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Published: October 10th 2009
Olympic Park
The Birds Nest stadiumWelcome to the China leg of our trip...
We picked (by chance) a great time to visit as the Chinese are in the midst of celebrating their 60th anniversary as the Peoples Republic of China. The extended public holiday meant that Beijing was bursting at the seams, which despite creating a carnival atmosphere, also means lots of pushing and barging; although compared to the airports in Cambodia, it’s a breeze. Beijing was everything you would expect from a modern metropolis and despite the language barrier we have had one of the best weeks of the trip so far.
Arriving a few days ahead of our tour meant we were able to acclimatise and make a start on exploring some of the major sites. Very few people speak English, initially quire daunting, but signing gets you surprisingly far. Our Chinese vocabulary is slowly increasing (hello, goodbye and cheers mastered so far), but it’s a relief to have our tour guide, Ricky, with us now. Our tour group is 15 in total and we couldn’t have hoped for a better group of people. I have at least three solid drinking buddies and I am hoping that some of the girls in
the group will relieve me from shopping duty with Beccy (if I have to go to one more market...). We’ve also experienced what it’s like to be a celebrity as I think for some people we are the first white people they have ever seen. This means lots of people wanting to take photos (particularly of (ginger) Beccy).
The Forbidden City, Lama Temple, Temple of Heaven, Ancient Observatory, Olympic Park, Hutong District and the Summer Palace are some of the places we’ve visited, with the highlight of the week being the Great Wall of China. I hadn’t really appreciated how the Wall blends into the natural surroundings, nor appreciated the scale of the wall (it’s over 3m wide). After walking along the wall for a couple of kilometres we finished off by recreating the Barclaycard water-chute advert by taking a 500m toboggan slide down to the bottom (without the water though).
Another highlight was visiting the Olympic Park which was made extra special by the number of other tourists as it helped us imagine what the atmosphere would have been like during the Games. The Birds Nest Stadium really does look as impressive as it did on TV
and it was great to look down at the track and see where Bolt ran those two amazing races. The Water Cube was another impressive building where Rebecca Adlington won her two gold medals. By chance I had noticed adverts for the 2009 China Open in Beijing (at the Olympic tennis venue) which was at the quarter final stage. We managed to get Centre Court tickets and saw world number 3 Rafael Nadal beat James Blake in front of a full house.
As well as all the sights we’ve also had some great nights out with our group. The highlight has been sitting on a rooftop terrace bar overlooking a small lake in the Hutong District. The Hutong District is a collection of alley ways and cobbled streets with lots of shops and bars. It’s a bit like a big model village as the buildings are so quaint. We’ve also had several Chinese meals crowded around large tables with a feast of food. The menu is unrecognisable when compared to an ‘English Chinese’ and there has been no sign of any prawn crackers so far.
We arrived in Shanghai yesterday and have two days to explore. The overnight
Beijing Tennis Open
The Olympic tennis stadium trip from Beijing was testing (six single beds in a tiny cabin), but a necessary evil so we can cram in everything we want to over the 3 weeks we have here.
Andy & Beccy xx
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Saz
non-member comment
Ginger Becky - they love you!! You're famous! xx