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Published: February 12th 2009
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In Our Hutong
Me and Lex in the alleyway of our hostel. Shockingly, the stopover in Kunming from which were to catch our plane was totally straightforward and went according to plan. We got the wife of John (from the george and dragon in jinghong) to write down a hotel near the airport that she knew, we caught a taxi there, the prices were fine and we succesfully walked around the corner to the airport the next morning, and checked in without a hitch. It still can't undo my previous experience of Kunming, but at least it didnt make the place any worse in my mind.
The flight was uneventful, and despite being disappointed to find taxi fares akin to those in Sydney, we got to our hostel easily enough, which happened to be located in a darling little alleyway (or 'hutong') in a great central location. The price is quite a bit more than we'd been used to paying, (Y85 a night each), but considering how gloriously clean it is (even by lex's standards which is amazing), and that there is central heating so the room's always a great tempature (unlike yanghsuo with air conditioning we had to pay extra for which either meant the room was too cold or too
Outside Temple Fair
Lantern decorations... hot), and the fact that the there's a nice smell of incense about the place, not to mention the great location and free breakfast, we were still very happy with the arrangement. The first afternoon we just looked around the great little kitch arty stores with vintage trinkets, handicrafts and clothes. I bought a great little key ring army knife thing, an old children's board game and a lot of beautiful notebooks. Everything was tempting, so to have gone without any huge purchases was a great achievement in my books.
We ate in a great local place which we quickly figured out had dishes made for sharing, and also happened to be the only place with good value food. We ate there for dinner every night, except for one night eating hot pot, which is this strange 'very Beijing' thing of cooking and then having to find and fish out your food in a moat of boiling broth set around what appears to be a small ceramic oven which is placed on your table (but not particularly filling, and easily frustrating).
On our first full day we went to check out a temple fair, which based on the
The Summer Palace
Looking very wintery... description in lonely planet I was expecting to be an old fashioned fete sort of thing with street performers and artisans etc etc. It was more like the chinese new year equivalent of the easter show, with double the tacky stuff for sale, and minus everything else. Still it was bright and colourful, and some of the decorations of lanterns and fans were truly spectacular, and it was certainly a good way to experience china's population in full force. And we wandered there and back along a river that was entirely frozen, the first time I'd seen that happen.
The next day we braved Beijing's public transport system to get to the summer palace, which is on the outer part of beijing and would have cost a ridiculous sum to get to by taxi. The instructions we got from our hostel didnt seem to correspond with reality at all, but thankfully lonely planet's did, and with the guidance of an incredibly helpful local who went very far out of his far to show us a bus stop we got there. It felt a bit weird being at summer palace when the huge expanse of kunming lake was entirely frozen
Mao's Portrait
Outside Forbidden City/ Tiananmen Square. over (with people even ice skating on the far shore), but the first building was particularly impressive, espeically the statues in one of the rooms. You couldnt take photos of them, but gosh, the expressions on their each one's face were so outrageous, different and believable, and a few of them seemed to have eyes that were alive and followed you. It really was amazing. Other than that I just found summer palace very picturesque. We made it all the way back by public transport (despite me getting very close to giving up and taking a taxi about halfway), which meant that the transport for the day ended up costing a mere and very satisfying Y5 (about $1), which considering how far away the summer palace was from our hostel is realy quite astonishing. You have to hand it to Beijing's transport system - Y1 for a bus, Y2 for the subway, no matter how far you're going. Pretty good. Also good was the lack of crowds, which was something I had been worrying about after the sardine can buses in Kunming and the fact that it was a weekend around Chinese New Year...
The next day was Sunday 1st February (a time I still would have expected to be in the south because it finally marked the end of the chinese new year holiday and supposedly the 'havoc' that lonely planet kept insisting on but china never delivered), and the day we met up Primrose (from high school) and her boyfriend Nick, who had both arrived in Beijing the day before. Primrose was a few months into a 7 month stay in China, and had very handy skills in speaking Chinese. We had a lovely home cooked meal, and sat around chatting until well after the subway system closed for the night, but were pleasantly surprised on how cheap the taxi ride back was.
The next day we went to explore the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. For some reason the forbidden city was called the 'museum of palaces' at the place you buy tickets, which led to a lot of confusion and indecision. Finally we went in. It was nice, but nothing spectacular. The term 'museum of palaces' was actually pretty accurate in the end, it was a bit dead and lifeless, like the skeleton of some buildings, covered in swarming tourists. We spent about 20 minutes looking around, so much for the half day lonely planet insisted was necessary.
With Tiananmen Square being the biggest sqaure in the world, and able to hold a million people, I really was expecting something a little more grand than its actuality. The famous painting of Mao is actually in front of the gates for the Forbidden City, which is across the road from Tiananmen Square, so the whole effect was a bit underwhelming. But oh well, there was some good old-fashioned communist sculpture, and the mausoleum of Mao which was sadly closed on a Monday. It was only early afternoon and we'd finished what we'd thought would take the whole day. After a strange local meal from something akin to a school cafeteria we decided to use the rest of the time to buy a ticket onto Xi 'An at the train station (seeing as we were going to stay with Primrose for a few days so wouldnt be able to get a guesthouse to it for us). That was a whole lot of trouble not expected. We almost gave up, but found it in the end and bought the tickets without trouble. Getting a taxi was also a bit troublesome, but accomplished in the end.
The next morning we checked out of our hostel and settled ourselves into Primrose's apartment...
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