Beginning of China Trip

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Well it has been a while since we last wrote but we have had a busy few weeks so I apologise for the late entries...

After arriving back from Koya-San a bit earlier than expected after Sarah’s little mishap we had a few extra days to spend with our dear friend Kevin. In these last few days in Tokyo we managed to go to the beach, albeit in a gale force wind (but we were persistent), we also went on the rollercoaster ride which was really really scary, we took a tram over Rainbow bridge in Tokyo harbour to see the statue of Liberty??? Strange but true but apparently there are three of them worldwide…. These last few days were nice and relaxing and we had a bit of time to really catch up on ourselves and get prepared for our 3 week trip through China. After the goodbyes were said we headed off to the airport bound for Beijing to join our 3 week tour through China.

We arrived in Beijing on Tuesday 19th September in the evening so upon arrival it was straight to bed for a goodnights sleep. Fist impressions of Beijing were not great, the Chinese are by no means as nice as the Japanese in terms of manners, etiquette, respect for personal space, spitting in public, communication etc. I suppose it is survival of the fittest out here as apparently there are 2.3 billion Chinese people which is 1/6 of the world’s population.

We met up with our tour group on Wednesday evening for a nice traditional Chinese dinner, which was a welcome relief after Japan as Sarah and I struggled a bit due to us not being particularly adventurous with our food choices and our lack of eating fish. Initial impressions of the group were good and we were very happy that we decided to do a tour through China than fight our way through the country on our own. Funnily enough Sarah is the eldest on the tour (even older than the tour guide…...) It doesn’t matter though as the guide and a couple of other people are my age, and in any case age is but a number. After meeting with the group we were told of all the best sites to see in Beijing as well what our itinary was for the next couple of days, so keen bean tourists here we come...

The next morning we promptly rose early to head off to see Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Belhai Park and the Summer Palace. Tiananmen Square was really disappointing, this was firstly due to their being so many tourists around as well as it being nothing much more than a square. If you have seen Trafalgar square or any other square in the world then you have pretty much seen Tiananmen Square. I am aware of the history behind the square and its significance in history etc but still at the end of the day it was disappointing. It may also have been that a lot of it had been cornered off in preparation for the Olympics so this did not help with seeing the square as a whole. On the Olympic note, this city has gone into overdrive, apparently they are already ahead of schedule (unlike South Africa and the football word cup), in preparation for the games they employed 2 million extra people for construction etc to make sure that it was finished on time.

After Tiananmen Square we headed across the road to the Forbidden City, which again was absolutely packed with tourists (I know it is hypocritical of me to be complaining of this, due to the fact that I am also a tourist but I still cannot believe how many people there are. We decided to hire those really sexy headsets as our tour guides as we really wanted to learn about all the history behind this amazing city. Upon entering the city I was expecting to be blown away but there was nothing, it was just a few more temples, open spaces, scaffolding (in preparation for the Olympics) and not much else. I am glad that I have seen it but I do not think that I would ever go back there as after awhile of looking around you actually get bored…which is never a good sign when you are in a place such as this…Anyhow we jumped into a cab a raced across town to see the Summer Palace, finally something really pretty to look at. The summer Palace is surrounded by hills and lakes and is just a really nice palace to stroll around and relax. It has amazing buildings that you can go into and best of all it has not yet been spoilt by scaffolding for the Olympics!! After a rather disappointing day sight seeing we headed back o the hotel to sample the speciality of Beijing which is Peking Duck.

The following morning Sarah and I set off to see a few more sights as well as try our hand at a bit of bargaining in the Silk Road Markets. In these markets you can buy anything from golf clubs to fine jewellery. We did not need much as our backpacks are already full but we thought that it would be a nice change from seeing the temples, and as you all no Sarah can never say no to a market or too. We also met Ollie (Rosies husband and father to be) which was really nice to see another friendly face from home who was here on buisness for a couple of drinks...

On the Saturday morning we rose early to catch our bus to our starting point for our 4 hour walk on the Great Wall of China. I was absolutely blown away by the size of the wall; it was everything that I expected and then some. As I said we walked for 4 hours but I honestly could have walked for 4 more as it was that nice. The place that we started our hike is slightly further out of Beijing then most tourists go so it was relatively quite and it is also one of the prettiest parts of the wall as it has not been rebuilt (for the Olympics) so it is in its original state which was really nice to see. Quite bazaar when you start the walk you come across lots of Mongolian farmers who walk with you for 4 hours in the hope that sometime during the walk you will require a bottle of water, postcards, t-shirts, fans and books. We had bought everything before the walk but they still live in the hope that you will want something else at some point, the price also gets more expensive the further into the walk that you go which I thought was quite clever on their behalf. It does become a bit annoying being followed the whole time but they are within the rights to walk on the wall just as much as we are so there is no way that you can stop them. We all enjoyed the walk on the wall so much that we decided to wake up the following morning at 3:45am to walk for an hour in the darkness to get to a point where we could watch the sunrise. This was absolutely spectacular and I can honestly say that it is one of the highlights in my life so far…

After the wall we headed back into Beijing to prepare ourselves for our first train journey of 14 hours. Upon arriving at the train station we had a couple of hours to kill so we decided to play poker in the waiting area, and within the matter of 10 minutes we had about 20 -30 Chinese people crowding around watching what we were doing. The station master was not impressed so came along shouting into a loud hailer for them to clear off and promptly told us that she was going to put us into the VIP section as a lot of the Chinese people had never seen so many foreigners in one group before (there is only 13 of us..) and we are causing to much of a disturbance in the station. WE were obviously not compliant about getting the VIP treatment but it is a realm odd experience to have people so interested in you when you are just doing normal things like playing poker. After our brush with stardom it was time to board the train bound for Xian. A couple of people in our tour party decided to buy a rice sake for the train journey, which cost £1.00 for 1.5 litres, I am sure you can imagine the result and I am quite glad that I decided not to go down that drinking road with them!!!


Anyhow lots of love and chat to you all soon.

Please send us loads of emails as wel miss you all lots and lots

Love Al and Se XXX

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Comments

[Nikki]

hmmf
Ahhh it looks like you are having the time of your lives guys! Wish we could be there with you, me so envious boo hoo. Love yas xxx

[Victoire]

I'm in awe of the wall
Looks like you are in some magical fairytale- the sense of expanse is amazing, and that's just from your pics! v x