Beijing

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So here we are in China. Some interesting sights and smells have greeted our eyes and noses...! The first leg of our Chinese journey landed us in Beijing for 11 nights. Seeing as China is so open to their people having their own feelings and expressions (ahem...!) Facebook is banned, but I did however discover that Instagram has yet to be discovered by the Chinese powers that be! So we have found a small outlet for our thoughts, or namely photos! So if you want to have a look at some photos from our time so far then you can check out my profile on that...my username is sarahf85. I am reliably informed (by Will) that we will be reunited with Facebook when we get to Hong Kong in late November. So I shall recall our wonderful time in Beijing...(small amount of sarcasm here, we were not enamoured with this city I'm afraid to say!)

27/10

We had our 2 indirect flights from Tokyo to beijing (Tokyo-Shanghai, Shanghai-Beijing) we immediately noticed a difference in culture as soon as we got on one of the airport shuttle buses and it was a constant tirade of horn beeps! Got fed on both flights, lots of rice and noodles! My bag got picked for a security check at shanghai airport...yay!! They muttered something about a "battewy". Turned out to be my chip and pin card reader and he just zipped it back up and on it went! We arrived in Beijing around 21.30 but as it was a domestic flight there was no security or passports checks so we were straight out. (Chinese immigration was a lot quicker at Shanghai than the Japanese one at Tokyo) We got in a taxi and gave the driver the address and map of our hotel in Chinese. He found the rough area but had difficulty locating the exact 'Hutong' (alley) of our hotel. After stopping to talk to some locals he realised he couldn't drive down the Hutong, so we paid our huge taxi fee of ¥70 (£7 for 35 min drive from the airport!) and walked down the alley to find our hotel. Hutongs are quite something to witness- traditional Chinese back streets and alleys, rather dirty, crowded and left us feeling a little uneasy. Pleased to have found the hotel and off the dark alleyways we checked into our room, only to feel like we wanted to go back out again!! Hmm, false advertising is a phrase that springs to mind. We had a lovely cracked toilet cistern, mouldy wood, rust in the bathroom, damp ceilings and bulging ceiling tiles. We soon realised that us and Beijing were not necessarily going to get along too well!! After bouncing on the rock hard mattress, which must have been made of wood, we were delighted to find free wifi!! The only plus point of this grotty 'hotel'. How they can call it a hotel and not a hostel is still beyond me! We soon started looking around for another hotel. Thankfully we had only booked 5 nights here so we started looking for different areas to stay in for the rest of our time in Beijing and hoped we could stick it out for the 5 nights we had booked...!

28/10

Well our first night's sleep was better than expected, until 7am when our room position between reception, office and staff room became quite apparent when the phone started ringing and the staff started shouting. Wow the people are certainly different here, we never heard a peep from anyone in our Japanese hotels! We lazed around for a bit until our bums became numb from the rock hard bed, so we "showered" in the dribble out of the shower head, watching our shower time seeing as our hot water supply was limited to 20 minutes between us! Yay! We headed out to wander the local streets! It was extremely busy and was rather intimidating, it was a Sunday so maybe busier than a weekday. We walked along the main road and then headed back along to the other side of a Hutong- very busy but traditional looking. It was rammed, filled with lots of people, and pretty much every mode of transport imaginable! Cars, bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters, rickshaws, tuk tuks, bikes with trailers! Lots of food vendors and street traders, some nice smells and some not so nice ones too! (Oh if only we knew how much worse it could get!!) We bought some churros with some UHT ice cream and chocolate sauce. We came to the end of the Hutong and walked back again and along the other way on the main road. Saw some posters advertising upcoming events in beijing- Blue!! And Elton John! Gutted to be missing out on those, they weren't until late November! We found a good supermarket caled Wu Mart. Stocked up on essentials including proper toilet roll, (the stuff the hotel left us did not count as toilet roll!) toilet cleaner, hand soap, plus crisps, other western snacks and drinks! Sorted! Back to the hotel to try and have a relaxing evening in...ha!

29/10

First stop today was to Beijing railway station to buy our sleeper train ticket for Xi'an on the 7th. What a palaver that turned out to be! Subway is easy to work out in Beijing and ridiculously cheap at 20p per journey- flat fare wherever you go on the line! Bargain! We got to the station and arrived into a throng of people with lots of belongings and people hocking up and spitting at every turn. Disgusting, not something we gave gotten used to even now!! We tried to find the 'English speaking window' we had read about on a very useful train website. (seat61.com) Well, of course we couldn't find this, so after a good 5 minutes of wandering around aimlessly I decided to ask a friendly looking guard who had smiled at us as we walked past him earlier. He took us to a window where he assured us the man spoke English and to wait in that queue. Got to the front of the queue and managed to get the right train, date and time but he couldn't understand us asking for a private cabin, to which he obviously got fed up and told us to go to window 15 for English speaking! We queued at window 15 and when we got to the front we were of course told to go to window 1, in a very traditional Chinese manor- NO, NUMBER ONE. Hmm, this is going well. So, off we trotted to window 1, where thankfully the kind guard from earlier asked why we hadn't got our tickets. He asked what we wanted and we explained to him and he went back to the original window himself and straight to the front of the queue, and told the guard what we wanted and came back to us with what we knew was the correct price for what we wanted- the private cabin. He went with us to the window and told us we needed our passports and ¥800 each for a room with only 2 beds. Thank The Lord for this lovely Chinese man!! The first kind and friendly person we had found so far! Not sure what we would have done if it weren't for him! This took a good hour and after all the trauma we headed off to Beijing zoo for what we thought would be a relaxing and easy experience!! We have since come to realise there is no such thing in Beijing! We got to the zoo and paid the ¥130 joint entry for the zoo and aquarium (zoo ¥30, aquarium ¥100...!) Maybe we should have guessed from then what the zoo would be like. My guide book had said that the conditions of the zoo may leave you feeling a little upset for the animals welfare...it wasn't wrong! We headed straight to the panda enclosure and paid the ¥5 (50p) extra to go into the panda house. The pandas did at least have big enclosures with bamboo and a few toys...though they were generally all asleep and looked bored! The rest of the zoo was quite a disappointment. It really could be an amazing zoo with a great range of animals. Polar bears, black and brown bears, giraffes, chimps and loads more, it was a big zoo. But the enclosures were terrible, tiny and cramped, no greenery to speak of, some cages with far too many animals in and some with only 1 that should be kept in big grouPs. Poor baby chimps rocking back and forth, leopards in a tiny cage pacing. I think the worst thing was the bears. There were 2 brown bears in an enclosure together- decent size and dropped down deep into the ground, however an open top to it meant that the fine people of Beijing were throwing all sorts for food and rubbish down into the enclosures, and what was worse was that they were making the bears stand on their back legs and beg for good food which they threw down, and then followed it by pouring whole bottles of coke and sprite down and the bears drank it all. No wonder they were thoroughly overweight. I couldn't watch this, I felt like I was at an awful circus. No staff to be seen anywhere but it is obviously a common occurrence unfortunately. And every glass window to an enclosure just got banged on by everyone. Did not enjoy this at all!! We headed over to the aquarium which was thankfully a million times better! Big enclosures and clean tanks etc. We watched a fairly pathetic dolphin and sea lion show here but they did at least seem to look after the animals!! We declined the tasty treats on offer at the aquarium - flesh and blood or flesh and gristle! Yummo!! We headed back to the area of our hotel and stopped at a cafe we had walked past along the Hutong. We had seen tourists there and the cafe was called Mean Beanz and Badass Bread! We walked in and immediately felt like we were in a safe house. Everybody in there spoke English- pretty much all the customers were European and so were the staff, plus an English guy who worked there. They also had free wifi which was a big plus so we sat comfortably eating some pesto pasta followed by a hot chocolate. It was bliss! We knew we would be back here frequently!!

30/10

After another lazy morning, then we decided to head to Mean Beanz cafe to have some brunch and use the wifi in comfort instead of in our horrible room! We had fresh apple juice and a pancake, yum! We spent a lot of time researching and booking flights and hotels for different parts of our China trip. We had been there for a few hours by this point so decided to order some bread with Nutella. It was amazing!!! Once we had sufficiently utilised the wifi at Mean Beanz we headed off to Lama Temple (Yonghegong). This cost ¥25 entry fee. Was a very impressive place with lots of buildings including a bell and drum tower, pavilions and lots of smaller temples with shrines for prayer. It was beautifully decorated, colourful paint in all the buildings. It was very serene and peaceful, it was nice to be out of the hustle and bustle. One of the buildings (called Wanfuge) housed a giant 24 metre Buddah which was carved out of a single piece of sandalwood and was in the Guinness book of records for being the tallest statue made out of a single piece of wood. It was a pretty impressive sight, you could barely see the top of it! After we had seen all the buildings inside the Lama Temple we headed across to a building that looked interesting from the outside. It turned out to be a huge Chinese restaurant so we had a look at the menu and decided to have some proper Chinese dinner. We had spring rolls, shrimp dumplings, mini spare rib and beef with noodles. It was all very tasty! And a big plus- the first diet coke we had found in Asia! Yay! Headed back to the hotel, it was pretty cold this evening- the state of things to come!

31/10

We headed out towards the Olympic park today, looking for the science museum Will had recommended to us. We couldn't find the science museum so I decided to stop in a posh hotel to ask for directions thinking there would be someone who spoke English there! I was right! And the nice man gave us a more updated map to the one we had which showed us that the science museum has closed and moved to a new location next to the Olympic park! We went into the Olympic park and paid to go into the water cube (¥30) and look around inside. It was great to see, it seemed quite a small seating area though, but we liked seeing the pool and diving pool and boards. The whole of the downstairs area was decked out to be like London, what with the handover for the London Olympics. It was like being at home, a red London bus, Piccadilly Circus, phone box, etc. Plus a model of a bench with a model of David Beckham sitting on it. We got some mini Vienetta ice creams on a stick (best find ever!!) and sat on the bench with Becks eating them. A nice Chinese man came and spoke to us, asking us who the model was and where we came from. He got quite excited when we said from London (much easier to tell everyone you're from London- it's the only place they know!!) He then started asking us how we get around London and when we said the underground he said he guessed it was very expensive- well compared to Chinese subway then yes, very!! He then took a photo of us with Becks before saying bye! There are some sweet Chinese people out there! 😊 We headed over to the Birds Nest stadium and had to pay ¥50 to get in here. There was some sort of BMX track inside so we sat and watched the bikers and skaters for a bit and then climbed what felt like a million stairs to the higher level. It didn't seem anywhere near as big as the London stadium and was already very warn down and shabby only 4 years after being built. I guess at the time it may have seemed impressive but now compared to London it seemed pretty pants! My Beijing guide said there was good Peking duck to be found at a restaurant called Made in China so we headed to there for another good Chinese feast. The restaurant turned out to be inside a posh mall and in the reception of a grand Hyatt- hmm, not cheap Peking duck then!! We were told how to eat all the different parts of the duck; the chef prepared it in front of us, and sliced it. The skin was sliced off and we were told to eat this only with the sugar, then the leg and breast meat we were told to eat in the pancakes with the usual extras! The hoisin sauce wasn't quite what we were used to so it didn't taste quite as we expected. We also had some nice pork noodles. It wasn't the cheapest meal we would eat in china but it was good! We found a Coldstone creamery inside the mall so went and got ourselves a yummy ice cream, cheesecake flavour with graham crackers and m&ms. We headed back to our slum for our last night! Hurrah!

1/11

We changed hotels today. The horrible ho(s)tel tried to con us out of our £10 deposit by saying we had 2 pairs of flip flops and now there was only one! Of course, we only had one pair, which they knew, because as soon as we told them they gave us our ¥100 back! Stupid people!we decided to head to Mean Beanz for some food and warmth as we were too early to check into the next hotel. Had a lovely warm crusty roll with strawberry jam which reminded me of Christmas Day! 😊 (family breakfast) We utilised the wifi again to book another flight and after a while I got peckish and so ordered some delicious carrot cake and a cup of PG tips. This excited me greatly. Have never been so pleased to see PG! Only downside was I was now desperate for the loo! No toilets in restaurants as there are public toilets every 50m or so in beijing. This is not something I was looking forward to...I was hoping the day would never come when I needed to use a public toilet...but what with the heavy rucksack pressing on my bladder I had no other choice...it was do or, well burst!! I was very lucky to find a disabled loo which meant it actually had a seat- everything else is hole in floor jobby!! Was rather relieved to have found probably the best public toilet in Beijing! A seat and not overly stinky...! Phew! Close one! We headed to the hotel on the subway, much easier to find than the last one! Checked in, a nice Days Inn right by the Forbidden city, like luxury compared to the last one! Thank god! We headed out to find a hostel we had found did a good Great Wall tour (apparently). We booked the tour for Monday 5th. We then headed back to the posh mall we had been in the night before to have a very Chinese McDonalds! Crazy cheap here (not a good thing!). We paid £3.50 for a double cheeseburger meal plus a Big Mac meal. Bargain!! Back at the hotel we did some hand washing, unfortunately still no washing machines!

2/11

We headed out to Bei Hai Park first thing today, took about 30 mins to walk from the hotel. We paid ¥15 to get in which included entry up to the white pagoda. It was a pretty place, a huge lake and lots of flowers. Walked up a lot of steps to the pagoda, there would have been a great view of the Forbidden city if it weren't for the smog/ haze. It seems to be getting worse! After the park we walked back to Tian' an Men Square to have a look around. We saw the monuments for the people of China but there wasn't much else to look at, so we headed into the Forbidden City. We paid ¥40 to get into the Palace Musuem- inside the gates and to look inside the buildings. We didn't get to see that much because of all the pushy Chinese people, saw a few of the big thrones in some of the rooms- most of them had burned down and been restored during either the Ming or Qing dynasty. They seemed in need of a good lick of paint and TLC! We got stared at an inordinate amount today so to overcome this we started staring back and waving at people who refused to look away! It seemed to do the trick! You'd think they had never seen 2 white girls before! In the evening we headed to Wanfujing street near the hotel and had a look at some of the shops and walked into the market where we saw some lovely Chinese delicacies including still wriggling scorpion on sticks, starfish on sticks and seahorses on sticks...hmm. That was enough for us! We headed down the non food section and back out on the main street! Headed to Pizza Hut for dinner, some soup to start and then pizza! Then we headed to Coldstone again for another yummy ice cream!

3/11

We headed to the Temple of Heaven. Unfortunately it was raining so we trussed up against it! We got the subway to just outside the Temple. We had fun changing the subway names to funny things...eg today we went to Tiantandongmen (dingledangledongmen) and there was also Dongsi shitiao (donkey shit). It was ¥30 to get into the Temple of Heaven, which included entry to the different sections. We went to the main hall first which was called the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, where they would pray, ironically, for a good harvest! Inside the museum for this hall I was enjoying looking at a model of the hall when I started being hit and shoved by a grumpy Chinese man who wanted to have a photo of him and the model! I assume he wanted me to move, but he chose the wrong tourist. The harder he hit me and shoved the firmer I stood. Cheeky sod!! I stood fast and we took a lovely cheesey photo of me with the model and the grumpy Chinese man in the background! It did make for a funny photo! We saw the other sights inside the temple if heaven, including the echo wall (not particularly echoey!) plus an alter and some other sections. We then headed to the history museum, and paid ¥10 (£1) to get in. It was pretty rubbish. A little dinosaur section and then the rest of the museum was filled with stuffed animals, all very run down and in need of updating. Didn't take long to look around. We headed back to the subway which was quite a walk from the museum so we were completely drenched by the time we got there!! Had dinner in the hotel this evening so as not to get wet again!

4/11

So this morning we woke up and felt rather chilly! A quick look out the window and there was snow...a lot of snow!! Brr!! We managed to book our train tickets for our Xian to Chengdu at the hotel- thank god! A much easier experience thanks to the lovely lady with perfect English on the desk! No deluxe private cabins on this train though...hopefully it won't be as bad as we are imagining...will it?!?! We decided to head to the science museum today now we knew where it was! Stopped to buy Chantelle some gloves where I practised my haggling skills. If it weren't for me she would have paid a ridiculous amount for her fake north face thinsulate gloves! (Not one known for her upfront haggling skills...!) We decided to take the easy subway route instead of the million changes one and walk the rest of the way. This was a mistake...the snow was turning very slushy and there were some nasty ankle deep puddles to contend with in our trainers! And it was freezing. Stopped at a market stall and got myself a nice bobble hat! On we trudged and finally made it to the science museum! A huge 4 floored museum with lots of experiments and buttons to press. Of course, being Beijing, a lot of the exhibits were broken, or under construction...! We still had fun and managed to spend quite a few hours in here out of the cold and snow! On the way back we chose the million change subway option as opposed to walking! We headed to Mean Beanz again for some lovely bacon pasta (too peppery for Chantelle and her delicate taste buds!) it was really tasty, and then followed it off with a Nutella pancake for pudding! Yum!

5/11

The day of our Great Wall trip had arrived!! We got up at 6am to get to the hostel for the trip before 7.30. As soon as we arrived we knew it was doomed...! I had had a bad feeling about it since we booked it, so it was hardly a surprise when we were told- no trip today- no driver..! 2 Americans arrived expecting to go on the trip too...none of us were best pleased and we spoke to the "manager" (a lady who spoke better English- she came from outside somewhere!) She made up some rubbish about the snow being too bad to go and that not even trains were running and the cars were stacked up on the freeway waiting to get off...hmm...smells like b******s to me (WWRY quote for those in the know!). We headed back to our hotel and asked if their trips were running to the wall, the tour lady assured us they were and that their trips had all left fine! As we suspected then!! We decided to spend extra money and pay for a private half day tour to the wall with a private English speaking guide plus driver! The day was saved! We left around 10am and it took about 80 mins to get to the Mutianyu section of the wall. She asked if we would like to pay to take the cable car or walk up the 2,000 steps option...haha...what a choice! Cable car for 2 please! We got to the top and walked up onto the wall, wow! What an amazing sight, really incredible. The section we went to was a much quiter and less touristy section that the usual one people go to. There were restored and unrestored sections to this part of the Wall. It is crazy to think that there are still parts intact over 2000 years after it was built, still with the original cement in place. It was a breathtaking sight, a real wonder of the world. We even felt a little emotional to be walking on such a huge part of history. It was a little icy in places and I only almost broke my ankle twice, almost scared the guide to death- she was very sweet and genuinely concerned for our safety. Very informative and friendly and she look lots of photos for us which was brilliant. We walked almost as far as we could go (the last section was up too many stairs for us and we were getting tired and hot as the sun was warm!). We took the cable car back down and stopped at a stall to buy our Great Wall souvenir- a t-shirt, truly have been there, done that and got the t-shirt 😊 What an amazing experience. Highlight of the trip so far! Back to the hotel in the lovely Beijing traffic and our very beep happy driver! We headed to the silk market after this and after some excellent haggling skills on my part, we left with a pair of UGGs, 2 pairs of UGC (!!) slippers, 2 Abercormbie jumpers, t-shirts and a a pair of A&F joggers. All genuine fakes of course! I even got praised by the lady in the A&F shop for my bargaining skills! She asked where I learned to bargain (I told her my father!) and she asked why I was so clever! Not clever- just not stupid I think!! £110 for 2 thin jumpers and a pair of joggers?! I think not!! We left after paying £40 and got the 2 t-shirts thrown in extra! After the silk market we headed off to find the hello kitty restaurant we had been informed about by Hannah Wynn-Jones! (Who else?!) We somehow managed to find it (good research before we went!) and had some dinner...pink and more pink! It was a fun experience and we even had a hello kitty shaped cheesecake for pudding!! 😊 Finally headed back to the hotel after a rather expensive but great day!

6/11

We had a lazy morning and then headed to the Bell and Drum tower at Hou Hai. They were huge towers with so many steps up to each tower. We went to the bell tower first and learnt a bit about how they used to keep time in Beijing with the striking of the bell and drums, and read the folk story about the caster of the bell and his daughter, who legend has it threw herself into the molten metal used to make the bell so that it would cast as it had failed so many times before! It didn't take long to look around both the towers (took longer to get up the steps than to walk around!) seeing as we were in the area, we headed to Mean Beanz for one last time and had a drink and some carrot cake and used the wifi for some more travel arranging! Headed to the posh mall for a quick McDonalds before packing up ready to move on again.

7/11

Checked out of our hotel at noon, left our luggage there and headed to Wanfujing Street to have a look at the shops. Our train wasn't until 20.29 that evening so we had time to kill! We had a walk around and then headed into the mall again to get some lunch. After searching in many shops we finally found some deodorant in a Watsons. We were beginning to think it was not used or sold in China! Had some lunch in the only Burger King we'd seen in Beijing...a little more expensive than McDonald's...but still under £3 for a meal! We attempted to head to Tian'an Men Square for the post office but everywhere seemed to be closed off because of the political congress that was starting the next day...it was impossible to get close! We gave up and headed back to the mall again as it was warm and quiet. We got one last Coldstone creamery ice cream and then went to collect our luggage from the hotel. We had to walk back to the taxi rank at the mall to get a taxi to Beijing West Station for our sleeper train. It is a very impressive building from the outside (only from the outside!!) The station was very busy and we were getting a lot of stares and dodgy looks- we think if we were carrying our stuff in a big yellow sack we might have fitted in better. The time finally arrived where we could get on the train and away from everyone staring! We got into our private berth with 2 beds, a table, armchair and a bathroom. It was very cosy and we settled ourselves for the night ahead! It was good fun actually, we eventually got used to the motion and noise of the train and managed to sleep fairly well...even though we could hear the man in the cabin next door snoring very loudly!! When we woke up we were almost in Xi'an ready for the next part of our Chinese adventure!

Sorry the blog is so long, the next few will definitely be shorter I promise! But there were lots of funny stories to tell from Beijing! Forgot to mentoin a few sights...like children pooing on the streets out of their trousers with bum holes...!! And almost getting squished every time we attempted to cross a road...run, stop, walk, try and get across any way you can...fun and games!! Speak soon, and lots of love. Xxxxx

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Comments

[Chris Driscoll]

All good fun
Isn't the traffic fun in Beijing!! My mum used to wait for the lights to change so we could cross the road and she thought the cars would stop, yeah right!! You had to take your life in your hands there, she used to thump or kick the cars if they didn't stop, she was more of a nightmare than the traffic. It's bloody cold too there this time of year, oops, sorry, didn't we tell you, ha ha. xxxxx