Advertisement
Published: August 25th 2009
Edit Blog Post
The day train to Beijing took more than six hours and I was lucky to have a seat. Some were standing the whole trip and although it was an air-conditioned train, it became very hot and damp. At arrival I took a taxi to the hostel because I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night searching for the place. It turns out that they are rebuilding the road, so there are no lights which makes the alley a bit obscure.
The rest of the night I stayed in the hostel. Because I had also slept during the train ride, I woke up very early. Because I was a bit tired of the whole travelling thing, I planned to do nothing during my first day in
Beijing. In the afternoon, I tried to get a train ticket to Harbin, which didn’t work out because all the students are traveling during this weekend. So I had to buy a plane ticket. The rest of the day I shopped around, because I need some more clothes than the stuff I have been traveling in.
I was able to buy jeans at a well known shop for European prices though. Next
I went into alleys and bought some cheap T-shirts and real Nike shoes (not) for 7 euro. Not the cheapest I guess, although it was one fifth of the price she originally asked for it. The woman who sold me the shoes kept on saying that I was a tough bargaining lady...
My second day in Beijing I spent on the
Great Wall. My pick up was at 6:30. At this time, I saw all the people who live in the hutong going to the public bathroom. It turns out that the houses in the hutongs generally don’t have a toilet inside... It was funny to see one old guy walking with a toilet seat! Next to the Chinese toilets, they installed also one Western toilet for the older people who cannot bend their knees so easily anymore. The toilet seat can be used to put on the Western toilet to have some hygiene (although the way he held the seat cannot be the most hygienic way probably...).
The trip to go to the starting point,
Jinshanling, took a few hours. Arriving at Jinshanling, there were a few possibilities to do the walk. One of them was to
take a cable car up to the Wall, but I decided to walk up the mountain. The tour I booked consisted of more than 50 people, so I was afraid that the wall would look crowded, but because everyone walks in their own pace and the Wall is really big, I didn’t have that feeling. The idea was to walk to another village,
Simatai, over the Great Wall. Because the wall at Jinshanling hasn’t been restored yet, it can be very rough and steep. Approaching Simatai, the Wall is restored (and actually looks less beautiful because of that). After more than three hours of walking, we reached the end point. We could walk down or take quick way down. It looked scary because it was quite high, but I was really glad I used the cable glider (or how is it called?) afterwards. The ride is not that quick or steep, so it was just only fun to do it!
Walking the Great Wall is pretty cool, especially when there are not that many others on the wall and you have the feeling that you are the only one there on the site. It was also a weird idea
that I walked 10 km on the wall, while it once was more than 9000 km long!
In the end there was a small buffet with very nice food and we went back to Beijing again.
The other two days I spend in Beijing, I actually didn’t do that much. Of course, I went to the
Forbidden City and Tianamen Square. But - probably due to my lack of Chinese history - I didn’t find it that overwhelming. It is all really big, but in the end there is just not that much to see. And again, I felt tired of sightseeing after over four weeks of doing nothing else than that. I had some good food and visited a nice, touristy
hutong. I also tried the yogurt they sell on the streets in Beijing, which was really good!
I also visited one of the areas to go out at night. All the bars seemed the same; a live (although some seemed to be playing a tape) band singing Chinese songs. It was funny to experience, but would not really be my thing for every weekend...
The rest of the time, I didn’t do anything but waiting to go
for Harbin or ‘home’ for the next coming months.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0386s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb