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Published: July 14th 2017
Thursday 24th June Weihai – Qingdao To date we have been extremely lucky with our ferry journeys it has all been smooth sailing and as a result we have slept well and recharged our batteries. We arrived in Weihai at 745am on a foggy morning, disembarkation was somewhat disorganised so it took more than an hour to set foot on Chinese soil for the second time on this adventure. No problems with immigration and although there were large crowds outside the terminal we had only one beggar both us on the way to the cab stand. Chinese cab drivers are a delight, they always seem happy, laugh all the time and never try to cheat you unlike their Korean brothers. The driver delivered us to the bus station charging just $3, taxis are so cheap in China that we use them all the time. The bus station was incredibly clean and grandiose and after just a short wait we boarded the 930am bus (Y68 - $12) for the three and half hour journey to Qingdao, the drink and cake was a pleasant bonus.
The distance between the bus station and the train station in Qingdao was to vast to
walk so we took a rickety minicab, I was terrified that a wayward spring would do me some serious internal damage. On arrival at the train station we discovered that there were no sleeper trains and that our only option was to travel hard seat which is the cheapest (Y116 - $20) and nastiest way to travel by train. We will be leaving at 83oam with expected arrival time in Beijing being 8pm, I was so upset, hard seats are where the lower classes travel, there are no reserved seats so overcrowding is common.
As we exited the station we were accosted by touts, this is often extremely annoying but not in this case, as we were directed to cheap but basic hotel (Y120 - $20) with comfortable beds. Next, we wandered around the city stopping for lunch at McDonald’s before entering a bookstore where we purchased two of the few English language books they had which should keep us entertained on tomorrows eleven-and-a-half-hour train journey. I slept for about two hours in the late afternoon before we went down to the hotel’s restaurant for dinner it seems we ordered enough food for four people all of which was
sensational and dirt cheap at Y54 ($10).
Friday 25th June Qingdao to Beijing After a good night’s sleep, we rose at 7am and headed straight to the train station and onto our train, our nightmare was realised when we found our seats were in a group of six which were all full, across the aisle are a group of four seats that would have been better. Sitting across from me is a common looking girl whose clothes are way too tight (I wish she would keep her legs closed as I can see right up her skirt) who eats with her mouth open, just gross. There is hardly any room and the train has not even left yet, after about 3o minutes Tony had had enough and moved to two vacant seats in a group of four further down the train which were much better.
We now have two young girls sitting opposite us; the train is very slow, Tony says he will never travel hard seat class again. At 1130am the rain ground to a halt and the girls left and were replaced by two men one of which spoke a little English. At the next
stop a man got on and demanded we get out of his seats, as people were now sitting in ours we refused to move. He went and complained to the conductor who returned and asked us to move at which time I shouted, “then rearrange the whole train and make sure everyone is in their correct seat”. The conductor walked away and the man had to seat elsewhere – the guys sitting across from us couldn’t stop laughing. If we had been Chinese no one would have said anything as the Chinese sit anywhere.
It is still seven hours to Beijing and we are both hungry and in need of a pee, but train toilets are for the brave in China. At the next stop even more people got on and now the cattle outnumbered the stalls, they must sell as many tickets as they want without a thought for safety, but imagine having to stand for six hours as most of these people did. Eventually we arrived in the capital where we exited the train and walked down a long flight of stairs into the darkness, which was both strange and a little dangerous. Emerging from the station
our problems began when the cab drivers refused to take us to hostel for anything less than Y100 ($18) even though it was only about five minutes away, we refused to pay these cheats. Chinese cabbies had always been friendly and honest so this behaviour was a huge disappointment to us, I almost punched out one who told us to walk, Tony had to drag me away. We had no option but to start walking, it was only about a 15 minute walk but uphill in the dark is a long way with heavy backs.
Hen out of the darkness materialised a rickshaw and the driver offered to take us for Y30 ($5) but we beat him down to Y20 ($3.50) but were a little dubious as he was a small and would be lugging about 200 kilograms with us and our luggage. He succeeded though puffing and panting all the way, at one stage Tony got out to walk along side as he was worried he would have a heart attack, but the driver insisted he get back in. Finally, we made it to the hostel and paid him is original asking price as we felt so sorry
for him. The hostel to our dismay had no single rooms so Tony hailed a cab (as this hostel is further out we had no trouble getting one -assholes) and we were soon on our way to the Far East Hostel.
We drove past the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and Mao’s mausoleum all of which were massive and imposing lit up. The cab dropped us out the front (cost $4) and we checked in to our hostel which was more like a hotel, and cost Y298 ($52), our room is very comfortable. The only restaurant we could find open at 10pm was you guessed it a McDonalds, 87 cent cheese burgers are hard to beat for value.
Saturday 26th June Beijing Breakfast was disappointing they just have no idea how to prepare a western style meal so rather than eat we walked through the back streets for about 2o minutes to Tiananmen Square. It was a warm day and the air hangs heavy with pollution so we rarely saw any blue skies. Beijing’s roads are extremely wide often up to eight lanes and were probably built for tanks we entered the underpass exiting net to the
Zhengyangmen Gate the last of the original nine imperial gates. We then entered the vastness of Tiananmen square where in 1989 the slaughter of protesters took place; Mao’s mausoleum was open but we weren’t allowed in with our bags and cameras and as is the norm the queue was extremely long. On one side of the square was Great Hall of the People, where congress meets and the Grand Auditorium seats 10,000 people, and opposite are two museums, all the buildings are built on a massive scale and we have never seen anything like it before. In Tiananmen square, we were mobbed by vendors selling everything from kites to hats, we bought two hats (Y10 - $1.75) and five chairmen Mao watches Y120 ($21). I had to restrain Tony when he got confused and offered to buy them for Y300 ($52), the poor thing has his currency conversions all confused. Next, we entered the Forbidden city through the Tiananmen Gate passing below the portrait of Chairman Mao who declared the founding of the Peoples Republic of China here in 1949.
Entry cost Y60 ($10) to wander with the masses through the Imperial Palace complex, scaffolding covered many of the
more impressive buildings which as it does everywhere ruins the visual effect. We still took lots of photographs, enjoying the experience although most buildings were off limits and it was disappointing to have to look in through dirty smeared windows. Much of the palace required maintenance as paint was fading yet the palace gardens were lovely, and one could only imagine what the place was like when the emperors were resident. After an hour and a half in such a crowded hot place we decided to leave and were shocked to see a palace building converted to a Starbuck’s commercialism is everywhere it seems. We went for lunch before deciding to avoid the afternoon heat and return to our hotel, taxis continue to refuse to take us so we took another rickshaw which cost just Y20 and saved us a long walk.
On our arrival at the hotel we called home then spent some time on the internet, it took more than 2hours to send just three emails. The rest of the day was spent in the bar which is full of tourists and light on real travellers, one girl was whining about having to use chopsticks. They show
Palace
Beijingmovies in the evening so we watched Sin Eater before grabbing a few exchange books and retiring to our room till about 11pm. We were hungry so we ventured out to a street stall and some wonderful local food.
Sunday 27th June - Beijing Today we decided to do nothing at all except laze around in our hotel room and read our books, we are recharging our batteries in the nicest way.
Monday 28th June – Beijing Tony woke up with a stomach ache this morning and spent half an hour on the toilet (I think it’s the Chinese beer – we ate nothing dodgy yesterday). We plan to go to the Mongolian embassy today to arrange our visas, but we need to wait for his stomach to settle. Leaving the hotel around 10am, we first checked with the travel desk to see if there were any soft sleepers to Ulaan Bataar on Saturday, to our dismay the trains are fully booked until July 20!! Our options are to catch a train to the border and then a bus or train into Mongolia, or to fly. We checked out the price of the flights which are
about Y1744 ($300) by comparison the train would have cost $185 and taken 30 hours, but the seats are limited on Saturday’s flight, so we need to get our visa now.
We headed off to the embassy, via the subway. Beijing’s subway system is surprisingly antiquated, you purchase your ticket at a ticket window (all stops cost Y3 (50c) and then a “ticket checker” rips the stub off before you get on the platform, this is so different from the automated ticket booths and turnstiles that we have become accustomed to elsewhere in China. I would hate to be the ticket checker during rush hour.
We caught the subway to Yongalin and emerged into permanently polluted air. We had a bit of a walk to the embassy, but we found it without too much trouble as all the embassies seem to be in the same place. Arrived at the embassy at 1130am to find that it was only open 9am-11am every day. We knew that it was only open in the morning but we had hoped it would be open a bit longer than that.
Disappointed with the delay, we headed back to our hotel, Tony is
still not well so I expect we will spend the rest of the day in our room. Will get an early start tomorrow hopefully. We have decided that we do not like Beijing much, it’s dirty and polluted and also hot, neither of us can wait to leave this place, such a disappointment.
Tuesday 29th June – Beijing Next morning re returned to the Mongolian embassy, but this time we left a bit earlier. We struggled through the subway and arrived at the embassy just after 10am. There weren’t too many people in there, about six, but our attention was drawn to an old American woman at the counter who must have been about 100 years old with a really wobbly head, who was trying to help a young girl stuck in Mongolia. She was wasting so much time and babbling on in an awful American accent “Well, no, dear, she’s not
family but she lives in the apartment across from us and she eats her meals with us and every night she watches TV with us….” Like, who gives a shit!!! Get to the point! The line had now grown to about 16 people, there was only
one person serving, although there were two girls behind the counter. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the other girl pulled out a nail file and started using it, she was that indifferent.
Finally, the old biddy was taken elsewhere (she was an English teacher, believe it or not, no wonder the Chinese’s’ English is so bad, how on earth did she get a job, she should be put out to pasture) and we were served within five minutes. The good news is that our visas will be ready tomorrow, the bad news they will cost Y475 ($82) each as we had to use the express service.
When we left the embassy, satisfied with our progress and glad that we must only surrender our passports for one day, we were cornered by a man selling pirate DVD’s. They were so cheap and were movies that hadn’t been released yet, so we bought one (Harry Potter 3) and told the guy that if the quality was good, we would buy more the next day.
We then walked to a nearby supermarket and stocked up on breakfast cereal, bread, cheese etc. Loaded up with shopping bags neither of us
could be bothered with the hassle of the subway, so we caught a cab back to the hostel.
Once back we booked our flight to Ulaan Bataar, seats were available on Fridays flight so we grabbed them. We also booked a tour to the Great Wall, which we will do on Thursday, the tour cost Y121 ($20) but that’s only transportation costs, so I assume we will be left to our own devices once we have been dropped off.
We then went to the bar and asked them to try our Harry Potter DVD in their machine. We were able to watch the whole movie and the quality wasn’t bad, so we will buy more tomorrow. We had cheese and tomato sandwiches for dinner, the bread was nice and fresh. After dinner, we returned to the bar and over a few beers watched the nightly movies, the first one, “Willard” was freaky and the second one was weak, it was called “Timeline” and starred Billy Connolly who should stick to stand up. I went to bed around 1130pm
Wednesday 30th June – Beijing It rained all night last night, and I could hear the patter on
the window pane. I’m getting a head cold; Tony’s stomach is much better. We left the hotel early, to collect our visas at 940am, so once again we walked the 15 minutes up the dirty street and onto the packed subway train, both glad this is the last time we must do this. Arrived at the embassy on time and collected our passports/visas, both glad that part is all sorted out.
Starting to rain now, our next stop was the post office to send more souvenirs home. On the way, we were ambushed by the DVD man, so we bought about 10 DVDs for Y90 ($15). We posted our stuff (including the DVDs) it was the heaviest box yet, it weighed four kilograms and cost Y146 ($25) to post.
We then caught the subway to Qianmen (Tiananmen Square) and used the internet in a café there to book our Mongolia accommodation. There were two cocker spaniel puppies in the café, they had just had a bath and were being cute and playful, so I satisfied my dog depravation gene for a while. Still raining so we caught the subway one stop to the top of our road and
went to an ATM to withdraw our airfare money, then walked down “horror” road for what is hopefully our last time.
Spent the rest of the afternoon reading and watching crap Chinese TV. For dinner, we went and ate in the hotel’s restaurant, naturally it was Chinese but quite delicious, and where else in the world can you get three main courses plus drinks for $10 between you??!
Thursday 1st July – Beijing We woke up at 530am as our tour bus leaves for the Great Wall at 7am so we were out the front waiting at 650am. Tony asked a waiting cab driver if he would take us to the airport tomorrow morning and he agreed to pick us up and take us for Y120 ($20). At least we have that sorted out.
Our tour group consists of three Canadians in their 40’s, a Dutch girl, an English guy and a European couple. Whilst we were waiting, one of the Canadian women told us that our “wall walk” would take about four hours! We nearly died, as we thought we would go to the wall, have a look, maybe climb a small section, take a
Great wall
Great wall few photos then come home, we certainly weren’t expecting anything strenuous, especially me, as my cold has hit with a vengeance today.
We all boarded the bus, unfortunately Tony and I were unable to sit together, so he sat in the front with the driver, while I sat in the back on a dicky seat. We had gone about an hour when we pulled in for petrol, discovering here that we have another two hours to go to our destination, ETA 10 am! Everyone settled down for a snooze with that news.
We spotted our first sight of the wall around 945am, looming up on the horizon, it is already an impressive sight. At exactly 10am we pulled off the main road into a country lane, where we were met by our guides who would show us how to get to the wall. At least the sun had come out and the skies were a beautiful blue now, so different to smelly, dirty Beijing. We were right in the middle of the countryside surrounded by farms, at a place called Jindaling. We walked to the wall and then all the way to Simatai, where our driver waited for
us, a total distance of 10 kilometres. Our driver left, giving us instructions that he would pick us up at 330pm, the European couple left with the driver, apparently off to do a different hike, and the remainder of us were left with two Chinese female guides.
First, we climbed up a “goat” trail to get to the wall entrance, which was quite a pretty climb but made you puff as the sun was quite hot by now. We reached the entrance to the wall and had to pay Y30 ($5) to go in (or on); already the views of the wall and countryside were taking our breath away. We climbed up a narrow set of stairs and suddenly we were there, on the Great Wall of China, the greatest structure ever built by man. We could see the wall was going to be a strenuous hike, we must pass through 30 “turrets” before we arrive at Simatai, and could only see about 15 turrets from where we were standing, the rest stretched off into the distance across mountains and countryside, for as far as the eye could see.
Tony and I paired up with the English guy,
Nick, and the Dutch girl, Cecile and off we went, scaling up numerous stairs and slopes that really tested my fitness, some of the steps were a foot apart, so it was down on your hands and knees to crawl up. Some of the paths were quite steep and in some places parts of the wall was missing, it would be quite dangerous to walk it alone as you could easily fall off.
Apart from being bothered by pesky hawkers and so called “guides”, we had the wall pretty much to ourselves. (Our ‘appointed’ guides only came so far, and the three Canadians were far behind us). Most tourists visit the wall at Badaling, which is nice and safe but very crowded; at least here we could take lots of photos without anyone else getting in the way. After we reached the fifteenth turret, most the way was downhill, with the occasional climb.
It was with smiling faces, aching muscles and sunburnt skin that we arrived at Simatai. First, we had to pay Y5 (-90c) to cross a bridge, which pissed us all off as there was no other way across, in the turret on the other side
we saw a small python. It was then downhill to the parking lot, it was only 230pm, so we had over an hour to wait before our driver collected us, so we had a drink in the (only) restaurant. Our Canadian ladies turned up about thirty minutes later, all beaming, including one who had fallen and cut her knee “I left blood on the wall!!” she shrieked happily.
Soon we were on our way back to the hostel, a long three hour drive, and it had started to rain again, we couldn’t believe how lucky we had been with the weather. Arriving back at the hostel just before 7pm, I showered before heading off to dinner with Nick and Cecile. We went to a local restaurant that made great Peking Duck, so we tried it. It was okay, a little bit greasy, but we had an enjoyable evening.
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