While waiting for the visa

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Thursday August 24th

One of the man in my train compartment woke me up at around 7AM. We were approaching Beijing. We arrived quickly thereafter and I managed to make a fool of myself when I got down from my (top) bed (I slipped when I put my feet on the middle bed and almost fell). Hard sleeper is definately luxurious travel. The ride had been really easy and comfortable.

I was a bit lost when I got out of the train station as I was expecting to land in Beijing Train Station but I ended up in West Beijing Train Station, which isn't connected to a subway line and is pretty far from the city center. So I went outside and walked around to find the metro but I took the wrong road so it took me more than 45 minutes to actually find it. First lesson learned in Beijing: distances that appear short on the LP map aren't really short, it's just an illusion. On the way to the subway I met a german guy that was as lost as me so we got together until my stop when I said goodbye. I was starving by the time I got to the subway station close to the hostel I was planning to stay and I went to a McDonald for breakfast as it was the only restaurant I could find in the area. After that I walked to my hostel but I took a wrong turn so it took more than an hour. I got a bed in a 8 bed dorm room where I talked with 2 swedes that were checking out for a few minutes.

I had been on the road for 2 nights now so I didn't smell like rose. I took a shower before leaving the hostel to make my way to the main reason of my visit to Beijing: Pakistani embassy to get my visa. Pakistan is the next country I'm planning to travel to and Beijing is the only place in the country that I can get a visa. Pakistani bureaucrats are not reknowed for their efficiency so I was planning that it would take at least until Monday to get my Visa in a best-case scenario.

It takes a while to get there using walking/metro and by the time I was there it was close for application and I'd have to go back Friday. Grrr. By that time it was already 2PM and I was tired. I went back to the dorm and slept for a few hours. After that I had dinner in a chinese restaurant nearby and then went on nearby wangba to check my emails and catch up on the news. When I got back to the dorm I talked with the people who had filled it during the day: a scottish couple, an american guy who has been travelling around Asia for 4 years, a spanish guy, 2 japanese girls and a french girl until around 1AM, sharing tales of travel.

Friday August 25th

I woke up early to get to the Pakistani embassy. I got there by 9:20. The very helpful bureaucrat gave me a form which I filled out after which he told me to get photocopy of my chinese visa somewhere which I had to walk 20 minutes to get to even though he had a photocopy machine in the back for sure. When I got back they made everyone wait until 11:30 because for some unknown reason, 9-11AM is the time for form filling and only after everyone filled out their form can we hand it in. The fact that everyone have to wait for hours just to hand in a form doesn't seem to occurs to these ever so friendly bureaucrats.

I had number 10 so I had to wait a while before I was allowed to see the man in charge of visas. He made me sit in his office and as a good bureaucrats he tried to make me feel like shit for not knowing things like that "S/O P/O" meant the name of my father. "You didn't fill your form thoroughly and now everyone is waiting because of you". Next came the little interview. Why do you want to go to Pakistan, where do you want to go, do you have accomodations booked, do you want us to help you book accomodation, do you have a plane ticket out of the country, do you plan to go to India next, where do you plan to go in India? That's where I made my mistake. I figured I'd stay on the safe side and only mention favorite traveller's place: "Delhi, Agra, Mumbai, Goa, Ladakh". I had forgotten that Ladakh was in Kashmir (albeit it is only a techincality since the county is Buddist and hasn't been involved in the dispute between the 2 countries, something evident because tourism has been flourishing there for years)

"Oh, Ladakh how interesting. You're planning to go in India's illegally controlled territory of Kashmir. India has occupied this province of Pakistan for more than half a century" said the old man with a look that tried to look intimidating.

He then proceeded to give me a sermon on India/Pakistan relations which could be basically summed up as "India evil, Pakistan Good". He finished by saying "But you don't know anything about that don't you?", looked at his female assistant for a few seconds then look back at me with disdain: "How sad". I knew I had to play dumb by this point because if I told him I was aware of the history of that region and the Pakistan/India wars but I didn't Pakistan should in any way ever have any control over Buddhist Ladakh (but they do have valid claims for the rest of Kashmir) that would be the end of my hopes to get a visa for Pakistan. He tossed my applications on the right side of his desk and told me to come check Monday. I was pretty sure by that point that he'd never give me the visa.

By the time I left the embassy it was 12:15. I was supposed to meet Silvia in Tiananmen Square at 13:30 and I had to go to the hostel to pick up my camera so I thought I'd make it but it would be close. By the time I had walked all the way to the subway station (25 mins), I realized I had forgotten my dear cowboy hat in the visa office so I had to run back there then come back to the subway station. On the way back I found a public telephone and called Silvia to tell her I'd be late by at least an hour but I really couldn't understand what she was saying because I think she was in the subway.

After I called her I realzied that taking a cab would make everything easier (if more expansive) so I took a cab to the hostel and picked up my camera. I called her again and told her I'd be there in 15 minutes. I took a cab and 15 minutes later I was in the Square. We were supposed to meet by the big stone monument so that's where I went, trying to look for Silvia by walking around it twice but she was nowhere to be found. There were plenty of chinese people who were trying to sell me kites, water or try to just "talk". I knew that Tiananmen Square was full of con-artist trying to lure naive and guilible foreigners either into a teahouse where they'll suggest a very good tea which ends up costing 300-400RMB (50$) or they'll try to bring you into a "student artist gallery" (ie cheap chinese souvenir shop) and guiltrip you into buying something.

Silvia had mentioned something about the museum on the phone but I couldn't hear quite clearly exactly what she said. So I figured maybe she was hanging around the National History Museum. I went there, walked around but didn't find her. Then I went back on the Square, went to Mao's Mausoleum to the south end of the square and back by the other side all the way to the Gate of Heavenly Peace (the entrance to the Forbidden City) and back at the stone monument but didn't find Silvia anywhere. I mean it wasn't totally a waste of time, Tiananmen Square is pretty cool and I enjoyed looking at kids flying kites, naive foreigners talking with "oh so friendly" chinese and chinese tour groups in matching hat led by the shepherd but I must admit I was quite pissed about not finding her. I couldn't phone because I don't have a cellphone (I know I know, so 20th century) and there are no public phone. After 2 hours I gave up as it was 4PM. I didn't have anything to eat since breakfast and just felt tired. I took the subway back to the hostel and slept in the dorm for a bit less than an hour.

The spanish guy from yesterday woke me up and invited me to go to the Silk Market with him and a chilean couple he met during the day. I was a bit relunctant at first but decided to join. The chileans were pretty cool and very easy to get along with but I totally forgot their name. The spanish guy's name was Daniel (I remembered because it's my father's name). We got to the Silk Market by bus and entered just as it started raining. The Silk Market is one of the place almost every foreigner go when they go to Beijing. It's a big multi-story market with fake of everything for very low price - if you are good at bargaining. The chileans wanted to buy some fake North Face jacket as they were heading for Lhasa and Nepal.

I usually hate shopping but I had a blast at the Silk Market, maybe because I wasn't particularly looking for anything. It seems that every overly outgoing cute women in China work there. They'll all invite you (sometime very aggressively) to their booth and when you mention that you speak french they'll always know several sentences in Brice de Nice's language. They all said that Canada was a very nice country and that Quebec was the best province. My hat seemed to be quite popular, one of them even stole it from me to lure me into her booth. They're very aggressive but it's just a game, which I thought was very fun since I wasn't gonna buy anything off them anyway.

We eventually rejoined the chileans who had been bargaining at hte same place for at least 15 minutes. The saleswoman was doing quite a show at trying to look mad, tearing her hair apart and everything. In the end, they got their (very good fakes I must say) North Face for 170RMB (20$) each, not bad since they started the bargain at 800. But then again it means nothing in the Silk Market. They start t-shirt at 380 but they'll sell it for 25 or 30 with enough bargaining (and threat to go to another t-shirt shop).

We shopped a bit after they got their jackets. Some woman told me she wanted to sell me "traditional china t-shirt" which included one of Che Guevara. It also included some t-shirt with pandas on it and it reminded me that I was quite hungry. I asked her if she knew anywhere where we could get panda steak but she didn't understand. They know english but only to sell you stuff, as soon you get out of the very limited sales vocabulary you might as well be speaking inuit.

In any case we went out looking for something to eat but didn't end up finding any decent panda steak. We ended up in some chinese restaurant and had some pretty decent pandaless food and a friendly waitress. We took a while to eat and it was quite pleasant. While we were waiting at the bus station some women tried to sell us socks, rolex and DVD. They were quite insistent but I found them hilarious. I made a quite good imitation of them on the bus: "Hello sir! Wantsocks?4for20,40for20verygood!4for20okok4for15.15verygoodpriceyeah.youpreferwhitesocks?theseverygoods.Nike.3for203for20.Youlike?Okok4for20.Verygoodsockssir.Youwantlolex?lolexwatchverygood.DVD?SUPERMAN!!!youwantdvd?supermangood! 20yuan!sockssir? etc etc". They are definately interesting. We got back to the hostel and they were talking about going out with some people from their dorm but I was totally beaten. I went to bed at around 9:30 and fell asleep right away.

Saturday August 26th

I was planning to go to the Forbidden City that day but for some reason I ended up doing pretty much nothing. It was just one of those days where you just want to take off and just relax. I felt a bit guilty because I hadn't seen much of Beijing in 3 days but hey, I was stuck there because of the visa anyway and it's my trip afterall, I do what I want. I woke up at 9 and had breakfast which was pretty disapointing. I took a note to myself not to eat at the guesthouse again. I booked a trip to the Great Wall for Sunday that drop you at Jiangshanling section and pick you up 4 hours later at Simatai, 10 km away so that you can actually walk the Wall. Then I did my laundry and went walking around the small street around my hotel. I ended up in a big wangba an hour later and stayed there for hours, reading the news, travel forum and updating (although it was a very unproductive day for blogging) my blog. I got back in the hostel in the afternoon to handwash the rest of my clothes and then fell asleep. I ate sweet and sour pork at the chinese place close to the hostel and went on the internet some more before coming back to the hostel at 9:30.

While I was removing my clothes from the line on the roof of the hostel I saw that the scottish and the american guy from the hostel were on the roof drinking beer so I joined them. The scottish guy is working in the merchant navy and had some pretty interesting stories to tell, for example when he was in Nigeria and the boat next to them got robbed by pirates which killed 2 crew members in a gun fight. He had to keep guard on his boat for 2 weeks after that incident. That also happened at the same time as Somali pirates launched a rocket on a cruise boat so he was quite stressed out about this all. He told us how he had been in Vietnam 5 years ago and found the nicest people ever and now he just came back from it and he says it's a nightmare. Touts are extremely aggressive and insistent and everyone tries to rip you off. They really didn't enjoy Vietnam which is pretty much what everyone who has been there has been saying. The american guy was interesting. He has been travelling around Asia for 4 years and has never work of all his life. He's just spending away his grandparent's money travelling. He is usually based around Bangkok. We were kicked out of the terrace at 11:00 so we went downstairs to keep talking. We were joined by a bunch of people including Daniel, the chileans and 2 irish guy. The conversation soon turned to real estate price in Dublin which was fascinating (well, not really). We talked until around 1AM when I decided to head to bed since I had to be awake to leave at 7:20 tomorrow for the Great Wall, which was the only attraction in Beijing which I was actually excited about.

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Photos

Gate of Heavenly Peace
... and guess who? Uncle M!

Tiananmen Square
Central Beijing

The Final Countdown
In front of the Museum near Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square 2
This is Mao's Mausoleum in the background.

North Gate
South of Tiananmen

Comments

[Ydola Forest-Tremblay]

Je t'aime
Allo, je suis présentement chez Sylvie et Michel. J'ai regardé avec joie ton beau journal, les photos m'ont beaucoup impressionnée. Fais attention à toi. Grand-maman pense à toi tous les jours. Gros bisous. gros câlins XXX ta belle grand- maman qui t'aime.

[Sylvie et Michel]

salut l'aventurier !
Que de choses tu as vues et que de choses tu verras encore! Ton regard sur le monde ne sera jamais plus le même j'en suis sûre. Tu nous fais vibrer avec tes magnifiques photos. Tu nous fais aussi trembler avec tes terribles aventures !!! Quelle leçon de vie. Par ici le vie reprend son cours: travail, école... le vrai monde quoi. Continue ton beau rêve et vis-le passionnément jusqu'au bout... On te suit... Au plaisir de te relire encore. Bye Gos bisous, Gros câlins , plus gros que ceux d'Ydola! hi hi hi. Sylvie et Michou XXX