Beijing

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Day 1

After finally arriving in China at 9:30 the first task was to find a place to stay, as the hostel we were going to stay at fell through the day before. We knew roughly where we would like to stay by tiananmen square so we got a bus to the centre of town. This bus took us to the centre of Beijing but nowhere near where it said it did and we were left trying to find another bus but to no avail. We finally decided to get a taxi (which are pretty cheap) to the square.

Once we were at the square there were some nervous moments while we trekked through the Hutongs (chinese backroads) trying to find a place to stay while carrying our heavy backpacks. We finally stumbled across one hostel which had no room but they suggested another couple of places to stay around the corner. We followed their advice and found a hostel called the Leo Hostel which was a really cool hostel with a big bar, friendly staff and a basic double room, but it had a TV and en suite.

As we decided we didnt want to do too much on the first day we only went to tiananmen square, which is a very large square with some interesting buildings, and historically was the scene of a governement massacre of peacefull protestors.There were lots of guards and many more chinese tourists than any other nationality. At the very noth end there is the famous picture of Mao set against the forbidden city and there are many other Soviet looking, impressive buildings surrounding the square.

That night we relaxed in the bar and met other travellers and at 60p a beer it was great.

Interesting fact no.1 - If you're stood in Tinanamen square, expect Chinese people to run up wanting to have their picture with you

Day 2

We decided to go further afield on this day and got the 690 bus from Tinanamen square to the summer palace which was the retreat for the Emperor in the hot Beijing summers. The bus took about an hour and a half and dropped us in a place with no directions. We decided to follow the crowd and Tracy managed to haggle one of the water sellers down from 5 yuan (50p) down to 2 yuan for a bottle of water and finally we found the entrance to the summer palace.

The Summer Palace was £3 for the day and £6 if you wanted to go in all the temples, however there were hundreds and hundreds of chinese tourists so we decided to just get the enterance ticket.

Once inside the summer palace there is a large lake in the middle with a beautiful walkway all around. After strolling around and stopping for noodles this took about 2.5 hours and the weather was gorgeous.

After the palace we decided to stop by the olympic stadium as it was only a little detour back to the hostel. The stadium was very impressive and the olympic park was massive and made us feel a little sorry for the hundreds of homes they displaced to create it. There was a huge walkway with the birds nest stadium on one side and the swimming cube on the other. Again the weather was beautiful and it was a pleasure to stroll down.

After taking our tourist pictures we went back to the hostel hot, sweaty and a little tired from all the walking. Joe was supposed to meet up with some friends from Reuters that night but it would have taken too long to get ready and get out so that was a shame. We had some drinks at the bar and had a well deserved early night.

Interesting fact no.2 - Never accept the first price for anything, ever....

Day 3

I think there was still a bit of jet-lag we needed to get out of our system so we slept in till 12:00 the following day and didnt get moving till about 1:30 and we decided to go to the forbidden city. We only had about 2.5 hours there as it shuts at 5:00 and the guidebook says you should spend an entire day there. We walked around and its quite large with some beautiful buildings and large open spaces. The initial buildings you come to are very formal for the Emperor to address his supporters, then as you go further in, the buildings become discussion chambers and finally his residence. Almost all the buildings contained impressive thrones. There was a lot to see but we saw the main parts and left by the north exit and walked back to our hostel.

We also needed to do some planning. We wanted to go and see the great wall and we needed to book our train tickets out of Beijing and having never booked a train in another coutry other than America we thought this might take some time. We finally found a cheap Great Wall trek at the recommendation of some of the people in the hostel which we were able to book for the following day. We also went to the Train station which was crazy (crazy in chinese is feung-le) and found a very stroppy ticket inspector who was of little help on the 'foreign tickets' booth, so we walked away without a ticket.

At the night time we decided to get some Peking Duck from a local restaraunt in the Hutong near the hostel which was gorgeous. Then again, we went back to the bar to meet some more people and relax with the jet-lag well and truly a distant memory.

Interesting fact no.3 - Don't expect to just turn up and get on the train, book in advance!

Day 4

Today was the great wall day and we had little idea what to expect apart from a great wall. There are different trips to the great wall, many of them are very touristy and also take you to shops that try and sell you tacky, fake touristy goods. We picked a 'secret wall' trip and from the people we talked to, you dont see any other people and there were no shops (apart from one that sells water etc).

We set off on a two hour bus trip with an annoying Alaskan girl sat next to us talking the whole time about how China was different to Alaska. There were ten people to each bus and there were two buses in total, which represented the whole party.

We arrived in the middle of nowhere surrounded by bush and hills and unfortunately it was quite misty and visibility wasnt great. We started a 30min trek up through the bush which took a while as we had to wait for the members of the party who were not as fit as others, but these were nice breaks to take in the scenery and chat to others in the party. After trekking for a while we reached the wall which had not been restored and was in its old crumbled state but made the trip more authentic. We began trekking along the wall but the visibility reamined poor but it was an amazing experiance. It's also worth noting that the guide was 72 years old and was a vibrant man who was runnning up and down the wall chain smoking and had the youthfulness of a 20 year old.

After trekking along the wall for two hours the visibility started to improve which led to better pictures and we could start to see the surrounding hills. We then started making our decent down to a small village which took about twenty minutes and we had a fantastic vegetarian meal cooked by the locals what was also included in the trip and we gave the guide a 4 yuan tip (40p) although he only asked for 1 yuan. After the amazing meal with the other trekkers we then jumped on the bus back to the hostel and many people fell asleep.

That night we went to find a night market with Amy, a girl who we met on the wall trek. The night market sold cheap food but when we got there (the map was not to scale and we under estimated the distance, as well as taking the odd wrong turn) the market was closed so we went to a restaurant and had some amazing food once again.

Interesting fact no.4 - Chinese mountains are differet to Alaskan mountains

Day 5

We awoke on day five with nothing really to do which is important when you're so busy all the time trvelling which makes you really tired. We decided to go pottering around Beijing on the metro to see the different sights. We started off going to the pearl market which is a big shopping centre which sells all sorts of stuff (mainly to tourists). Upon arriving we realised we were going to be hassled throughout with people shoving things in our face and shouting at us too buy things. We learned one phrase which is coming in handy 'Bu-yao' which means 'Dont want' which we've been using to rescue us from these situations. We decided to leave the pearl market because of the harassment and the fact all the goods were fake and most likely to fall apart in about 2 hours.

After the pearl market we went back to the night market which isnt actually a night market but a bustling day market that sold all sorts of things. There were live scorpions on a stick, chicken feet (local delicacy), cooked seahorses (didnt agree with this one) and touristy stuff. This was a good market and was full of life and we had some cheap beef noodles to fill the growing hole in our stomachs. Again we didn't decide to buy anything, we now had our train ticket to Xi'an and it cost more than we thought it would so we had to adjust the budget.

After leaving the market we then had to grab our bags and head off to the train station so we could grab the train to Xi'an which was a 12 hour sleeper train. We got a soft sleeper which is the nicest class andd there are four people to a lockable cabin on the train. Each person has a bed which is quite comfortable and we shared it with a Chinese couple who couldnt speak any English so interaction was kept to a minimum. After only a few hours the train lights went off and it was time to sleep and the following day we knew we'd arrive in Xian.

Interesting fact no.5 - The air is so bad in beijing that its like smoking 70 cigarettes a day

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