I arrived into Beijing with a little panic attack. I had forgotten to write down the directions and name of my hostel that I had booked over the internet, so I wasn't to sure where exactly it was and what it was called. I tried getting on the internet at the airport but that didn't work very well. I did remember where I was suppose to get the bus to so at least I was able to get a ticket to there. Which was beside the forbidden city. On the bus I was looking at my travel book hoping I would remember what street my hostel was on, but I was stuck between two streets and of course I didn't know how long they were. But if worse came to worse I would walk both of them till I found it. On the bus I tried talking to the guy beside me but I found out quite quickly that he didn't have much English. I just wanted to know if there was an internet cafe close by when we got off the bus that I could go to. I have to say he was a gentleman, even though he couldn't communicate with me. I ended up going into a KFC (which I found out are on every street corner) and in there he found a girl that spoke English. Between them I was put into a taxi and sent towards my hostel.
I eventually stop the taxi close to where I thought my hostel was and its a good thing I have good memory, (I hear a lot of people laughing at that one) OK that I have good picture memory. And I found my hostel. Which was a good thing cause it was freezing. My hands were so cold. So the first thing I bought was gloves and I only went out long enough to buy them as I wasn't prepared for the cold that seeped into my bones. The only way to get warm again was to have a shower which I did willingly and WOW, what a shower. Probably the hottest shower I ever had and man was it nice. Especially since the bathroom and shower room was outside in the cold, down the stairs across the courtyard and into an area out the back. So needless to say I wasn't going to get up in the middle of the night to go for a pee in a hurry.
So my first night in china was huddled in my bed under the covers on the internet as I was able to get access from the dorm room. SCORE.
The next day I had arranged to meet a Danish girl called Line (pronounced lina) from couchsurfing. She had arrived the day before also and we had organized to meet at the forbidden city to see it with her and her friend. I walked there from my hostel as it wasn't to far away, but I got a little confused on the way and took the long way. I found out very fast that china is a maze of tunnels and bridges. To cross a busy street in particular you have to find the tunnel that goes under the road to get you across as the the roads are blocked with fences so there is no way you can J.-walk. Otherwise I would have tried.
So I ended up being a little late but Line was patient thank god. She was travelling with a friend of hers from Denmark also called Dagmar. I liked them immediately. On the way into the city we got stopped by a tour guide that wanted to bring us on a tour. We were trying to decided between us was it worth it for the price, which wasn't to bad in the end so decided why not. I'm actually glad we did as I learn a lot of stuff I would never have known otherwise and she turned out to be quite nice and even later that day gave us a free tour of the temple of heaven because she said she liked us so much.
The forbidden city was quite impressive, though not as old as I would have thought. The original buildings had burnt down so many times that the last one was about 200 years old. If even that.
The day turned out to be a nice one sunny and not too windy or I think I would have been too cold. As it was a was pretty much nearly wearing everything in my bag. 2 T.-shirts, 2 hoodies, one fleece, 2 crop trs, 2 long trs and 2 pair of socks. I would have put on more if I had it.
There were 5 bridges to go into the city and the middle one was always reserved for the emperor.
The emperors symbol is the dragon and the empress is the phoenix. Jade is to believed to give long life and should always be worn on our left arm closest to the heart. And all his mistresses weren't allowed to leave the palace walls. Prisoner for life.
After the forbidden city, Dina asked did we want to do another tour with her, but we weren't sure. And afraid it would cost too much. She told us about the government silk factory shop. That she would bring us too and show us around. It wasn't for much more so we decided to go for it. We got a taxi there and went into the silk shop. It was huge with like 5 floors, they showed us how they got the silk for the cocoons and showed us how they made silk duvets. We even got to pull silk out to help make a duvet. Is was pretty cool. If I had the money I would have been buying all around me.
I had my first Chinese lunch, of cold noddles, they were pretty good. Trying to eat noodles with chopsticks is pretty hard work.
After lunch we were heading to the temple of heaven and Dina said she would do the tour there also, but she would do it for free as she liked us so much. So we paid for her ticket in and she showed us around there too. While we were walking around, we heard some music, thinking that there was someone up ahead playing music, but it turned out that they had speakers in the parks to play music. Which seemed kind a bazaar to me. But we did find some guy playing the AR WHO (not the way its spelt) and was kind enough for us to try it out. Needless to say we were crap and made a lot of high pitched noise. The temple of heaven was pretty cool and was the temple for praying for spring, there was another temple for winter and another one called the echo wall and it was built in such a way that if it was really quiet you stood on the first stone in front of the temple and clapped you would hear one echo and if you went to the second stone and clapped you would hear two echoes and the third, three echoes. I would have loved to try it but of course the place to full of people and there was no way you could do it. I wonder if the guards did it now and again.
There was some thing up in the sky and Line thought that it was a bird but it turned out to only be a kite. From there we left Dina on the subway and we headed to the train station to get our tickets to get out of Beijing. We were sure if we were going to be able as it was coming up to Chinese spring festival and we heard that is was very difficult to travel around that time. We were both really lucky as we got the ticket that we wanted to get out of Beijing, we would just have to wait and see once we were at our next destination would we get ticket to continue on.
My original plan was to travel down the east coast and maybe I should have stuck to that plan, but then again I wouldn't have met the wonderful people that I met along the way. But I decided to take marks from singapores advise annd head towards chengdu, so I got a ticket half way to Xi'an (she' ann) where the terracota soilders were. At least I hitting all the highlights.
Line and Dagmar. had to leave they were couchsurfing in Beijing and had to make it back to their hosts place, so I headed back to the hostel and had hot shower and a quiet night.
The next day we were suppose to head to the great wall. But by the time we met up and went to get our bus, we were told it was too late and that the buses weren't going anymore. But they were willing to give us a car to get us there, that would be more expensive. We decided against and said we would go and see the summer palace, and start earlier the next day for the great wall.
The summer palace was really nice and we got some great views from the top of the hill. It was bloody freezing again though. Dagmar. was funny, line and her had bought a couple of apples for lunch and they were really sticky. Not knowing what made them sticky, her decided to peel them, but all they had was a spoon. Well I now know if you really stuck you can peel an apple with a spoon.
The day was a quiet one, walking around the palace, it was really nice. It actually didn't get really cold until the sun was low in the sky and at that stage it was starting to get unbearable. We also got tricked again with kites in the sky, thinking that they were birds. Next time I'm just going to presume its a kite.
I left the girls heading towards their couch again but they were arriving to my hostel the next morning as they were spending their last night in Beijing there and we were going to head for the wall together from there.
So the next morning, we made sure you were there earlier for the bus, but there seemed to be some kind of scam going on between the people who actually worked for the public bus. They said that the bus wouldn't go to the wall unless there was enough people to fill the bus, which doesn't make sense as it was suppose to be part of the bus route. But they wouldn't let us on the bus so what were we to do. When the government workers are in on it. So we ended up getting the car there after all. But in the day that was in it, it probably was worth it, as it was faster and I had to be back in Beijing in time to get my train that night to Xi'an.
So when we arrived to the great wall it was packed. So many Chinese people were there. I think even some school tours. For the fun of it, we decided to count how many Caucasian people we saw along the way, also counting us. There were so many steps, and I thought the great wall was going to be much bigger than it was. Don't get me wrong it was amazing, especially when Dina on the first day told us that, the wall was made from sticky rice, egg and lime, lime in the mineral, not the fruit. But just that if you were suppose to be able to see it from space, I expected something more giant.
We had fun though and as we got further up the wall the less people there were. I can now say I had lunch on the great wall of china. Where I also tasted my first Danish liquorice, a very acquired taste. Should have taken a video of that also. Started a documentary of strange tastes from around the world.
In the end we counted 32 Caucasians, not a lot really considering how many people there were.
I got back into town in time to get something quick to eat and get to the train station for my train. I arrived an hour before hand as I knew I was going to have to put my bag through an x-ray machine but when I arrive to the front door, and looked at the time table I didn't see my train number up there anywhere. So I started to panic. I asked the guard where I could find my train. He didn't have any English and shook his head saying it wasn't there. So I showed him the map I had and he didn't know where to point to on it, I didn't know what I had to do. I lovely girl then came up who could speak English and told me I was at the wrong station and that I needed to get to the east train station.
Which was on the far side of town. I bought my train ticket there so I thought I had to leave from there. I found out how wrong I was. And now I didn't know if I was going to make it on time. They pointed me to where I could get the bus but the line was long to get on it and I didn't have time to wait. So I got a taxi there. Even in the taxi I was running out of time. I arrived to the train station with 10 mins to departure, but I still had to get through security, it was like going to a bloody airport. The amount of people trying to get in the train station. It was crazy. By the time I made it through and to find out which platform it was leaving from. I got to the door to the waiting room with no time to spare.
But the door to the waiting room was closed and they wouldn't let anyone in. I was trying to tell them that I still had 2 mins left but they weren't opening the door. I didn't know what to do. Finally they were opening it to let the crowd for the next train, so I ran in and showed my ticket. But my train was gone. There was a young couple with me also who a had missed it. I just stood there sweating with Sean, both of us not knowing what to do. When the guy from the couple I saw asked did I miss the train also. I said I had but they seemed to have a plan and said that they would try to get tickets for the next train. So we left the building and that where I found out that we could get standing tickets for the next train. Standing ticket? I hear you say. I didn't know either that you could get standing tickets for train. But you can. So we queued to change our tickets. The queue was a joke, it wasn't going anywhere because people kept skipping it. But the girl I was with finally got smart and skipped it herself and we went running back to our bags that we left with her boyfriend and we went to catch the next train that was leaving for Xi'an.
We got on the train and it was packed. Crazy packed. We couldn't even walk down the aisles as there was so many people standing there. I had a difficult time trying to make my way through especially with Sean on my back. When was he going to stop being so lazy and get off my back.
I stopped saying sorry as I couldn't help it and everyone couldn't understand me. But after getting through all those people, we had to turn around and do it all the way back. We finally stopped at the dinning car, but everywhere we put our bags we were told we couldn't leave it there. It was blocking something. Gez they should have that before they jammed everyone in. so I spent the train journey sitting on Sean at the end of the aisle of the dinning car. I was getting looks from many people and at one stage we had even gotten a group of people with us, who were students on the way home and wanted to practice their English.
I found out the couples names that had rescued me, xiao ai was the girls name and huang xiao was the guys name, but like to be called Michael after Michael Jackson. They were a lovely couple from urumqi. Xiao ai was excited about inviting me to her house for new years and when I expected the offer I didn't realize how far away it was. It was the furthest city away from the sea and in the far north west side of the country. I really couldn't have picked a spot further way. The only thing was trying to get me a ticket to go with them the next day, which I was thinking wasn't going to be so easy, especially seeing how packed the trains really were.
