where I'd meet up with Pete, Hannah, her boyfriend, and Pete’s elder brother Simon. Beijing was actually really nice, I only spent a day there, so didn't get to do all of the cultural shizz that I'm sure will be around forever. I'm sure I’ll see it sometime in the future! Instead Pete, Simon, and I went exploring, and due to some conveniently open doors we got onto the roof of a skyscraper in the centre of the business district, and got some rather lovely piccies! However, it was getting chilly, so we got some food and headed back to our hostel where we started packing for our snowboarding trip! This involved some quite dodgy transport connections, and ended up with 5 of us in a tiny little Nissan Micra, with a snowboard on the roof and our bags absolutely everywhere. Anyway, we finally arrived at Duolemeidi, an "Italian" Chinese ski resort... Thanks to Pete’s contacts in the Chinese snow sports world, we all had free ski passes and after talking to the women at the ski resort, we managed to get 30% off
Beijing Skyline 2
The sky was surprisingly blue, considering all you hear of Beijings pollution. you can see the moon too! our ski hire too. We were also staying in Pete’s bosses flat about 25 mins from the resort, so that was also free! In all it was a 25 quidish 2 day skiing holiday! Not bad!
The night before it was time to go back to Beijing, I decided that I might as well travel on, instead of staying in Beijing, which, with the huge travel rush which is Chinese New Year (3rd Feb. this year) makes any station of any sort in Beijing a mass of shouting, smelly people with no belief in personal space. Hannah and Stevie, both having all of their stuff, decided that they might as well travel on with me too; and so on we went, together, to Datong.
Now Datong is the Capital of Shanxi, a province which is well known for its production of coal, and a province that I don't think I’ll be visiting again! The hostel that we stayed in whilst there was quite an experience... It was underground, had a hole in the roof into a mass of piping and bits and bobs, and had an abundance of mould. Outside of the hostel was pretty dodgy as well,
Long way down
Thats Pete, on the level below ours...to get up to where the photo was taken required some rusty old ladders and a bit of balance... we didn't really stay there for long, just enough to get onto a bus to the nearby caves, which, although probably overdoing it a bit, had 51,000 carvings and a hell of a lot of caves! It was nice to see and there were some very impressive sized Buddhas etc, but it just seemed like they probably could have done something better with their time than carve all of this stuff! There were also some quite cool temples and a "warm springs" -which was frozen. After a while walking around this place we decided that it was time to get some warming drinks, and after a while, found a lovely little tea house where we got some crazy Chinese powder drinks and sat watching old men play Chinese checkers and trying to eat some Chinese version of pistachios...that were green and flat, and not too great.
The next day we headed on to Taiyuan, a quite nice city further south that didn't really have much of interest nearby. Even so, we arrived late, and, as the hostel that the lonely planet recommended was closed, we booked into the next cheapest option, which was a nice hotel with a ping
Brothers in Beijing
Looking out across the city... pong table on our floor. We stayed there for the night before going back to the recommended hostel. All I can say is that I don't think i'll be trusting the lonely planet recommendations so much any more. The room I stayed in smelt very strongly of wee, the bed wasn't clean, and in order to sleep, Stevie and I drank a small bottle of baijiu and 5 half litre bottles of beer between us... It was just enough to send us off to sleep quite nicely! Anyway, before we had gone for dinner I ended up having one of this experiences that you could only really have in china...
I had been wandering around just exploring a bit, when I saw a woman stood next to a man who was letting out the occasional wail, and looked slightly worse for wear. The woman was occasionally giving the man a half-hearted pull on the arm, and whenever she did this the man wailed all the louder and swung his arm wildly trying to get her to go away. As all the Chinese people were just watching and didn't seem to be doing much, I asked the woman if she
Beijing by night
From an amazing top floor restaurant with glass walls all around...and a rather pricey menu... needed any help. By this point I could smell the horrible sweet stench of Baijiu- the Chinese 50%ish liquor. I was soon to learn that the man had drunk 'only 2 small bottles!' and some beer on top of it! The woman asked me if I could help get her insanely inebriated husband up this road, as she was sure that there would be somewhere that he could sleep up here. We proceeded slowly, with the man wailing and screeching all the way and occasionally attempting to lash out at us...luckily he wasn't the most coordinated man, and every time he was difficult, id just lift him up off the ground until he calmed down. It turned out that there wasn't a hostel on this road, but by now we'd accumulated quite a number of spectators, and a couple had even started trying to help us! By now the man had fallen on his face, and was bleeding, which had got not his wife's coat after he tried to bite her...
With some advice from bystanders, she decided that it may be worth calling an ambulance, as this dude was in a rather bad state. By the time the
ambulance got there, I was having to hold this madman so that he couldn't hit or kick anyone. Luckily, being a westerner, i was quite a lot bigger that him, and he was pretty helpless. The paramedics, upon seeing this guys state asked me if I could possibly come with them and help to hold him down. So there I was, in the back of a Chinese ambulance with it's siren going, kneeling on this guys legs and holding one arm, whilst two weedy little Chinese men tried to hold his other arm. We finally arrived at the hospital, where I was thanked and told that to get back to my hostel I had to get back to a road "over there somewhere". And so I wandered, and eventually found my way back to the hostel, after a good bit more exploration.
The day after that we went on to a tiny little village called lijiashan, which was way up in the mountains, next to a river with icebergs floating down it, and very cool. We stayed in a middle aged couples house... Well, I say house, but it was a series of rooms built into the mountain, and
Bridge to the Temple
A cool temple built with a moat around it, with a rather cool bridge to get there... so for a night we lived in a cave! The woman who ran the place was really nice, and, as there was no running water, she ran down to the nearby spring to grab us some. She also showed us the toilet (a hole in the floor in a hut outside) and made us some noodles, which I dutifully offered to help her with, and didn't do too badly!
The room that we stayed in had one huge bed, which was exceedingly cunningly crafted. Next to the bed was a coal burning stove, which added a little heat to the room, but not much, but where the smoke was was uber clever. It all goes under the bed (did I mention that the bed was made of stone?!) and heats it so that its just like having a heated blanket! In fact, even though we were way up high in the mountains and well below 0 degrees, I was massively overheating in that bed, which was a nice change!
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