Beijing, China
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2008
1
17
18
Trip End
Jul 06, 2008
Beijing,
Beijing,
China
Monday, April 28, 2008
First I should probably let you all know that you won't be seeing me back in England on the 6th July now. I have extended my trip and I will now be returning on Thursday 25th September! If I don't run out of money before then! I am currently working at a hostel in Byron Bay driving the minibus from the hostel to the bus stop. I get free accomodation for doing this so that is cool.
Sorry about my slackness in updating the blogs. I have a lot of sitting around now because of the bus driving job so hopefully I should be able to bring you up to date soon.
Anyways, this is my blog for my last 5 days in China and Asia before I left for Australia. It's going to be a big one as a lot happened in the 5 days that I was there (apart from the one hungover day!).
Thursday 24th April
We pulled into Beijing Zi train station at 7:30am. One problem I have with Chinese people is that they have no concept of queuing to get in/out of anywhere - they will just barge past you - so a few thousand people trying to get out of three gates at the station exit was a bit of a free-for-all! After shouting at a man for pushing a woman with a tiny baby and holding him back so she could get out the gate I sat down to evaluate where I needed to be going. I hadn't realised until this point quite how massive Beijing is. I decided to jump right in at the deep end and get on the Metro underground train at a time which would be rush hour in London! After stopping for some food from a street stall which was noodles and onion in a pancake - a bizarre but delicious combination - I jumped on the subway train. One trip cost the equivalent of 14p. A bit cheaper than London then! After two trains I started to walk along the road on the map that lead to my hostel. It was only a centimetre on the map but it took me 20 minutes to get there. I arrived at the place on the map where my chosen hostel, Red Lantern House, was but there was a slight problem ... It wasn't there! After half an hour of wandering around confused as hell I ended up back at the main road where I found a big map of the area which actually had English on it. It turns out that the alley that my hostel was on was actually a few hundred metres up the road. Crappy Rough Guide book! I eventually found the place and enquired about the price of a single room. It turned out it was more than I had paid for a really nice hotel in Xi'an. I was just about to opt for a bed in a dorm when an Austrian guy standing next to me, Gerd, said that his friend had just checked out and asked if I wanted to go halves on room with him. He seemed like a nice guy so I agreed. I sat down for a coffee with him and it turns out that he has visited almost every country in the world. After China he was going to North Korea and then Pakistan! I then set out to explore the city. First I went to Beihai Park. Again, it looked like a short distance on the map, but it turned out to be a couple of kilometres away. As my Rough Guide pages were photocopied it meant that I couldn't see the scale on the map! The park was really nice. It was strange to find such peaceful place in such a huge city. I went in throught the North Gate and walked through an area with loads of bridges crossing over ponds that had hundreds of goldfish in that you could feed. When you dropped in some food it was an absolute frenzy, with fish leaping out of the water on top of each other to get the food! I have a video. After walking through a maze of boring Pagoda buildings I reached the huge lake which covers about 70% of the park. I read in my book that the lake was completely man-made and that rather than removing all of the excavated earth they just piled it up in the middle to make an island and then built a temple on it. I walked down the west side of the lake and then around the outside of the Forbidden City until I reached Tian'anmen Square which is a truely spectacular sight. I crossed over the road where the Chinese student in the 1980's stood in front of the line of tanks and stopped them. It isn't actually a square anyway. It's blatently a rectangle shape. But that's just me being a Maths nerd! On the north edge of the square is the Forbidden City, on the east is the Museum of Chinese History & the Museum of the Revolution (both were closed in preparation for the Olympics), on the south is Zhenyangmen (the South Gate), on the west is the huge Great Hall of the People and right in the centre is the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall which displays the pickled corpse of Mao Zedong. Apparently Mao actually wanted to be cremated but his successor decided to go against his wishes and put his body on display to state his authority. At the South Gate two Chinese guys called out to me and started chatting. I was a bit suspicious at first but it turns out that they were just two nice guys who wanted to practice their English. Dongfi was studying English at University and Mi was studying Chinese history. I told them that I was on my way to the Forbidden City so they walked with me the whole way, showed me where to buy a ticket, waited for me and then walked me to the entrance. Mi was telling me facts the entire way. The most impressive being that the Emporers that lived inside the City had almost 10,000 concubines (mistresses) to choose from! Whenever he was feeling a bit randy he would choose one by picking a tablet bearing their name from a pile on a silver tray. Just outside the ticket office a Chinese guy came over with a sign that said something like: 'Watch out for people posing as students from Beijing University. They will take you to a tea house and charge you a lot of money'. The two guys got really offended and started shouting at the man in Chinese! The City itself is absolutely massive - 100 hectares, which I think is 1,000,000 square metres. It was cool to be in a place where 500 years worth of Emporers lived, and rarely left, but I got bored really quickly. It is a maze of 800 buildings that all look pretty similar - red with gold trim and a fancy multicoloured roof - and have names like the Palace of Heavenly Purity, Palace of Earthly Tranquility, Palace of Eternal Spring, etc. They all contain various artifacts such as paintings, jewels and ornaments. After a couple of hours of pottering around it suddenly started hammering it down and I was in my shorts and had no coat! I managed to weave my way through the complex - walking under ledges and cutting through buildings - without getting too wet though. I had been walking around all day and by the time I eventually trudged back into the hostel my legs were knackered! I sat with Gerd and a big 50-something year old Polish guy and had some beers and a pizza for a few hours before heading out to explore the bars around Houhai Lake. At about 11pm I left and soon reached the lake. The lake was lined with neon-lit bars, similar to Bar Street in Xi'an. I got dragged into one place on the far side of the lake by a woman who was standing outisde it on the street. I sat down at a table and ordered a drink. A few minutes later I was joined by a stunning, huge-breasted Chinese woman. I thought it was a little bit too good to be true ... and I was right! Basically I had been dragged into a brothel of sorts. The women in there expect you to buy them drinks and then they offer you sex for money! I quickly made my excuses and left. I realised on the way back around that most of the bars around the lake are so-called 'lady bars'. I walked back to the Red Lantern wondering if Gerd knew about the bars in this area before I left and neglected to tell me!
Friday 25th April
I heard Gerd leave the room at 7am before I had the chance to find out if he had stitched me up the night before by sending me to the lady bars. I immediately fell back to sleep and woke up again at 11.30. I packed up my things and moved into one of the dorm rooms. After a late breakfast I set out to find the Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube (the swimming pool). I swear the woman at reception told me that the bus number was 49 but at the bus stops I couldn't find that one, only 409. I decided to chance it and jump on that one. I had no idea how far away the stadium was though. After 10 minutes or so I caught a glimpse of the top of the Birds Nest (the stadiums nickname). It looked amazing. The bus then turned and started heading away from it so I jumped off and started walking towards it. After 20 minutes I managed to get pretty close. I asked a Chinese guy if he could take a picture of me in front of it and it turns out he spoke English. The pictures weren't that great though as there was six lanes of motorway traffic between me and the stadium! I asked Alan (the Chinese guy) and his brother how I could get closer and they told me I could tag along with them. To get closer you had to walk quite a distance down a path parallel to the motorway, cross over it on a bridge (where you got a good view of the hockey stadium) and then walk down the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway! I heard that you were able to go inside but when we got there it turned out that you couldn't. We got some good photos of the stadium, pool and Olympic village. Alan invited me to join them on a trip to the Summer Palace but I decided to try to get a better view of the stadium from the other side. I managed to get some better pictures from the front entrance as you could get a lot nearer, but the security guards stopped you from getting any closer. Back at the hostel I got chatting to a couple of Danish guys, Mads and Severin, and met my two room mates. One was the big Polish guy that I met the day before and the other was a German guy that had no interest in chatting at all. I had a brief chat with the Polish guy and told him about my adventures in the lady bar the night before and he asked me where it was! The Danish guys booked onto the same tour to the Great Wall at Mutianyu as me in the morning. We got some food and beer and sat around chatting before heading to the other Red Lantern building as they had sofas and a huge flatscreen TV. Inside we got chatting to a big group of Architecture students from Oslo University who were on a trip. They went to bed pretty early so we watched 'There Will Be Blood' before heading back.
Saturday 26th April
In the hostel we met an English guy, Jose, who was staying in the third Red Lantern building, and an 50ish year old German lady, Heike. They were both coming with us on our trip to Mutianyu. Before we left at 8am the Polish guy in my room told me that he had gone to the lady bar that I had told him about! On the minibus we met two American brothers, Eric and Kevin, and a Canadian couple whose names I can't remember. The trip to the wall ended up taking 3 hours thanks to a major traffic jam that we got stuck in on our way out of the centre of Beijing. The wall was ridiculously touristy. The path up to the entrance was lined with stalls selling tacky souvenirs. We had the option of taking the cable car up but we decided that we would walk up. The view from the first tower was amazing as you could see the whole of the reconstucted section which was a few kilometres long. You could also see some ruins of the original wall running up the mountains in the surrounding area. I was disappointed to find out though that the reconstructed section of the wall was completed in 1986, using new materials, so I was actually older than the section of wall that we were walking on. It was still an incredible sight. We started at tower 10 and made our way along to tower 20, which was a few kilometres along the wall. It was a difficult walk as the wall stays at a consistent we height as it stretches along the mountains, meaning that you are constantly going down and uphill. We reached tower 20 after an hour and a half which is the heighest part of the reconstructed wall. The views were even better than before. We had to walk back down for 10 minutes or so before having the choice of going back down on the chairlift or (you won't believe this)... a massive winding slide on a cart! Obviously, us 6 guys chose the slide whilst our guide, Alice, took the chairlift. The carts were awesome fun but I had a woman and her 10 year old kid directly in front of me. At one point the woman stopped her cart to take a picture of her kid, which meant that I had to slam on my brake so that I didn't go into the back of him. Jose, however, did not see me stop because of the blind corner and flew into the back of me at full speed which hurt his foot and my back. Towards the bottom the f***ing stupid woman slammed on her brake for no reason. Her kid flew into the back of her, I hit the kid and Jose piled into the back of me! Mads reached the bottom before us and took an amazing photo a split second before impact. If you zoomed in you could see the look on my face - bracing myself for impact! After the ride we had lunch before heading back. The return journey was even longer thanks to a few car accidents on the motorway. Back at the hostel we drank for a few hours whilst planning our boys night out. We met another English guy, Tom, in the hostel and invited him along with us. Heike really got on everyone's nerves as she kept on talking over everyone when we were in the middle of a conversation. We decided to try a place called 'The Boat' which, funnily enough, was on a boat in the river in the Sanlitun area of Beijing. We got the receptionist to write down the name and address of the bar in Chinese and we drew a picture of a boat next to it. We handed the piece of paper to the taxi driver but he still had no idea where he was going. I tried Koen's tactic of repeating 'Sanlitun Lu' (the name of the street) in as many different tones as possible but the taxi driver looked at me with a confused look on his face each time. We eventually got out and decided to walk and ask directions on the way. The bar was pretty cool but it was expensive and full of Westerners. There was a bar upstairs and a nightclub downstairs. We stayed for a couple of drinks and the decided to walk down Sanlitun Lu which was very similar to Houhai Lake with the neon-signed bars, but without the hookers. We got chatting to three Norwegian girls who took us to a cool bar with cheap beer. We stayed for a couple of hours and then Tom went home (because he had an early flight in the morning) and the remaining four of us jumped in a cab to a club called Babyface. It was a really cool club with good music but the dance floor was tiny. There was a super hot, but ridiculously drunk, Chinese girl that kept on coming over to dance with us even though she could barely stand up. Every now and again a big guy, that we reckon was her brother, would come over and carry her away and sit her on a stall! The next time I was at the bar a Chinese girl invited me over to sit at her table with her friends. She was the only one who could speak English but all of her male friends were really happy and enthusiastic and shook my hand. After 20 minutes Mads, Severin and Jose decided that they wanted to go so they dragged me away into a taxi to another club, Mix. It was actually a lot better. The dance floor was huge, the drinks were cheaper and the music was better. Mads was really drunk and turned up on the dancing with a fully bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky that he had found on a table on the edge of the dance floor! We ended up just passing it around between us and drinking it straight from the bottle. At around 4am, in a very drunken state, I went to find the toilets but somehow ended up outside. As soon as the air hit me I felt completely hammered so I headed back inside to tell the guys that I was leaving. Jose was asleep on one of the sofas and the Danes were dancing still so I went to get a taxi by myself. I remember showing the card for the hostel to a few drivers and being turned away, but I don't remember getting in one! The next thing I knew I was standing outside the hostel and it was light outside!!!
Sunday 27th April
I woke up at 11am feeling like I was close to death and in desperate need of the toilet. As I climbed down the ladder from my bunk bed with my eyes still half closed I heard someone shout "Good morning Matt". As I turned around I was greeted by the beautiful sight of the fat Polish guy sitting on his bed using his laptop in a tiny pair of underpants! That's not what I needed to see when I was already trying not to be sick! I ended up going back to bed for a couple of hours. When I got up again Heike was sitting in the courtyard and I had to endure an hour of her banging on about this, that and the other before I was saved when Mads eventually got out of bed. We had breakfast, I changed rooms and then we had a sluggish walk around the east side of Beihai Park. We kicked the feather for a bit (I don't really know how to explain this thing. I brought it in Vietnam. It is basically a spring with plastic bits and feather coming out of the top of it which you can do keepy-uppies with) until I bruised my bare foot with it and then decided that we both wanted a Pizza Hut. It was a great idea in theory. The problem was that it was a 4km walk away and we both had stonking hangovers. The walk took us past the hostel again so we went back in to wake Severin up. It was 5pm at this point! He wasn't up for it so we went alone. The pizza was amazing but the walk back was even more of a struggle! Mads went to meet Severin and I went back to our building as Gerd was coming back and I was supposed to be sharing a room with him. We shared our stories from the last couple of days and I quizzed him to see if he had known about the lady bars around Houhai Lake. He said he hadn't and looked quite shocked so I guessed he was telling the truth. After our catch up I went to meet the guys in the other building to watch some films. A few beers helped get rid of the hangover and we ended up watching three films back to back - 'This Is England', 'Cloverfield' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2' with an American guy that was doing a bit of work for the website of the hostel. He worked 10 hours a week teaching English and said that he earned enough money to pay for his appartment, University course and live comfortably. I think I might be moving to Beijing!
Monday 28th April
As it was my last day in China before I flew to Australia I had to get up early to pack my things and check out of the hostel. I still had a few places I wanted to see so I got a bus to the Temple of Heaven. The temple buildings we scattered around an absolutely massive, peaceful park. I wasn't particularly bothered about the buildings as they looked exactly the same as the other hundred that I had seen all over Asia, but the park was really nice just to sit and chill out in. I was hugely amused by a story I read in my 'Rough Guide' book about the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests - one of the temple buildings in the park: "The original building was destroyed by lightning in 1889. The official explanation for this appalling omen was that it was divine punishment meted out on a sacreligious caterpillar, which was on the point of reaching the golden ball on the hall's apex when the lightning struck. Thirty-two court dignitaries were executed for allow this to happen"! I explored the area for a couple of hours before heading to the metro to get a train to the Summer Palace. On the way to the station I bumped into Chris and Liam in a tiny hutong (alley) just south of Tian'anmen Square, which is crazy seeing as how Beijing is bloody massive! By the time I got to the Summer Palace, which is just a huge park with various temple buildings in it like the Temple of Heaven, I only had an hour to look around which was nowhere near enough time. The place is huge. There are hills, landscaped gardens and so many paths that you could walk around for 10 minutes without seeing another person. Back at the hostel I said goodbye to the Mads and Severin before getting a taxi to the airport. I flew from the new terminal built for the Olympics which was a spectacular sight as we approached it in the dark. I only got there an hour or so before the flights so I didn't have to wait long before we boarded the plane. I watched a couple of films before trying to sleep.
Comments
Worth waiting for
Brilliant blog...well worth waiting for.xxx