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Published: April 16th 2011
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Day 16 - Thursday 7th April
Early morning departure from UB to Beijing. The border crossing took place at midnight and was a lot more extensive than coming into Mongolia. The Mongolia immigratin raided through every Chinese person's bag and vice versa on the other side. No one seemed bothered with us at all. Then once the immigration had been completed....the wheels had to be changed. We were taken into a shed, unhooked from the other carriages, raised 4m into the air and then crashed back onto the next carriage again. This all took place at about 1am and lasted 4 hours...It was making everyone grumpy to say the very least!!
Day 17 - Friday 8th April - Nihao China
Afternoon arrival into Beijing West. We are greeted by our Honcho Lily and all go out for dinner. We had a feast of all things chinese; about 15 dishes were placed on the lazy susan and it came to 42 Yuan each! No more pot noodles for me!!! In order to celebrate finishing the train journey we all wanted to have a drink but there is a bit of a glut of bars and therefore went back to the hotel
for some 60p beers. I ordered a Baileys...clearly hadn't be opened in 10yrs as it had solidified. She still served it to me though! Ed, having had a few beers then serenaded me with a song titled "Bestival of my testical" having had the misfortune of seeing him spread eagled on the train earlier this morning.....you can only imagine my face!
Day 18 - Saturday 9th April - The Great Wall Of China
Up early to try and beat the crowds to Mutianyu, a 3km section of the wall about 90km northeast of Beijing. We pay the 40 yuan entrance fee (£4!) climb the 1225 steps to the top and the view is magnificent. It is unfortunately a grey day but the view was still amazing and even though most of this part of the wall has been restored it was still really good and you can see parts in the distant which are original. We walked up the steps to tower 10 and then higher still to tower 14 and then back down to tower 6 where we rather tackily took a tabboggon down to the bottom again. This cost 50 Yuan but was lots of fun and
much more enjoyable on the thighs!
We walked round to Tiananmen Square with Kris, Jo and Ed and enjoyed being photographed by entire families. Michelle and I got grabbed to be in a massive family photo...I'm about a foot taller than everyone else so it looks pretty funny!
We went for a chinese hot pot which is a metal bowl with a soup in it. You are then given all the meats/veg/artificial seafood and you place it in the bowl and cook it. After a few minutes it is cooked and you take it out and dip it in some other sauces. I have never been to a chinese restaurant at home that does this...probably because it involves sharing everything on your plate!
We then got a taxi to Jin Sha theatre to see the Legend of Jinsha acrobatic show. I won't go into too much detail as I have filmed quite a bit of it...but please check out the entire video!!!!!!!
After the show we went to Houhai Lake to have some drinks. Lots of live (tone-deaf) singers in every bar and yet somehow we ended up in a club with a pole in it. The guys were mesmorized
by the dancers and we enjoyed our cocktails!! Tonight was probably the first real experience of public squat toilets, I'm still practicing on how low to go in order not to pee on myself...Michelle needs further practice having totally mis-directed and peed on the girls foot in the next cubicle!!!
Day 19 - Sunday 10th April - Let's cycle along Beijing's M25!
Up nice and early to get to the Panjiayuan Market to see where the locals buy their stuff. Apparently up to 50 000 people visit in a day to try and find a treasure!! It was good fun but difficult to see how many people make a living as a good quarter just looked like they were selling broken crap that they didn't want anymore. We did also see some Buddha shaped sex toys....must be something about getting closer to Godliness?!?!!?
We then rented some bikes from our hostel and decided to cycle to Beijing West to buy our onwards tickets to X'ian. The girl on the reception desk looked at us as if we were crazy and laughed when she said it would take 15 mins to get there. That said we got directions and made
our way out onto the crazy roads. We passed Tiananmen Square and then ended up on the equivalent of the M25. All the locals were doing it so we just followed them...the main aim is to not stop and just prayer the cars will avoid you. Like home, the main danger for cyclists are the buses who when coming up behind you sound a claxon to indicate that you are in their way. Scared the crap outa me every single time!!! The horn is used by all to indicate that you should MOVE! No one takes a blind bit of notice though....
Half way down this road we realised it must have been lost in translation and the girl behind the reception actually said 50 minutes...but having took a left where she said at the Military Museum we ended up cycling through real Beijing with all the fried ducks, foods and fruit stalls outside peoples houses on route to Beijing West station. Was bloody brilliant. We booked our tickets and then went for a gander outside the station; quite a lot of people just sleeping in the middle of the entrance and you can see a lot of poverty as
many many people are collecting the recycling. We found a little restaurant with lots of locals in....as soon as we walk in, the manager is over cleaning the table - laying out out napkins, bringing both hot and cold water and being very attentive. This didn't happen for anyone else that came in so made us feel very special!
We confidently cycled back to the Tiananmen Square to take some pictures where these random families start taking pictures of us again. One man stroked my face then blew me a kiss! They really are fascinated by my casper white skin...or they think I am Miley Cirus...who apparently I look like?! Two people have said this since we left!
Thoroughly impressed with our live it like a local adventures we meet up with Mike to go to the night markets to taste some of the "local" delicases...I am sure these are all set up for tourists as I have never seen a chinese person eating any of our following order:
Starfish, Sea Urgent and Sea snake. All were horrendous...but the sea urgent was so vile. I imagine a similar taste would come from walking sea-weed that is stuck on your flip
flop around London for a month....bloody HORRIFIC. We were going to play a game where we all picked a delicacy for each other....but you would have bet we would have come back with Sheep's penis'! We then walked further into town eating some dumplings when my tummy really started to churn....I had to run into a KFC and throw up in a squat toilet! I threw up in a squat toilet in KFC in Beijing. WTH!!
Lesson 3: Don't eat crap from the bottom of the ocean. Much Love x x
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