Beijing!!!

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Okay so I have now added pictures to the last two blogs so if you click on previous in the top left hand corner you can go back and look if you wish 😉

So after an amazing nights sleep and refreshing ourselves we got up and heading out in Beijing on Tuesday!! Was amazing to be here are being in desolate Mongolia for so long. Our clothes were amazingly filthy and we needed to put them in the washing but needed some extras so we decided on our first day we would head to one of the infamous chinese markets, this one was called the silk market and was absolutely crazy!!! It was a huge 6 floor building with an indoor market, maybe 10 rows with each row having maybe 15 stalls on both sides and each floor sold different things from bags, coats, shoes, jewelley, souvenirs and clothes. We spent the entire afternoon here and afterwards were absolutely shattered. Basically shopping here is like one big game. The market stalls offer you a ridiculous price and you have to haggle with them like crazy, but even when you say no and walk away sometimes they can get quite vicious will grab your arms virtually begging you to buy it, when you say no its too much walk away again they will shout down the isle saying ok ok and offer you something slightly less...its just sooo frustrating and you think why didn't you do this 20 minutes ago. Well we got some good bargains and some not so good, Ste got some fake trainers for about 7/8 pound which was really good, but then things like underwear worked out 1 pound per piece, I tried explaining that in the Uk you could 5 pairs of knickers for that price but she wasn't having none of it, her first offer was something like 4 pound a pair. And they try so hard to tell you how good the product is and if we say ahh we just wanted something really cheap they say ahhh no cheap quality product good quality, you just wanna say, shut up its fake and you know it...hahaha but you cant! Ste got some new shorts and a bag...finally after nearly 2 months of me begging him to buy a bag so I don't have to carry everything he did!! So a productive afternoon spent shopping. For dinner we found a little side street restaurant that was nice and cheap think it cost about 3/4 pound fod both of us to eat, huge portions or noodles and rice and chicken 😊 Luckily everywhere in Beijing has everything in English, not sure how we are going to cope outside of Beijing but whilst we are here its great. For the evening we just had a quick drink in our hostels bar, met another English couple who had travelled China a bit and got some good advice off them, especially about our Vietnam visa's so planned on getting them sorted tomorrow. Drinks here aren't as cheap as in Mongolia and Russia, a beer in a bar costs about 1-2 pound and vodka + mix is about 2/2.50 so need to be careful how much we spend there. In the shops the vodka is really expensive about 20 pounds a bottle...so different from our 1 pound bottles in mongolia and russia, but you can get a big beer bottle for about 30p!!! So unfair...may have to become a beer drinker again!

So Wednesday we headed off to the Vietnamese embassy to apply for our visa's, the couple from last night said it takes 3 working days so that meant we would have to stay in Beijing till Monday...bit longer than we had planned but hey there's plenty to do round here. The embassy was fine, except it was closed for lunch for 2 hours when we got there so we wondered around and found this beautiful park to chill out in. Inside the park they had those outdoor fitness suites...they tried them in England I think, was so funny watching all the Chinese people on there lunch breaks working out. The park had a really cute little cafe there by a lake so we treated ourselves to a beer and hot chocolate and read some of lonely planet china book we bought from the hostel (18 pounds!!! But we needed it otherwise we wouldnt have a clue what to do!!) After we went back to the embassy filled in the forms and were told to come back Monday morning, the visa costs 35 pound each which was a bit more than expected, but seemed a really easy process. That afternoon we headed off to Tiananmen Square, about time we did some of Beijings biggest sights. The smog from the pollution in Beijing is awful, all the skyscrapers in the distant dissapear so quickly, so the pictures weren't very good, but there was a little ceremony that happens everyday at sunset where these soldiers do a little march and lower the flag so there were loads and loads of tourists....mainly chinese tourists...not many white people!

Wednesday night we had arranged to meet with Jennifer and Antoine (our friends we met back in Lake Baikal and then again on our trip in Mongolia), they were in Beijing with the rest of their group from mongolia, so was really good to see them again and spend some time with them. The other English couple from our hostel came too, Jodie and Richard and we had also met a Swedish couple Martin and Louvisa who joined in, so a right group of us which worked to our advantage as Jen was able to do a bit of work in getting us some cheap deals on beer in some of the bars 😊 Really good night.

Thursday we had a bit of nightmare morning, wanted to visit this place called Underground city which was a huge underground network of alleys built during the 70's when China were worried about Russia's nuclear threats...well long story short, we couldn't find it!! Wasted a whole afternoon getting lost and not seeing anything, so we decided to treat ourselves to some drinks 😊 and headed to a different bar district by this lake. It was amazing!! Exactly the Beijing I had imagined. Loads of smalls bustling streets and alleys full of bars and restaurants, all had red lanterns hanging and loads had roof top bars so you could see all over! Came back early evening for an early night as tomorrow we had planned on an early start to visit the great wall of china.

So with the Great Wall there are different sections to visit others more touristy, the hostel arranged some amazing trips but they were expensive, Louvisa and Martin had said they had visited a really quiet area of the wall where there a 20p admission fee, other parts are 5 pound! And you could get the bus there, not a taxi like the others. So we decided we would do the same and save some pennies. Turns out it wasn't that simple...firstly we left a bit later than planned, then got lost finding the bus station in Beijing (its a big old city) then we finally got the bus to the first location where we had to change to a different bus where we spent over an hour trying to find the next bus, eventually, after asking the only white people we saw in an hour, we got the bus...by this point we had arrived in the village at around 2.30pm! It was a miserable day raining dark and cloudy and it was a very good view, the village itself was beautiful with parts of the great wall on either side of a river surrounded by restaurants (all closed). Louvisa and Martin had said there was a person at the end of the wall where you paid your 20p and they had a ladder so you could get up onto the wall...well we walked a fair while and could not see anyone, another guy was also trying and had gone a different way to us but come back with no luck either. Eventually we gave up and figured it wasn't open because of the weather. When we returned the hostel, we spoke to them only to find we were so close, just had to walk past a little house where the entrance was....nightmare!!!! Never mind eh! Got some piccies and the weather was horrible anyway!

For our dinner we decided to head out to infamous night market which is a row of about 30 stalls all selling weird and wonderful things...snakes, pigs heart, testicles etc.....we weren't brave enough to try anything more adventurous other than sharks meat which was very yummy!! Got a few more cheap snacks for our tea before headed home for an early relaxed night as the weather was still miserable.

Saturday we figured it was about time we didn't some more sightseeing in Beijing so headed to The Forbidden City. To be honest it was a bit overpriced for what it was (6 pounds with a load of fancy chinese buildings...they were good, but we later seen some other just as nice buildings in a park that cost 1 pound!), anyway we wondered through to find at the other end a park with a temple at the top overlooking the whole of the forbidden city and the park only cost 20p!!! So we hiked up rewarded with amazing (but still very smoggy) views over all of Beijing! Saturday night was Halloween and we had planned to go out with Jennifer and Antoine again, but we later changed our minds as the weather had turned pretty nasty again! So our hostel bar was doing several drink offers and we ended spending the entire night there Louvisa and Martin and another English couple we met Sarah and Mike. They were working in china teaching English in a really remote town with not much life going on so had come to Beijing for a few days. Another really good night 😊

Sunday after a nice lie in 😊 we eventually got our bums out of bed and woke up to a load of snow!!! Completely unexpected!! ! And it was absolutely freezing outside!! We decided we would do a museum or something indoors today, so headed on the subway and when we got off at our stop we found another market...this time called the pearl market but the same kind of thing. We had been thinking about getting an mp3 player since our one died a week after we left home and we had missed music so much. SO we bravely ventured inside, took us our 3rd stall to get a good offer...ended getting a fake ipod shuffle and a fake ipod nano for 17 pounds for both 😊 Although Ste is having a play with them now and says they aren't very good, although they are fake so what do we expect, hopefully its just the headphones. Louvisa and Martin transferred their music over for us so now we have music 😊 yayayaya 😊

SO tonight we will chill out, we splashed out earlier and bought the South East Asia on a shoestring lonely planet book so may have a read of that and get excited about some hot weather in a few weeks. Tomorrow we (fingers crossed) pick up our visa's for vietnam and then tomorrow night we have an overnight train booked to Xi'an, takes around 10 hours and only cost about 14 pounds each. Although we did opt for the bottom class of hard seats so that should be fun!!

Hope everyone is well at home, miss you all lots

Lots of Love

Layla & Ste xxxx

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Photos

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Crazy little snack street

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Night market selling crazy food

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The Great Wall of China - the little part we saw of it!