Not my favourite day in Bejing. We left our hostel and changed to a hotel, as we meet our tour group tonight. Although we have our own bathroom rather than a shared one, it's not the cleanest. We'll cope...it's Beijing!
We booked a tour to the Summer Palace which is an immense park which was once a playground for the imperial court. Royalty came here to edlude the summer heat that roasted the Forbidden City. Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt the park in 1888 with money supposedly intended for the creation of a modern navy. After at least a 40 minute drive to the Summer Palace amongst public holiday tourists taking up every inch of the road, and the scorching heat, I was well and truely ready to frollic in imperial garden glory. Oh how wrong could I be. There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Chinese tourists, with a couple of German and Scandinavians and 4 tall Aussies thrown in for good measure. This was the first day of Beijing where I couldn't cope, and quickly decided I was going to walk and bustle like a local - push your way through the crowd and not apologise for brushing or hitting anyone in your path. No-one even blinks an eye at this rudeness, and once I started I got the hang of it very quickly. Rani and Kt were interested in seeing everything and taking lots of photos, but I felt like murdering someone so Dom and I quickly escaped to an area with a few less tourists. We met the girls about an hour later, found our coach and got the hell out of there. Not happy Jan!
We got dropped home and the other girls went to do more sightseeing, but I was over it so I had some free time before meeting up with the other 10 people we are to share the next 2 or so weeks with on tour. Most seemed nice and well travelled but we will begin the introductions tomorrow morning at 7am when we leave for Mongolia.
In the evening we went for yet another delicious dinner. The food here has been sensational and obviously nothing like the Chinese food available back home. Again we washed it down with chinese beer (I found out the name - Tsing Tao - which I think you can get at home) and were the main attraction of the night, again being the only westerners in the restaurant. The waitresses loved serving us, and laughed at our sign language trying to ask for certain things. The guy next to us who was smoking away certainly didn't have any problem understanding my sign language that was telling him to put the cigarette out because it was repulsive to sit next to in a restaurant. He was very obliging, but really I gave him no choice. And he knew I had back up!
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Beijing - Wednesday 02 May
Today was the most exciting day for me - trekking the Great Wall of China! We had booked an all day tour which collected us from the hostel at 10am. We had a few others to pick up along the way, then it took around 2 hours to reach the wall. For anyone planning on doing a tour, I would recommend you go to the Mutianyu section because it's a less commercial experience and is equipped with a cable car (my heart was racing the whole way up) to go up the mountain to start the trek and a fantastic toboggan to come down.
One of the Ancient wonders of the world, the Great Wall stretches about 7200km and took millions of people to build (many political prisoners). The wall started in the Qin dynasty and over the course of the first 10 years of this part of the building process, an estimated 1 million people died and legend has it that the bodies of deceased workers were amond the building materials used.
So we took the 5 minute cable car ride up the mountain, me holding on to the bars tight the whole way, then started the hour or so trek down, then up and through some of the guard towers. The stairs were very small and close together, although wide, but in some areas we had to step up about half a metre to the next step. And very steep, almost but not quite vertical. Again it felt surreal to be trekking the Great Wall, something i've always dreamed of doing but only ever seen on tele or in books. We were amazed at the beauty of it, the surrounding mountains and views and we were Heroes! We took a fun ride to the bottom of the mountain on a 5 or so minute toboggan ride. Woo hoo! Our tour guide told us you are a hero when you trek the Great Wall. She told us she loved us because we were now heroe's after the trek. We waited on the bus for over half an hour because an old man on the tour hadn't returned to the group on time. The guide finally found him and when he got back he said that it was the hardest thing he'd ever done but he was so proud to have done it (apart from serving in the war perhaps??). I was so proud of him as well - imagine accomplishing a walk of the Great Wall at 70 (he looked at least 70 anyway). Go gramps, well done!
On the way home we stopped at a tea house for some delicious tea - we tried Jasmine, Luton and Lychee and they all tasted beautiful. Much better than the tea we can buy at home, but unfortunately i'm not prepared to carry tea half way around the world and home. Finally around 6pm we were dropped at Wangfujing St to experience the food stalls.
Today was the real Chinese experience. The food stalls were lined up along the street, and once again we shared our space with thousands and thousands of chinese people. Ok, so me being the food lover and travelling with three other food loving gals, you can imagine our delight when we found stall upon stall of sticks of sea and land creatures, balls of puffy goo covered in sugar, mounds of unknown creature and pots of bubbling edibles. We spotted some large starfish on a stick and had to give it a go. We bought one to share and found that it was a delicious delight, filled with delicious filling - made of what, I do not know. No sooner had Dom and Rani taken the first bite of starfish and we had a television crew surrounding us to film the experience. They were from a Beijing youth documentary channel and were delighted at our experience, asking for our opinion on the taste and continually saying they had filmed enough only to shove the camera in the face of the next one of us to take a bite. Once they had filmed enough, we moved on to the next stall where we bought three medium sized crabs on a stick, covered in spicy pasty goo. Very crunchy, not bad but not delicious. We then found puffy balls of carbohydraty delight covered in mounds of sugar and straight out of boiling hot deep fry. mmmmmm....The next delights we found but did not try were sticks of millipede, unknown bug, snake and scorpion. As daring as I would like to think I am with food, those varieties can wait.
After we'd immersed ourselves in enough weird and unusual culinary pleasure, we decided to find a restaurant for dinner. We ate the most delicious black bean and green vegetable dish and a green bean, vege and mushroom dish, again washed down with Chinese beer (i'll have to find out the name, we've paid as low as 0.80c for a 630ml bottle and it's a great thirst quencher at the end of the day).
Home for another very well earned nights sleep!
One of the Ancient wonders of the world, the Great Wall stretches about 7200km and took millions of people to build (many political prisoners). The wall started in the Qin dynasty and over the course of the first 10 years of this part of the building process, an estimated 1 million people died and legend has it that the bodies of deceased workers were amond the building materials used.
So we took the 5 minute cable car ride up the mountain, me holding on to the bars tight the whole way, then started the hour or so trek down, then up and through some of the guard towers. The stairs were very small and close together, although wide, but in some areas we had to step up about half a metre to the next step. And very steep, almost but not quite vertical. Again it felt surreal to be trekking the Great Wall, something i've always dreamed of doing but only ever seen on tele or in books. We were amazed at the beauty of it, the surrounding mountains and views and we were Heroes! We took a fun ride to the bottom of the mountain on a 5 or so minute toboggan ride. Woo hoo! Our tour guide told us you are a hero when you trek the Great Wall. She told us she loved us because we were now heroe's after the trek. We waited on the bus for over half an hour because an old man on the tour hadn't returned to the group on time. The guide finally found him and when he got back he said that it was the hardest thing he'd ever done but he was so proud to have done it (apart from serving in the war perhaps??). I was so proud of him as well - imagine accomplishing a walk of the Great Wall at 70 (he looked at least 70 anyway). Go gramps, well done!
On the way home we stopped at a tea house for some delicious tea - we tried Jasmine, Luton and Lychee and they all tasted beautiful. Much better than the tea we can buy at home, but unfortunately i'm not prepared to carry tea half way around the world and home. Finally around 6pm we were dropped at Wangfujing St to experience the food stalls.
Today was the real Chinese experience. The food stalls were lined up along the street, and once again we shared our space with thousands and thousands of chinese people. Ok, so me being the food lover and travelling with three other food loving gals, you can imagine our delight when we found stall upon stall of sticks of sea and land creatures, balls of puffy goo covered in sugar, mounds of unknown creature and pots of bubbling edibles. We spotted some large starfish on a stick and had to give it a go. We bought one to share and found that it was a delicious delight, filled with delicious filling - made of what, I do not know. No sooner had Dom and Rani taken the first bite of starfish and we had a television crew surrounding us to film the experience. They were from a Beijing youth documentary channel and were delighted at our experience, asking for our opinion on the taste and continually saying they had filmed enough only to shove the camera in the face of the next one of us to take a bite. Once they had filmed enough, we moved on to the next stall where we bought three medium sized crabs on a stick, covered in spicy pasty goo. Very crunchy, not bad but not delicious. We then found puffy balls of carbohydraty delight covered in mounds of sugar and straight out of boiling hot deep fry. mmmmmm....The next delights we found but did not try were sticks of millipede, unknown bug, snake and scorpion. As daring as I would like to think I am with food, those varieties can wait.
After we'd immersed ourselves in enough weird and unusual culinary pleasure, we decided to find a restaurant for dinner. We ate the most delicious black bean and green vegetable dish and a green bean, vege and mushroom dish, again washed down with Chinese beer (i'll have to find out the name, we've paid as low as 0.80c for a 630ml bottle and it's a great thirst quencher at the end of the day).
Home for another very well earned nights sleep!
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