Beijing

Trip Start Aug 24, 2007

Trip End Feb 26, 2008

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Flag of China Beijing, China
Monday, November 5, 2007

A train had been booked from UlaanBaatar to Beijing but in the loose sense of the word. In fact when we had booked the train 3 weeks ago, that was not in fact true at all. The guy who had booked was quite reluctant to commit to price or how we were actually going to get on this train but assured us we definitely would. With my most suspicious mind, I knew there was something going on, but what could we do...we needed to get to China before our visas expired. We were to meet him the next morning at 6am to go down to the Rail Ticket Office to try and get on a train, which we didn't seem to be able to get tickets for - Hmmmmm

When we got there, amazingly there were still no tickets. A quick change of plan - with an hour to go before the train arrived, we were to go down to the train station...still no tickets. When we got there, a quick phone call was made and the next thing, a man with a briefcase called "silver fox" arrived

Beijing

. Money was exchanged (only dollars and about $20 more than the tickets price) but we now appeared to have tickets. We were told to wait in the train station restaurant until called. The train arrived at 7:30am and was due to leave at 8:10am. At 8am we were still waiting. At 8:10 we were still waiting. Suddenly the "silver fox" told us to grab our bags and run...We got to the train where numerous dollars were exchanged with a train conductor, and the next thing we were in our cabin and the train was off. Who would have thought there would be a mafia even for train tickets!

Beijing is crazy and busy. Millions of people, spitting everywhere and cars, bikes and pedestrians walking and driving as if they are only ones on the road. All of a sudden the drivers in South Africa look conservative and very law-abiding! There is so much to do and see and we only had 5 days.

We thought after mutton, mutton, mutton, it seemed essential to indulge ourselves with some Chinese cuisine and what better way than to start with a street food market:
It was all about skewers: with cicadas, deer, balls, stomach, sea-horses, and well pretty much everything else you can think of.

I was worried that the Great Wall would in fact turn out to be not so Great, but I was so wrong. We decided to do the non-touristy route from Jinshanling to Simitai. It involved a lot of walking, but was amazing. It blows the mind to think that these guys built this wall which is all in all 5000 km long all built to keep our Mongolian friend Chengis Khan out.

Beijing

Cycling in London is dangerous; but cycling in Beijing is just stupid - so we set off at 6am to watch the flag pole raising ceremony at sun rise in Tianaman square on bikes. It would have been good except for the thousands of other tourists with the same idea.

The Forbidden city was huge and impressive and you certainly realized how well the Emporers and Empresses treated themselves during the various dynasties.

Chinese Opera is to be avoided at all costs. It doesn't look good, sound good or make you feel good; so it has been decided that will be our first and last performance.

The Summer Palace is where the Royalty went to escape the heat, and where I would choose to go whether it was hot or cold! The buildings and temples were amazing and we spent the whole day wondering around.

The next day was time for Dicky to head off to Shanghai and then back to Cayman; so we decided to have a little farewell celebration! We headed off to the Hutong district which are the real old city back streets. There are bars everywhere...so it was not difficult to find plenty of beers. It was a great night which ended with a taxi ride with a guy who really didn't know where we lived but desperately wanted to get rid of us!

Before heading off to Datong the next day we also went along to see the Olympic stadium, which although we couldn't get anywhere close looks very impressive and easy on the eye.