Proper Tourist, Finally!

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This blog is one of those 'I told you so' moments. Ralph kept saying 'we've got loads of time to do touristy stuff' and then what happens? We end up cramming it all into my last week here. Of course.

On Monday we went to get our Mongolian visas which involved queueing at the embassy for 3 hours. Fun times! But in the queue we met a Dutch couple and two Danish guys, and a beautiful friendship was formed over shared frustration at queueing and beurocracy.

After handing in our applications Ralph went off to teach and I went to the Drum and Bell Tower with my new friends. the towers themselves were a little underwhelming but the drum performance was very impressive.

The next day we met up with the Dutch couple again and went to the Forbidden City, which is pretty much the main tourist attraction in Beijing. It's a sprawling complex of buildings in which the imperial court used to reside. It was quite interesting and really weird to think that when you see that stuff and you imagine China you think of it as being really ancient but actually this was built and happened in like the 1700... When Britain had like steam trains and stuff, China was still using swords and bows and arrows. Crazy.

Then we had the best day of my entire life. Ever. We went to the Great Wall of China, and it was stunning. When we woke up it was rainign quite hard so we were a little worried, but decided to soldier on and go for it since Ralph had taken the day off work for it. We met up with the Dutch couple and one of Ralph's mates, Paul, at the bus station and were immediately pounced on by aggressive Chinese women trying to get us to go in their cabs to the wall. We never even mentioned that's where we were going, it was crazy! We decided not to go to any of the touristy bits near the city so we got on a bus for about an hour and a half, then got off and rented a minivan and drove for another hour. Just like at the bus station, as soon as we got off the bus there were hundreds of mini-van drivers harrassing us to go with them, all trying to take us to the touristy bit of the wall. So we decided to go with the only mini van driver who hadn't approached us! Finally we ended up at a part of the wall called Jiankou, which even our driver hadn't heard of and had to ask directions for! We pulled up at the foot of a hill, literally nothing and no one in sight and headed off into the forrest, after about 30 minutes of trekking along what could I suppose could loosely be called a path, we spotted the first bit of wall above us. Eventually we got up to it and it was just how you'd imagine, all crumbly and falling to bits and snaking off across the hills as far as the eye could see. We set off along the wall and came to a rather steep bit, and when I say that, I mean it was practically vertical. So of course we climbed it, even as it was crumbling beneath our feet. We got to the top and looked back at what we just climbed and were like, 'wow, we are crazy. That's kind of dangerous...' But of course we carried on! We got to a watch tower and little kind of plateau bit and decided to stop and have lunch there. Then we climbed very slowly back down. In all we were there maybe 4 or 5 hours hiking around. The whole view with the sprawling mountains and the wall across them was the most stunning thing I've ever seen. It's just mental to think of them building it back in the day...

Yesterday it rained *again* so in the morning I went to the Capital Museum with Sander, the dutch guy, which I was pleasently surprised to find was free, and made me feel very cultured. Then in the afternoon when it stopped raining we went to the Temple of Heaven which is pretty much what it says on the tin. It suffered from the same problem I've found with most of the tourist stuff, overcrowding, overcharging (you have to pay extra to go in each different bit of the temple) and being rebuilt several times. Which is a shame. It was still pretty though.

Today I had a well deserved lie in, and then went to the Ancient Observatory on my own (got to practice going places alone for when I go to Hong Kong alone! *gulp*) which was interesting. And now I am killing time until we go out for pizza with a load of guys from where Ralph works. This pizza place is amazing, it does the biggest pizzas I've ever seen in my life. Heaven!

So that's been my last week in Beijing! On Monday I am off to Shanghai, then on Wednesday off to Tokyo and then after that off to Hong Kong for The Great Russian Visa Expedition (which will inevitably end ina trip to Disney World)...

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Comments

[fififolle]

Oh! I can leave comments! :)
Loving hearing about your travels and seeing your amazing pictures :)

[Hamish]

Stephenson's Rocket was built in 1829. Forbidden City 1420.
but perhaps the guide book lost something in translation?