Photos can be seen here
Thursday – The next day we did not do a lot, I went to the gym in the afternoon with Weh and had a shave which was refreshing. Then we stocked up on some of the food we would need for our 28 hour train trip on Friday. Friday came and we slept in, not dangerously but probably about 30mins to long so it was a bit of a rush, we made it to the station, then had a little trouble finding the train and our carriage. The plan was to upgrade to a sleeper after a few stops and then have a snooze.
Boy were we in for a shock, the train was sweltering, we were in hard seats. Picture a one level train carriage full of seats facing each other, 6 on one side of the isle and four on the other. Then picture about 2 people and all their luggage standing between these seats. This was frustrating as I was in an aisle seat (something I soon rectified). When we boarded we found our seats but although they were consecutive tickets they were on opposite windows. Thinking we were going to get upgraded to a sleeper we sat together and didn’t ask others to move. When it became apparent that we were not going to get upgraded we shifted the two girls who had good ‘the slightest possibility of sleep’ seats on the windows with a table in front to put your head. They were not to happy but thems the blows.
We eventually arrived about 4pm the next day and found a great hotel for 40 Yuan! This was a real bargain with one shower and toilet (same room) that was shared with about 20 rooms. To get hot water you had to plug the hot water heater into a power board that was falling apart and rested under the shower!
Photos of the Great Wall can be seen here
Well I woke around 9 (probably a little late for what I was trying to do) and had breakfast of a big omelet. Then it was off to the wall, the section that I was hoping to do was about 80km outside Beijing so it meant some fun travel on random buses. The first bus was a mini bus for a little over an hour where my legs didn’t fit in the seat (not that it would bother anyone else). When I alighted from this bus I caught a taxi the remaining 75km round trip and this was about $25 AUS. I eventually made it to a place called Jinshanling and was going to do a 10km section.
On the drive in it was amazing you could see remnants of the wall on most of the ridges alongside the road. One funny thing was after being in the car with the driver for about 20km he suddenly put on his seat belt then 300m later we went through a police checkpoint then he took it off again. You don’t realise how high up the wall is, to get to it from the car park would probably be about 50 vertical meters because it is built on the ridge. When i embarked in my thongs I was told you wont make it to Simitar(end of the walk) in thongs. Everyone was wearing massive hiking boots(and some with hiking poles) that weighed a tone and you could see them struggling. The thongs were fine I never missed a beat.
The wall is quite a hard walk because it follows the ridge all the way. You continually are climbing up a steep ascent just to go down a steep decent then do it all again. I don’t think the section was 10km because I Was worried I would not finish before dark and ended up finishing early. One of the highlights were the turrets, most of them you could not get up the top, but I managed to rock climb up one that had a great view. Someone had a shady pile of rocks to help.
Along the wall I was met an Australian couple so we all walked together and had a good time. At the end they were setting up for a vogue photo shoot so it was the perfect opportunity to strut some of our stuff.
Photos of Beijing can be seen here
Arriving in Beijing was a relief although I had no idea which of the 12 bus stations I was at and at 5am it is hard to find someone who speaks English to help you out! I jumped on a bus and managed to get someone to tell me to get off where a subway station was (after 20 mins and going through about 8 people). The subway is a relief because the station names are in English and Chinese. My target destination was my friends station Wudaokou as I was staying at his house. I managed to get there by about 7:30 which was good, grabbed some breaky then gave him a call.
As we were leaving on Friday at midday and it was Tuesday it was straight into the sightseeing. After lunch i decided to go the Tiananmen square and the forbidden city. They are both huge, imagine a corridor about 700m wide about about 2km long and it is like that with Tiananmen Square in the south and the forbidden city taking up about 1.5km to the north. Check this map out. This is the center of Beijing and where most of the historic buildings from the Mao Dynasty are. Tiananmen square is bustling, there were people milling around everywhere pretty much all tourists because the only buildings around there are government buildings.
The forbidden city is a must when you visit Beijing it is a real highlight although they were restoring parts of it for the Olympic games. The forbidden city is a massive palace complex, but very different to European palaces, it is very grand but basic inside at the same time. So there is a lot of effort put into the buildings but It the contents were quite elegant and simple. This is much like other sights I have visited in Asia it is really quite minimalist in terms of possessions but the encasing is exquisite.
I walked in under the watchful eye of Chairman Mao through the gate of heavenly peace. I always have a smirk at he lovely names they have for monuments, highways and border crossings. I thought that this was the entrance but this is the outer gate and you have to walk through about three to get into ‘The Forbidden City’. The restorations took away from some of the grandeur with scaffolding encasing most of the high towers, however the buildings were still breathtaking. The attention to detail is amazing for something so big. Being on a tight schedule I wanted to climb a hill outside the north gate so that I could look over the city for sunset. This was well worth it and the view although hazy was amazing.
That night back at Weh’s place his flatmate was cooking some dinner, this was just what I needed a home cooked meal and the first one in a long long long time. Being from Israel he cooked some great Israeli food which really hit the spot. The next day it was off to the great wall so so what better way to prepare than on a full stomach.
