Advertisement
Published: August 4th 2006
Greetings from Shanghai, China!
Well, we've crammed in as much of China as we could in ten days - tomorrow we fly to Hong Kong, then Singapore, before reaching Australia on Monday morning!
We managed to get our Chinese Visa of course, after much faffing at the consulate. You basically queue up, wait your number and hand over your passport and cash. I nearly didn't get one, because the silly security guard wouldn't let me in with an orange juice! We had waited there for so long, I had gone to fetch a snack breakfast for us both, to eat while we were waiting our turn. However, as my OJ wasn't allowed to go through the x-ray machine (?!!?!) I had to leave it downstairs.....cue much yelling by me at what a pointless little man he was, and exactly what I thought of his jobsworthiness! The OJ remained downstairs, I got my visa and I gave the security chap an 'English' wave on our way out! Well, honestly, if I was going to blow up the place, I'd hardly do it with Tropicana would I?
So to Air China, the bit I was dreading. Doesn't exactly sound like an airline with a decent safety record, does it?? I mean, it's not Air Kuwait, granted, but still! Turns out to be another very new plane, lovely stewardesses and it was another very safe flight. The landing was fantastically bumpy, but I actually like that, at least you know you're down on the ground again!!
Much jostling at the airport followed, the chinese don't actually queue up, they just surge forward, so with elbows at the ready, we escaped through immigration, claimed the bags and sought relief in........KFC. Ok, ok, I know, probably not the best idea, and our burgers were actually pink, but we were starving and couldn't have eaten the slop on the plane. A 45min taxi ride later, we arrived at our hotel in Beijing, where we were to meet our Intrepid tour leader and fellow travellers. Beijing was very drab, grey and communist looking. It's all tower blocks, smog and tons & tons of cars. How on earth Beijing was awarded the Olympics for 2008, none of us will ever understand. It's the gridlock capital of the world! It actually looked like a film set of a nuclear holocaust or the dalek invasion of earth 😊 !
The hotel was pretty nice, and even though it's yet another country where you mustn't flush the loo paper, in Beijing their sanitary system is quite good thankfully. Ju & I had a quick beer before the welcome meeting, and braced ourselves for the meeting, hoping we'd get a Western tour leader (after the Hitler-job we had in Vietnam) and maybe a few less Aussies. Just kidding Aussies, but your lot do get everywhere!! Is there going to be anyone left in Sydney when we arrive?!??!
Howard greeted us..........Howard Hu that is, China's finest, so I didn't get my wish of another Ainsley, ah well. He was smiley enough. The rest of the group were as follows: Seb, a student from Bath, Andy a student from London, Arlene from bloody Melbourne, Katie from bloody Melbourne and Brenda from bloody Alice Springs. More Aussies! Yes!! Arlene is just the best Aussie name ever! Next, we had 'The Family', mum & dad John & Kim and their 16yr old son Tom from Oop North, Stockport. Last but not least, there was Jane, a very pretty girl from Norway and Alex, a girl from Canada who had spent the last year teaching Engrish in Japan. Now, every group has an 'odd one' and who knows that odd one could be me, more times than I'd actually admit, but Alex was a one off. She was the loudest most opiniated girl any of us had ever met. Katie had also been teaching in Japan and Brenda in Korea, and they were really enjoying it. Not Alex. She even referred to it as 'F*****g Japan' instead of plain old 'Japan'! Turns out she hated it and was heading back to Canada after this China tour. Her husband hated it too, but he hadn't joined her on this trip. Perhaps wisely he'd gone to do the Trans-Mongolian!
So began our tour. The very next day we took a bus to Mutiyanu, the section of the Great Wall that Intrepid likes, as it's less crowded. Howard advised is to borrow brollies from reception as the weather wasn't going to be much cop, so Alex, me and Arlene trotted up to the concierge desk to fetch umbrellas. Scam number one looms! They wanted 50 Yuan per umbrella deposit, which we would of course get back if the umbrellas were returned in good order. I don't know if they expected us to eat them or what, but they obviously didn't want to hand them over!! Alex paid up (Ju had the wallet back on the bus) and off we went. Howard was rapidly turning into Lam, eg treating us like we were 12 year olds on our first time out in public! Stopping for the 'Happy House' (it's a bloody toilet, you nutter!) and continuing to show us how to cross the road, that kind of thing. His motto? 'Things are different in China'. No shit!
Sadly, it was very cloudy at the wall, limiting visibility to no more than a few feet. It was awesome still, but you couldn't really feel the size of it, wothout looking at the postcards afterwards. We walked miles along the wall, it was very spooky being up in the clouds, although i suspect most of it was actually smog. Howard took great offence if we called it smoggy, he seemed to think Beijing was misty - we knew different, if you sneezed it was black! Sorry!
The next day we visited Tiannemen Square & the Forbidden City. Talk about Communist headquarters!! I never realised that China still worshipped Chairman Mao, even though he's been dead for 32 years, and was by all accounts, a bit of a mentalist dictator (another one!!). There was a queue stretching around the block to enter his tomb, we didn't bother, I don't have a very high opinion of him, and also a massive portrait of Mao on the front of the Forbidden City. Howard went off to get the tickets and left Seb in charge, waving his Intrepid Flag at us!
Alex meanwhile had spent the morning trying to get Howard to say something controversial about the Tiannamen Square massacre of 1989, but it turns out most Chinese hardly knew it had happened. Even now, the media is enormously censored here in China. To illustrate, you aren't allowed to look at certain websites, including CNN and BBC!! I'm having to get my football fix from the times online and skysports.com! I've no idea why the BBC is a banned website, but Google is even worse - you can only search for about 4 items that aren't censored. No wonder all the Chinese kids play stupid computer games in kine instead of surfing the web! They're sat all around us know, chain smoking & shouting each time they 'kill' one another, sad gits!!!
We took an overnight train to Xi-an, home of the Terracotta Warriors, and the train wasn't so bad, after Vietnam. We shared with Andy (who by the way, totally reminds me of Dan Godfrey, in the deep voiced, posh boy sense!) and a local Chinese guy. He was fine, we offered him some of our food and he offered us a local delicacy in return - PIG SNOUT!! And he'd already taken a bite out of it!!! We declined, I nearly gagged and went to the next cabin. Big mistake. I was stuck listening to Alex slag Japan off. For 2 hours. And the boys didn't rescue me!! I finally snuck out, and realised I'd left my book on Alex's bed, luckily Seb was kind enough to retrieve it, but it was so obvious that I'd just bailed on her!
Scam number 2 loomed - on the bus from Xi'an train station, Ju adjusted the overhead air con blowy thing. It came off in his hand! The bus was distinctly old anyway, but we didn't think switching it on meant it'd drop out! Anyway, we thought nothing og it, Howard checked us all in and we dashed off to our rooms to get showered (12 hrs on a train makes you want to burn the clothes you wore, and bleach yourself clean again). Then, next thing, bloody Howard is knocking on our door, with the bus driver in tow. The driver wants 200 Yuan (14quid-ish) because you damaged his bus. Stunned, I said No, Ju let off a volley of Anglo-Saxon and then shut the door. In his face! There was no way it'd cost 200Yuan to fix and we couldn't believe he'd brought a total stranger up to our hotel room! The door knocked again. This time Howard was alone and he came in. Ju apologised and explained that it always felt like the Chinese wanted money from Westerners, and that we weren't going to pay. Howard's response? It's diferent in China! (We got the umbrella deposit money back, by the way, but only after Howard intervened). We still havent paid, we felt like the bus driver was totally taking the mickey.
Xi'an was much better than Beijing (lets face it, Ipswich is nicer than Beijing!!) and the Terracotta Warriors were pretty impressive. I didn't realise that most of them have still to be uncovered though, it'll be much better when the Chinese get their collective fingers out and dig up the rest, pit 3 was just a load of broken muddy bits! Still, we bought the obligatory mini-warriors, which we will ship home from Oz and put on top of the telly. Classy.
Another overnight train later (no locals or pig snouts in our cabin, although Howard did his best to cock up the seating arrangements again, leaving Katie on her own and us with 4 chinese. He sorted it eventually) we arrived in Suzhou, a pretty pointless place, where we were to see a show. That was fun, it was the biggest load of cobblers since the water puppets in Haboi, but it was free at least. Scam number 3 - Howard said he could arrange an afternoon sightseeing for 100Yuan each, so off we went, visiting a silk farm & enjoying a boat trip through the canals. It wasn't unpleasant but we all agreed that 100Yuan was way over the top price wise. We were sure Howard had scammed us, even more so when another passenger arrived on the bus - a local with his son!? He wasn't a guide, but I think it was his bus and he'd wanted his cut of our 100Yuans or something. Howard even called him the middle man?! Scam central. Seb & Arlene later confessed they'd been caught in the Tea Scam in Beijing - tea ceremonies that end up costing a silly amount of money, but luckily they'd both cancelled their credit cards and got the money back. Ever since, we'd had an in joke that everything was a scam - if you fell over - it was a scam, if you bought water it was a scam, silly as hell, but funny too! Howard used to always pay the bill for us, for group meals, and I totally think he was getting his cut. Like I say, land of scams!!!!
We arrived in Shanghai, one of the nicest cities I'd been to, by bus (Ju was barred from touching the air con!) and immediatley went for a walk. Two hours later, Howard was still striding ahead, so we all bailed and went to Starbucks. Air conditioned heaven, and western toilets too! Squat loos aren't so bad, but I'm a Westerner at heart and I like to sit down! Shanghai has a very futuristic sky line, so the photos look immaculate. Some of us went up the Pearl Tower (no Howard, so no scam 😊! ) 350m tall and worth the views over the city and the river. We also got horribly drunk on Suntory, of Lost in Translation fame, so the tour was definitley ending on a higher note than it started. Last night was the final group dinner, the food has been top notch, even with Scammer Howard doing all the ordering, so still no sign of any weightloss, sadly. I did indulge in some Bullfrog though. Marginally nicer than rat, but very spicy anyway so I'm sure it could've been chicken!
So, China has been an experience, as has the whole of Asia, so very diverse and so bloody hot!! I would recommend our route to anyone, no regrets, even if Beijing wins the award for most underwhelming city ever.
Tomorrow we're off again, a new continent awaits this time to Sydney, where we've just booked our Sydney Harbour bridge climb, which I am well looking foward too, then on around Oz through August until we get to New Zealand...!!!
I hope Norwich don't get hammered too badly by Leeds tomorrow, part of me is glad I have no 'Jeff' to watch...take care all, everybody mail me soon.
Love Kelly & Julian xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.066s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0397s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Neal
non-member comment
Bill who?
Hey Both, It's great being back at work!?!?!?!? I am so jealous! Kelly you're writing makes Bill Bryson look like an amature... so funny.... and no pages missing in your blogs!!? Come on Norwich tomorrow... I hate Leeds more than you remember!?! Keep travelling safe guys and remember, there will be less Australians in Oz I'm missing the banter and my drinking buddies, Take Care Neal (and Caroline who has also been enjoying your blogs) PS - If you havn't already can you e-mail us the link so that we can check out your photos please!