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  Beijing, China
Friday, August 29, 2008

On the 29th of August we left Ulan Bataar at 8am, which we were really gutted about as we had had such a good time in mongolia. One of the blokes who worked in the hostel was an absolute gem, so Helen bought him a bottle of tiger beer (which he seemed to drink everyday!) which he was very happy with. In exchange he gave us a bag of fruit and a book for Helen to read which sums up the generosity of the mongolian people really. At the hostel, in the same room as us there was an irish girl, who we decided to tag along with once at the train station. It turns out it's her birthday today and she is in the same room as us in the train. Once we boarded the train we were soon joined by a mongolian lad called Tod, and strangely he was carrying this big birthday cake, Merlins eyes lit up nicely! It turns out that it was Tod's birthday today too! so there are 4 of us in this room on the train and 2 were having their birthdays.....great! So Merlin blew up some balloons that we had, which they loved!

Helen and a chinese lad who wanted her photo

The journey across Mongolia on the train was quite boring as far as the views were concerned, as we were travelling across the gobi so it was just flat for miles and miles. We did see some antelopes though! Our mongolian friend had a look through some of our photos that we had taken on our little trips around mongolia, and one of them in particular caught his eye. It was a picture of a white fox that we had seen. He couldn't believe it, as accoring to him, the majority of mongolians had never seen this fox as it is so rare! brilliant! We're in Mongolia for 4 weeks and we see one!!

We arrived at the Chinese border at about 8.30pm, and after all of the passports have been checked we sat on the train and were taken into this massive, massive changed due to the tracks being different widths in Mongolia and China. So, the train is lifted up on a huge lift where the  bogeys were changed, which only took  half an hour to do the whole train! The whole border process took about 5 hours, so at 12.30 midnight we put 23 candles on Tod's cake, turned off the lights and sang happy birthday to both of them! What better way to spend your birthday than in 'no mans land'!

We arrived in Beijing on the 30th of august at about 2.30pm

Merlin on top of a bridge in the summer palace

. So we said our good byes to the irish girl and decided to walk to the hostel as it was only about 30min walk away, 40mins later we were looking slightly lost and a young girl came up to us and asked  if we needed help,we told her "we are trying to find tiannmen square" she told us that it was 1hour in the direcrion we just came from! so off we trekked through the center of beijing getting the strangest looks from the locals.
As we were walking we both realised that it wasn't busy, smoggy or dirty.... we put it down to it being  saturday ?! The city was really clean and there wasn't as many people around either which was really unexpected seen as the olympics had just finished.

As we were walking along we got our first glimpse of the forbidden city which wetted our appetite! but with the heavy bags on our backs and blistering 30 + temperature we kept on walking. Eventually 3 hours later!!! we finally found our hostel which was on a busy little road in the old hutong area (the hutong streets are little alleways full of lots of little shops, which is how we imagined china to be). The hostel was brilliant, people were very friendly the rooms very clean so we were both very happy. As we are walking along the street, chinese people just stare at us constantly as we are 'so unusual', it's very annoying to begin with but after a while you just get used to being 'famous'

One of the many buildings in The Forbidden City

!

The next day we make our way through Tianamen square. This square is huge but seems so small when there are thousands of chines people everywhere. It was really busy. The centre of the square has Mao's Musoleum, which has Mao's dead body in there which they have pickled! So Helen joined this massive queue to get in, which suprisingly only took about 10 minutes to get to the front. You have to go through security checks before you can go in, no cameras,lighters, ciggarettes etc. The body it self just looked like wax work in the coffin, really surreal!

from here we went to the Forbidden city which was just beautiful. Great buildings and so much history to them. It took about 4 hours for us to walk around, it is huge,  and we didn't even see half of the buildings! From the forbidden city we head out through the North gate and cross the road to a park. When we entered we headed straight up to a pavillion which was a small climb to the top of the hill. From there you had a panoramic view of the city. At the top we could hear a lot of music coming from somewhere but couldn't workout where it was coming from. So we headed bck down the hill to walk around the rest of the park that was full of flowers and bamboo, it was really pretty. As we are walking we can still hear the singing and all of a sudden we start seeing small groups of people all huddled together singing, or playing instruments, and some even were doing karaoke in the park!

Us on top of the great wall

! It was great to see, all it takes is one perso to start singing then other random members of the public start to sing with them! There was an even bigger noise coming from up the hill slightly,so we had a wonder up only to find about 40 or so people singing as a choir! the sound was amazing!

The next day we went to the summer palace.we jumped on a public bus that cost 16p each to do an hours journey! bargain. It was another boiling hot and humid day. we enter through the gates only to be met with an amazing view through the trees of an huge lake, bridges and old chinese buildings. We walked around the lake which took about 6 hours! and then made our way up an unbelievably steep hill to get to a massive buddha pavillion. Inside the pavillion was  large statue that hadn't been touched for a long time,and it just looked great sitting in this old building.

On the 3rd of September we arranged to go to the great wall with a tour company that cost 8 pounds each.Along the way the bus stopped at a huge warehouse type building that had loads of buses outside. Turns out we have to go in there to buy little trinkets! such a con! We had a quick look around but didn't buy anything.Also at this stop we realise our 8 pound ticket included lunch. so we are ushered upstairs to a large restaurant were we sit with 2 girls from te Uk, an american lady, and 3 lads from Japan. On the table, 8 different dishes are put in front of us,and the only thing we recognised was the fish in one piece in the middle of the table!! It was a strange lunch to say the least!

After our little detour we eventually get to the great wall, where the tour guide tells us that we only have 2 hours!! so annoyig, we spend an hour at a tacky shop and then only get 2 hours at the great wall?! So sad we don't have much time the guide tells us that we must purchase a ticket that will take us to the top of the wall and back, she was adamant that we couldn't walk as there was not enough time!

We buy the extra tickts and make our way to what we thought was a cable car to the top..... oh no no no...... this was a tobbogan ride! So we come to the historic great wall.... and go upon this silly slide!! another surreal moment on our trip!! eventually  we get to the wall,and make our way to the highest point. The wall is so steep in places that we weren't expecting it. People were really struggling to walk along some sections. Around the wall were beautiful mountains covered in green trees, as well as a view of the wall flowing over the mountains. we managed to get to the highest part of the wall, after 3 photos with chinese people (as we were sooooo special!). Our 2 hours were quickly coming to an end so we rushed back to the tobboggan ride (!) and started down the side of the hill. It was  really good fun actually and left us smiling for a short while afterwards!

Our final day in Beijing was spent at the olympic stadium.  We arrived there at about 11am after jumping on a bus. There were people selling many counterfit olympic shirts, keyrings etc. Helen managed to buy an olympic shirt for 60 yuan, when the price he asked for was 300! so not too bad! After wondering around taking pictures of the birds nest, we decide to catch the bus back to the shopping area near our hostel.So we stood at the bus stop ....... for an hour!!! Not a single bus came along. All of a sudden there were  bus loads of police being dropped off at the main stadium gate. Then 20 or so buses full of volunteers in olympic out fits got off the bus. It turns out that they were having a practice run through of the opening ceremony for the paralympics, and all of the public buses had been comandeered. All of a sudden we have to walk about 1 mile to get to the next street to catch the bus! After walking for about 30 minutes in a random direction, we stop to look in this shop that randomly had a Formula one car inside . So we spend time chatting to the shop people and looking at the latest gadgets, then leave. As we came out of the shop the whole place was desserted, no cars or people just us and police!! About 8 policemen came up to us and asked for our olympic passes (which of course we didn't have)and they couldn't understand how we managed to get into the exclusion zone around the stadium!! So after they checked our passports and visas they told us to catch a taxi..... Which we did.. back to the hostel for some much needed rest!

That night we met up with a lady who we met in Mongolia a few weeks earlier. we walked around  the little side streets and then had dinner at this massive restaurant that was full of people that had arrived for the  olympics.

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