Beijing
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
18
63
Trip End
Ongoing
Beijing,
China
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
On the recommendation of other travellers in Xian, we booked into a little hostel north of the city center called the Red Lantern. After a lengthy taxi ride from the train station, the taxi driver eventually located the hostel tucked away down a Hutong (narrow lane) with no signs or advertising. We were wondering how anyone ever found this place, that had such good things said about it.
We settled in to our room, and noticed there was fresh espresso coffee available, internet, big home theater in the common room, nice courtyard etc. We had to pick up our tickets for the train from an agent in town. We set off to find the subway, and out on the main road found Gavin and Lucy (British couple we had met) walking the street looking for the hostel. They had departed from the same hostel in Xian as us, shared the same train, and 3 hours after we had arrived, they were still unable to find the hostel. It sure was hard to find!!!
Later we asked the hostel owners why they did not have signs etc, and the answer was the govt had not approved their application yet.
We spent most of our time in Beijing travelling. We wished to see the famous sights, such as the Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, Summer Palace amongst others. But every excursion took 1-3 hours of travelling!! The city is huge and sprawling, and the traffic is gridlocked. The subway serves a small amount of the city, but often a bus ride is needed, and they can take a long time.
The major attractions in Beijing were mainly palace/temple related, and were absolutely crowded with Chinese Tour groups with megaphones and flags. To me, they did detract from the experience a little, as we were forever competing for space to look and see all the features. Most of the features were buddas, so I was not too concerned about missing a few.
We took a day trip to see part of the Great Wall. There are many sections of the wall, and the ones closer to Beijing have more flags and megaphones on them. So we decided to head out further to a set of walls called Jinshanling and Simitai, where we could walk 12kms from one to the other. We suffered another typical chinese bus ride, where apart from the flat tyres and emergency toilet stops for upset western stomachs, I thought we were going to die in (another) road disaster. We seemed to be competing in some informal bus race, where we needed to overtake anthing and everything in our path to stay ahead of the other competing buses. We found closing our eyes the most comfortable way to travel. But we survived the bus ride, there and back, and the walk on the wall was absolutely amazing.
Probably due to our late arrival (flat tire) there were no others on the wall at all, just the 20 odd from our bus and local ex farmers whom were selling cold drinks/post cards etc. The wall was mostly unrenovated, built on a very jagged piece of mountain that required a lot of climbing up and over. We took a lot of photos, and finally had a chance to stretch our legs and do a good walk.
By the end of our 6 days in Beijing, we starting to learn our way around, found some very nice eateries, and had a lot of sights left to see. We were even fed for a couple nights by the family that ran the hostel, and their food bettered that we had eaten elsewhere. So it was with some sadness that we left Beijing, but both us looking foward to the next big leg of our adventure.
