Anyhow, back to the trip. We flew to Beijing via Singapore. As we have a round the world ticket we are beholden to the airlines and their hubs.
We landed in Beijing and once we made it through immigration, which took a while as there were hoards of people. We grabbed our luggage and had to search for the guy with our name on a placard. As there were two of us, I searched the left, Ric searched the right. A good bit down we found our guy who speaks no English.
We got into his car and headed for the hotel we booked online. The cleanliness was a vast difference to India and Nepal. We arrived to the hotel where they also spoke little English and really weren't overly helpful. Our room however was fabulous and clean with a huge bed. Of course the only English channel on tv is the news channel, which repeats every hour.
So we are in Beijing, Ric's mission is get a train to Lhasa. My mission is to visit a few of the historical sites: summer palace, tianamen square, forbidden city and the great wall. Most importantly to do so at our leisure.
Having done such a world wind two week tour we are absolutely exhausted. Each morning we sleep in until five minutes before they stop serving breakfast which is ten. Then we change the plans we made the night before as we are now late. So by about noon we stroll out enroute to one monument or the other. We have learned how to barter, basically reduce by 70% and stick to it. Then walk away and they come after you with a reasonable price.
In India Ric couldn't wait for chi exes food. His mind was quickly changed when menu after menu was difficult, but mainly had innards of fish...??? They seem to love sea cucumber for some reason. By day two we figured things out, the metro, the bartering, the right times to saunter through the sites.... The next day we aim to visit The Great Wall. We must also check out of our comfy hotel and check into Leo hostel. Quite the contrast, but we figured as they are booking our Lhasa trip and getting our soft sleeper train tickets, if we are there, it is less likely that we will be shafted...we hope!
The great wall
Up early, no breakfast. Ric is brave doing is expedition with me. Metro to the train station. Find the ticket booth and wait and wait and wait. Ask in pigeon Chinese where the ticket booth to Badaling is.ahhh, of course it is two lines to the left and isn't moving. So bag this and we hop on the metro to the bust station. The buses leave every 10 minutes. Just get the 919. Easy enough. Find the 919 stickers. Must be right, there are other foreigners waiting. Chinese guy baks at us to move further down for 919. So off we go like a herd of cattle. Finally we see a slew of 919 buses. We all line up and try to get on one Nd the conductress barks at us 877. We all say no919 she says 877. There are now about 15 of us. We are now comrades in arms who don't want to get shafted. So we all pay and board the bus. Then Our trustee hong kong lady who thankfully speaks English and mandarin, says that yes we should get on the 877. So we all sheepishly bundle off the. Us, bit not with out getting our refund. Ha, thatwill teach them to mess with a group of foreigners. So we all lined up for the 877.
The ride was comfortable enough, all instructions were in Chinese, hing kong lady helped us again. When we got off the bus she have us her card, she is actually a travel agent back in hong kong. She is on holiday with her family of about ten. It hS taken them three days to finally get to the wall. So we ate lucky on our first try at using the local transport.
I am quite sure Ric mentioned the stats of the wall. I was upset with the wee beautiful bears that they have in very poor conditions. You can throw food form the, for a price. Ric of course through and apple and was approached by the bear keeper to pAy. Ric played dumb foreigner and showed his credit card. I eventually walked away and so did Ric. We the went to booth further upmand paid cash for our entrance to the wall. We went to the furtherest point so that we could walk up to the top. I had a crazy notion of wanting to do hAlf the great wall marathon. Fortunately it already passed. I was wondering why people were holding onto the side railings further up. Well I eventually found out why. These guys were crazy. It is so steep at some points, that if you don't hold on you will slide back down, literally.
We took each bit, flight by flight. This included resting in between. My thighs muscles were burning. But it felt good as we have only been walking pretty much as our exercise recently. Not that great as seasoned "triathletes".
We clearly went up the part that guides told everyone else not to take. But we reached the top ninteless to a trapse of people. I got out the Grenadian flag. This guy and his wife wanted pictures with us the. Asked the country name. Of course their expressions were completely blank. We are used to this at this point. At least in India if you mentioned the west indies they mentioned cricket. Here, not so much.
At the top, we became kids again and ran up and down the slighted slopes,using the downward momentum to get us up the slopes. We were naigh and took the slide car down. Think of a very old, slow ride at an old amusement park. We got down and cued up for the 877 back. We slept most of the hour and half ride back. Oh and my breakfast consisted of ritz crackers and a whole roasted sweet potato. I really didn't feel like some random street meat.
We made it back to cheng dong and mozied down the street where we found a dim sum restaurant. We ordered shrimp dim sum and sautéed snow peas. Perfect end tom out trek. We then went down to Helens restAurant across from Leo hostel for lemon and sugar crepes and some rum and vodka.
We should be leaving the next evening for Lhasa on the train if we get the train tickets. I got the call from " noodles".yes we got the soft sleeper,bottom bunks and in the same cabin. Score. We are off.
We spent pretty much the whole day preparing for the train trip then chilled out and watched the holy grail, a month python production. We hopped in a taxi at the end of our street and headed to Beijing west railway station. It was like an airport. As the information is also in English it made this part of the trip a doddle.
Once on the train with our luggage stowed, we settled in for a 44 hour train journey. FYI,no one speaks English, thankfully we have our china guidebook and a sheet of phrases.the most important is for Ric. He is deathly allergic to mushroom. A waitress kindly wrote it chinese characters for us. Literally a life saver!
Ais
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