Beijing Bound

Our rather expensive train tickets made a lot of sense when we boarded the train that night. It was achingly new, and compared to everything I had been on quintessentially modern. We had tv screens at the bottom of our beds, not much use admittedly, and it was lovely and fresh and metallic and altogether quite exciting. We had a couple beers in the space age dining car before going to bed- this kind of train travel definitely makes the journey pleasant compared to a chore!

Beijing Beijiing, although I had been before I was excited.... Beijing! It is a city I like, and in comparison to Shanghai it manages to maintain a more personal feel to it somehow. Probably because of the large amount of hutongs which remain, small alley ways filled with tiny houses and some restaurants etc. We were staying at the P Loft hostel in one of the hutongs (yet again amazing hostel, sorry to sound like a broken record, This one was possibly the best of all!). Ditching our stuff and grabbing some breakfast we did what all self respecting tourists do and headed straight for Tiananmen Square. The sight of Mao's face looking down at you in this gargantuan square is always a bit spine chilling, especially as his mummified body is lying in state at a building in the middle of it, but not one to be missed. We stepped into Beihai Park for a bit and as it was Sunday many Chinese people were out and about, we saw orchestras, groups of people singing, karaoke, tai chi, aerobics, and dancing- which Faye joined in on! Very amusing. We wandered the streets (which were extremely hot!) and ate that evening at the night market, purveyor of all things weird and wonderful in China. Squid stick for me, tofu stick for Faye. As much as I am constantly telling her her vegetarian ways ensure she is missing out on various feasts she refuses to budge..! Just kidding.

The next day we explored the Forbidden City, where the Emperor and his hundreds of wives used to live, sealed off from the rest of the world. It is an interesting collection of buildings which I didn't mind revisiting, they have a certain magical quality I find. Probably the thought of all the intrigues which used to go on behind all the closed doors... We went to find our train tickets for the next day, and were disappointed to find out that they were sold out yet again. Bugger, the school holidays in China seemed to be making a big difference! So we had an extra day in Beijing after all. That night I managed to indulge in one of my favourite foods of all time, Beijing Duck pancakes. I am not ashamed to admit that since they haven't seem to have cottoned on to the whole quarter duck theory, I did put away half a duck on my own!! No wonder I am not losing any weight...

Faye went to the Great Wall the next day and I decided to explore a new part of Beijing I hadn't been to before, a section of hutongs with lots of little boutique shops and other cool things. Sometimes it is just nice to potter about on your own eh, and Beijing is a good place for pottering. Feeling like we had an extra day we decided it would be best to do what most English people do when given a bit more free time, and that's get pissed. The hostel we were staying in had a bar so we spent the night getting to know some of the guys and girls who worked there and owned it. It was pretty funny, one guy we were chatting to was introduced as “Er Ge”... I asked if this was “brother number 2” and she said no it is a different meaning, it's actually “Stupid Brother” because he's older than us and he is really stupid. Only in China could this be delivered with such ease I feel, but it was rather hilarious! He was a very nice guy though, and we had a good laugh. Not so good the next day though as we woke with a hangover of mass proportions and had to check out of our room... So I am ashamed to say the only thing we managed to do on our last day in Beijing was visit the Olympic Park as everything else involved too much effort, time indoors, concentration, or movement.!

Next Phase China!

The following Monday it was Adam's time to go home, how quickly a month goes when you come to the end of it! Fortunately there was something to take the edge of the rather sad atmosphere in the form of the high speed airport express which gets there in 8 mins and goes at 420km- even the Japanese were taking photos so it must be fast! That night I was demoted to a dorm for the first time, sharing a room with four strangers was a bit much after so much seeming luxury I can tell you! Perhaps I am feeling my age. Still, it was not for long that I was all alone as the next day my friend Faye arrived! Straight in from Phnom Penh.

It was Faye's first time in China so it was exciting to spend it with her. We spent a couple of days doing some more touristy things which I had managed to so far avoid such as the Yuyuan Gardens and the Propaganda Poster Museum. That was a definite highlight, made all the better by a hilarious chinese man who worked there who took much enjoyment out of wandering with you and giving the odd translation “That is you- English! That says English Dogs! Stamp on those English Dogs, Slave to America!” Was extremely funny at the time at any rate!

Having already been in Shanghai for about five days I was kind of ready to move on after a couple more, but we had a bit of a predicament as to what to do next. Long story, but we were planning on going to India afterwards in which case we needed to get a visa, in which case we needed to go to Beijing... But when? So for some unknown reason we seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time having lengthy debates catching up and discussing what we should do next. By the time we had made a decision, which was to go straight to Beijing and miss out anything in between, we went to the Station only to find out the trains were all sold out for the next day. Eek! This wasn't supposed to happen innit. Mistrusting my language skills we ended up going to a tourist office to see if they could help, but it turned out that I had been right... bollocks! We had already checked out of our hostel (and having already stayed there a total of 10 nights I didn't want to go back!) so we were in a dilemma. We managed to get an overnight train for the following evening and then figured we should try and find an internet cafe and find somewhere to stay... The way to find an internet cafe in China is to flag down the first young hip person you see (or in our case go in a mobile phone shop) and ask them where there is one, where they will no doubt direct you to an enormous smoky labryinth, and this was no exception. I have to say, you often find very helpful people in China. Ensconced in seat 670 of the net cafe the guy who worked there took a polite shine to us and let us use his phone for free, so we managed to find somewhere else to stay.. We found a cool hotel though which was perfect. Our last day in Shanghai was spent drawing in the park (kamp!) and then eating lots of cake. Nice!

Shanghai Blues

For me Shanghai has always been a place I wanted to go one day, full of mystery and exoticism! So I was very excited when we left Suzhou on the train to Shanghai, the maglev no less. Upon arrival it was obvious we were back in an enormous city, in many ways it feels like the biggest in China I have been to. We had been tempted to get a taxi but when they started saying really high prices we figured we should brave the tube. I had been a bit put off by the thought of getting on London Underground during rush hour, which would blatantly be impossible with a ruck sack, but we should have known better. The metro is of course pretty brand spanking new, with big carriages and the luxury of air con! It felt funny navigating the underground again, but was really easy.

We were staying in Pudong, on the west side of the River Nangpu, the part which is “new”, home to Shanghai's tallest buildings and other modern complexes. The hostel was yet again pretty cool, we were staying in a loft style room which was kind of like a mini maisonette, an upstairs floor and everything for £12 each, not bad for Shanghai?! That night we headed out over to the older part of Shanghai, the bit everyone has always heard of... I was eager to see the Bund at night, but sadly the entire stretch of it was blocked off and a massive construction site. This became a running theme! We wandered about for a couple of hours up and down the shopping mecca which is East Nanjing road and around all these parts looking for somewhere to eat which was proving sadly elusive, until we found “Grandma's Kitchen”. The cold beer went down a treat and we ordered a second one, not noticing that the full restaurant we had entered was slowly dwindling to hardly anyone. Until that is we were asked to pay and it was made pretty clear we'd have to leave, having barely finished our food! We checked the time wondering if we hadn't noticed it getting late, and saw it was...9.45pm! On a Thursday.! We then wandered the streets for a while, the bonus of which was seeing groups of older people all ballroom dancing on a street corner. Random. Having missed the last tube (at 11pm- again Shanghai was surprising me!) we eventually managed to get a taxi under the river and back home...

True to form of acting our age we spent the next day at a waterpark, figuring it was about time we got some water action in this oppressive heat, and it was actually lots of fun. Not much more to say, waterparks really are the same the world over! Main amusing point of the day was me falling upside down in the wave pool and having to get pulled up by two helpful Chinese men looking and feeling like a drowned rat.

Last year Shanghai's newest tallest building opened, and I have to say from the outside it looks very cool indeed. We decided to put on our glad rags and spent a delightful evening having cocktails and then dinner at the top. What more can I say other than it was an awesome view, and of course a delicious meal!

The next couple of days we spent wandering the streets of hot and sweaty Shanghai, through the French Concession, to the Shanghai Museum, and just generally pounding the pavement as much as we could. I have to admit, I was somewhat disappointed by Shanghai itself. I had looked forward to seeing it for such a long time, but in reality I found it sprawling, littered with enormous construction sites and generally less interesting than I had thought it would be. But hey, you can't have everything eh, and it just goes to show that things never turn out how you think they will....my absolute motto for travel in China!

Oh and Calamity Morton struck again... yet again proving he is the luckiest mofo in the world by leaving his credit card in a bank machine on Saturday night and managing to get it back from the bank when it opened on Monday morning!! Lucky lucky lucky.

Calamity Morton strikes again!

The next day, aching and walking like an elderly couple we caught an early morning bus to Suzhou. The hostel arranged for us to get a minibus to the bus, which we jumped onto very quickly as there is always a frenetic energy in these situations with people screaming ”get on get on!”. 20 minutes in Adam noticed his wallet was missing. Fck! It was one of those moments that you hope won't happen, but here we were... on a bus to Suzhou with no wallet. Now I have to give some background here in that at the beginning of the trip Adam had managed to somehow forget his pin number which had resulted in him being locked out of his account pretty much straight away.. so he had previous! I somehow managed to explain to the bus driver what had happened and ask him to phone the minibus.. amazingly he understood what I was yabbering on about and called the minibus, who had returned it to the hostel. The hostel girl then amazingly followed the bus route in a taxi and got the bus to wait!! It was a very slow twenty minutes sitting on that bus, but amazingly Adam had his wallet returned to him in person and we were soon on our merry way with not a negative word mentioned in our direction from the other passengers- extremely nice of them! I don't think you would get that on the National Express! Adam is a lucky Mofo.

We arrived in Suzhou in the early afternoon and made our way to yet another hostel which surpassed our expectations in its beauty, grandeur and helpfulness! Suzhou is cool, I have wanted to go there for a long time and it didn't disappoint. Again, it was much bigger than expected, a virtual city in its own right on the doorstep of Shanghai. Marco Polo once supposedly described it as the Venice of the Orient, and it still has some small areas which lie on canals, our hostel was situated on one. All very quaint and lovely. It is also famous for its ancient gardens which we checked out the following day. They are a bit like what most of us know of Japanese gardens, but slightly more wild and less polished. Very beautiful all in all.

Cheats never prosper!

The whole reason for us coming to this area was to climb the ubiquitous Huangshan Mountain, a top on Adams list of must see attractions! Having previously climbed Emei Shan, a gruelling task of walking up and down stone steps for 10 hours a day for 2 days, I had some reservations... but reading about it the impression was that it would be no where near as hard, phew.

That wasn't accounting for a nightmare beginning to our day... The reason I say cheats never prosper is because when we left our hotel we were harangued by a bus driver at the station which caused us to jump into a taxi to go to the bus station... said taxi driver then asked us where we were going and offered us what seemed like a fairly decent price to go straight to Huangshan... hmm we thought- yes this seems more appealing and faster than getting the bus... ok!

Off on route the lady cab driver (who I had insisted on grabbing in some crazy stand for feminism) spent most of the 70km journey badgering us about where we were going to stay that night. I'll point out we were planning on staying at the top, even though we had heard it was expensive, but she would not stop going on about it! She then picked someone else up, crafty! And went on and on at us the whole way... The next thing she was pulling up outside a hotel and trying to get us to stay there. In hindsight what we should have done was say naff off about this hotel and take us to the base of Huangshan...but of course we just assumed that it must be very nearby and therefore paid her and went off on our merry way...

Pretty irritated by her antics, I became more and more irritated when we had been walking a main road for about 15 minutes and saw signs which suggested we were still at least 3km from the base. Walking along what can only be described as a virtual motorway we plodded along, unsure how long it would take but incensed that we would not get another taxi having already wasted money on one! Of course most people who know me well should right about now be feeling sorry for Adam as the situation obviously worked me up into a fury about which I ranted about the annoyance of Chinese cab drivers, China in general, and Chinese Mountains! All slightly unfair in retrospect, asides from the cab driver of course!

2 hours later(!) we decided to give up and get another taxi which took us to the base of the Eastern steps. Driving in that taxi it literally dawned on us that it would have taken another 2 hours to get there if we hadn't jumped in- what that annoying woman was doing dropping us at that hotel I will never know!! Anyway, rageous McCarthy did gradually subside (fortunately for Adam who at this point would probably have liked to push me off the edge!) and we made the most of the three hour uphill slug. Hard work! Esp after the 2 hour trek beforehand! Still as much as I hate to admit it there is something rewarding about climbing Mountains, even if it is incredibly painful at points!

Huangshan is famous for being coated in mist, and by the time we reached the top it was no exception. There is not a “top” as such, instead it is covered in lots of different peaks- in essence, it's pretty massive. The mist was so thick at the top that sunset was a no no, but apparently it is a lucky rarity to see it at all. We were slightly taken aback at the cost of the hotels, cheapest setting us back about £85- ouch! But it had a hot bath which was heavenly, and an ok restaurant. In fact I was amazed at the fancy hotels at the tops as there aren't any roads... god knows how they build all these things...

The next morning the wake up call was at 4.30am ouch! We set out in the dark to go up to a peak and watch sunset. I have to admit I totally lamed out here... I walked up to the peak and it was still misty, and I was cold and lame and... went home for some more shut eye! Leaving Adam to enjoy sunset virtually alone, apart from one Chinese man who turned to him and told him that the last time he had been there was 30 years ago when he was a student, “it feels like a different life” he said. “I used to think Chinese art was make believe, until I came here and saw it for myself”. How very true.

I did get up about 7 and we set off to climb various peaks around the top, all of which were pretty spectacular. The mist is constantly moving so it changes the scenery all the time, mountains and peaks disappear and appear, it is all quite other worldly. At about 10 we decided to go for our descent down the Western steps. Except the descent isn't really a descent, as we found ourselves going up and down more cliffs. It was really different scenery to the previous day and it was much much busier, the constant blare of a tour groups microphone always somewhere in the background! As hard going as it was at times it was also pretty amazing. About three hours later we reached a point when we had to decide whether we would go straight down or instead go up “Celestial Peak” which the guidebook said was worth saving energy for. Staring up at the path which stretched straight up a mountain ledge we paused for thought, but then thought fck it, we're here once... lets do it!

My god was it a tough climb. Straight up for about an hour, with the use of ropes and things to help stop you slipping off the side. One you got to to the top it was immense, we were so high that if you leaned over the edge you were above the constantly moving mist. It was also quite intense because unlike what you'd get in the health and safety mad UK, there were no real barriers in place so you definitely felt like you had to be pretty careful not to slip and suddenly propel yourself over the edge! We then began our descent over the other side, which was mental. No other word can describe it! At points the path was so narrow you could barely get through, at points through really narrow caves... it was insane! To be fair we noticed pretty quickly that only young people were doing this particular walk so we realised there may have been warnings about the difficulty in chinese at the bottom. I swear, if you were a big fatty you wouldn't make it down as you simply wouldn't fit through. Fortunately, even though we have been stuffing our faces constantly, we made it through.

Following this we had another two hours to the bottom, needless to say by the bottom my legs were shaking and I felt exhausted... We managed to jump on a bus and made it back to the hostel and hot showers and cold beers in Tunxi pretty quickly... It was really hard but as always, I am glad now that I did it. You really do feel like you have accomplished something after climbing a mountain, although every time I am doing it I swear it will be the last time!!! We shall see eh.