Advertisement
Published: February 7th 2008
Edit Blog Post
LITTLE TROUBLE IN CHINA TOWN
Today we have decided to visit the China wall, however it would not be us to just do it the easy way and like everyone else who gets a tour or sees the Great Wall of China.
We were going to see independently the Simatai Wall, which is located 110km northeast of Beijing - easy peasy, if you can read the instructions in Lonely Planer correctly.
We have found a bus 980 as instructed, but did not realise we will get kicked out of the bus in town that does not come close to having any wall around it. As soon as we got out taxi drivers had it for us. We had to gather out staff and plan what to do next. WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?
So we have wondered aimlessly in to the town where we felt like a celebrity - everyone staring at us like we were the Queen of Sheba. It was obvious no one speaks English right. To go back to Beijing would be to much of a defeat, determined to get to the wall, we thought: "TAXI?"
OK we found this taxi woman, with gestures and our little phrase
Frozen cheeks/ Omrzlinky obecne
Not cold at all/ Je ti teplo devce book she soon knew where we wanted to go. Now the PRICE. HAGGLE until you can - golden rule in China, but if you know where you are. No one speak English....woo what misleading assumption... suddenly this roughly 70 years old man spoke : "Three hundred, three hundred ..." in this point we were surrounded by the locals ... autographs anyone? .."Zne tai qui le" - it is to expensive - as the phrase book says... suddenly someone ESL spoke more advance English that just numbers... round trip for 300... Well but how can we be sure she will wait.... at the end we haggled to 170 one way and found out we were in town called Miyun.
On the way there it soon become clear that we have misread the instructions how to get to Simatai, and booking a taxi or minibus was inevitable. I think we have made her day 2 foreigners giving her more money that she usually make in a day, why not call a friend get us to say Hello to them. The route was scenic with dead animal hanging by the road for sale, cars driven by lunatics- why use indicators, right of the
way, marking on the road...we got HORNS.
Suddenly there it was THE WALL - WOW. It can not be described it has to be seen. Hurrah lets go. Taxi woman will wait for us for 320 for 2hours.
The climb was a bit physically challenging especially the stairs are from 0.5m high to suddenly you can not fit your foot on them, but as Renata says: :"Let the pet out of the cage and it is happy" ( she was referring to herself). Only we wished we could stay longer.
On the way back we have decided we will give the taxi woman only another 100 as already gave her 200 as deposit.... driving back enjoying the scenery and she suddenly reaches into her glove box and pulls out a back scratcher and off she goes giving her back real good scratch...when we got back gave her another 100, she started to have go at us and again the locals gathered. with gestures told her she said 300 and as we had witnesses she could not say anything only the fact that instead of 5 yuan we gave her 5 jiao. After much of embarrassment we went for wonder around
town, took some photos, had a work out in local gym and come back to Beijing.
RANO VSTANU A OBLEJU SI PRDEL
Dnes jsem se vydali na cinskou zed, ale jako obvykle, protoze jsme to MY jsme se rozhodly jet na nejvzdalenejsi zed, ktera se nachazi 110 km jihovychodne od Pekingu. Romca, ktera je puntickarka nedopatrenim nedotahla uzaver na flasce s vodou a po ceste na autobus zacala mit pocit vlhkosti. Prdel mela celou promacenou, ktera se po chvilce chuze v -4 stupnu se zacal menit v ledovy stit. To se vsakne.... a taky ze jo cestou autobusem. Z ktereho jsme byly vykopnuty a blize neurcitem miste. Asi po pul hodine bloudeni martanu jsme se rozhodly oslovit (rukama nohama) taxikarku. Po dalsi pul hodine s publikem cele kolonie jsem se domluvili za kolik a kam.
Hura hodinu a pul jedem po ceste oblehle mrtvymi zviratky, telefonujici taxikarkou ktera nas po telefonu jako zviratka predstavila svym nevericim kamaradum.
Cinska zed se pred nami objevila a zviratka byla vypustena!!! Taxikarka na nas cekala dve hodiny. Vystup byl trosku fyzicky narocny, specialne schody, ktere byli od 0.5 metru vysoke tak ze clovek na nej nemohl ani dat nohu, ale jak Renatka rika:
"Puste zviratko do prirody a zviratko je stastne!" Pouze casove bychom tam rady zustaly dele, ale nechteli jsem riskovat ze nam taxikarka ujede.
Zpet ve meste pri placeni taxikarce jsem mely jeden mensi trapas, ktery nam dosvedsi cela kolonie. Zpletli jsem si 5 Yuanu s 5 jiao, ale co stava se i vlepsich rodinach.
Pred odjezdem z planety Miyun jsme se prosly parkem a nastivily jsme jejich posilovnu.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0747s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb