Global Traveller: July 2011

Greetings from China!

This month's blog is a little later than usual, mainly because I had been in Kuala Lumpur for 2 months so not very much had happened on the travelling front. Still, in Rory & Dave style we went to party after party and continued to maintain our record of how many times you can get drunk in a week!

Pool parties in Kuala Lumpur

Well here we are in China, and this is something else. Never EVER have I seen so many people all in one place. On our arrival at Tianjin (just outside Beijing) we had to wait on the plane for an hour on the tarmac whilst the customs officer decided whether or not he wanted to open the doors of the plane! After not sleeping at all the night before and not sleeping on the plane, this was the last thing I needed.

Heading to China

Now, we had been warned that few Chinese speak any English so this was the part I had been dreading, getting from Tianjin to Beijing, a distance of about 80 miles. We headed to the arrivals area to get a shuttle bus to the train station. As predicted, the counter selling tickets didn't speak any English so we headed outside hoping to see some westerners. Luckily, the bus was waiting and they were selling tickets right by it. We then had to buy train tickets at the station and again there were no signs in English so it was pot luck which queue I took. Dave managed to track an officer down that spoke some English and told him that I was in the wrong queue so finally managing to get to the correct queue, we bought our tickets. Then came the navigation of the platform area and navigation to our train. This was a complete mission, with us looking at our tickets and trying to match the Chinese symbols to the signs on the wall. We managed to get the train and it was the bullet train. We had paid an extra £3 and bagged the VIP section, a tiny compartment right behind the driver cab, and there was just a glass wall between you and the driver, pretty cool for our first time on it. We arrived in Beijing and went to find a taxi, only to find there was a queue that trailed the whole length of the station and curled back around on itself. This was unbelievable; we would have had to queue for hours to get a cab. Instead, we went out of the side exit and headed straight to a rouge taxi that was parked outside the station. We broke all our rules with taxis and booked him at a ridiculously over priced fare, but that was worth it to avoid queuing for the rest of my life.

VIP cab behind the driver

We headed out to Tiananmen Square on our first day and it was manic. There were hundreds of thousands of people all filling the square. It was hot and the sky was cloudless so we were sweating the whole time. Tiananmen Square is huge, over 1km long from end to end. We wanted to visit the Forbidden City and thought we had found it, only to realise we were actually next-door at the Beijing Cultural Palace. How we managed to get the wrong place is a mystery; we can be shockingly bad travellers sometimes. So day one was not very successful.

Beijing Cultural Palace

By day two, we decided to take a day off because we were still hanging from the journey from Kuala Lumpur. We managed a lie in and had a lazy day watching movies and generally recovering. The Great Wall of China was next on the list and this is something I have always wanted to do since being a kid. We took the tube and it was the early morning rush hour. You have NEVER seen anything like it. It makes the London rush hour on the tube seem like nothing. 3 trains went by that were packed and we managed to squeeze on the 4th one. At Beijing North Station, it was a repeat of being at Tianjin Station; no signs in English and not one of the Chinese locals we asked spoke it either. One of the guards very vaguely pointed us to the police box just outside the station and there we bought our tickets to the Great Wall, quite an odd place to sell the tickets. Plus, the timetable we had worked from online seemed to mean nothing as we had a 2-hour wait for our train!

Dave and me on the Great Wall

The trains are a complete free for all with regards to seats, you have to literally fight your way past everyone or you will get left behind. Any morals us westerners have with regards to queuing ethics are completely worthless here; you have to act as the locals do. Little old peasant women seem to enjoy pushing me out of their way so a quick elbow in the face seems to stop them in their tracks.

When we arrived at the Great Wall it was spectacular, just as you see it in the pictures winding its way up the steep mountains. We walked for about an hour to the top of the mountain before turning round and heading back down. The wall goes on as far as the eye can see and you could probably spend a few days just exploring this area alone. As with all things in China, the wall was packed with people, but oddly enough everyone seemed to follow each other on the wall and head in the same direction, so Dave and me headed in the opposite direction to avoid the crowds. This massively paid off as the walk was relaxed and we managed to get some fantastic pictures. Well, I say relaxed; the Great Wall is actually so steep in some places you are practically crawling up the thing! All in all it was a great experience and worth the journey to get to it.

Heading back into Beijing was just the same as leaving, hectic, pushing and fighting on the station platform to get in the carriage and grab a seat. It has to be said it is great being tall; pushing people out of the way is a doddle!

Scorpions on Wangfujing Street

Finally, 3rd time around we successfully made it to the Forbidden City and managed to get the right location! It was super hot and I don't think I have ever sweat so much just from walking around. The Forbidden City is a huge complex and is about 600 years old. On paper, it sounded really interesting but in reality it was just a lot of large court yards with huge gates over looking them. I think the heat probably played a huge part in us turning around after a few hours and heading back. Later that night, for a reason I don't know, I decided to head to Wangfujing Street and eat some scorpions! The scorpions are alive on a stick and are wriggling around. If you bang the counter they are on, they all start writhing around in tandem; it wasn't very nice to watch! You pay the guy behind the counter and he will dip them in hot oil and season them and away you go! They actually don't taste that bad, they are crispy and have a savoury taste. I think I'll get myself on next years I'm a Celebrity!

Bullet Train

The time came to leave Beijing and head to Nanjing. This meant another assault on the Chinese Railways. As predicted there were no English signs so I was queuing blind with all the locals battling each other to push in. When I finally made it to the counter I found out that all the standard seats had gone and I had to book first class, a total of about £150 for the 2 of us! Ouch. The beauty of the Bullet Train is that we covered over 1000km's in 4 hours.

So here we are in Nanjing and there is nothing here! It has rained constantly since we got here and it is grey and misty. It is like being back in the UK in summer. There are very few attractions to see and it is just full of knock off electrical stores. It's not really somewhere I would recommend to anyone. Still, we are making the most of being here and seeing part of the real China.

The Great Wall of China

After Nanjing we will be heading to Shanghai and hopefully there will be a bit more on offer for us there. We were going to head further south into China for the remainder of July, however the language barrier is huge in big the cities, so it will be almost impossible to communicate in the smaller towns. Therefore it looks like we are heading back to Bangkok. After that we should be heading to Sri Lanka and it looks like home is calling ever louder now. But you know what? After spending almost a year on the road, I think I'm almost ready to think about getting back to a bit of normality and some of my creature comforts.

On that note, it's bye for now!