China!

Well China is all over and done with. After 3 weeks in China we have just arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam. We had very good intentions of writing more blog posts but the Great Firewall of China said no to blogspot. I think we just got lucky the first blog post that we did. Daryl did give us some ideas of how to beat the censors but we were just too busy ie. lazy. China was a pretty amazing experience. We ended up spending 6 days in Beijing and our stay there was a pleasant surprise. Overall everything was much cleaner than imagined. The people were all really friendly and their metro is amazing. We had some initial hassles involving getting our hostels address in chinese so we could get a cab...than promptly losing the post it note it was written on. But after much help from a few different people we made it to the Happy Dragon Hostel. Which is actually a great place to stay if anyone needs to know a place in Beijing....

Six days was more than enough to see all the sights that we wanted to see. On day one we went and checked out the Water Cube and Birds Nest at the olympic park. In the night we went to the most famous duck restaurant in China (so says the sign outside) for some amazing duck with all the crew from the train. Such great duck! We ate so much and it was really cheap in the end! In the days after we covered much ground to see the Forbidden City (chock a block full of tourists and we probably should have done the audio tour seeing as we didn't actually know what we were looking at), Tianemen Square & Chairman Mao (again really super busy. And Kat & I are both undecided as whether the Chairman is a wax figure or not...), Silk Street (kinda like Paddies Markets in Sydney on steriods. Only good if your idea of fun is having people bully you into buying things). A chinese acorobat show was also in order. Not particularly impressive if you've ever seen a Cirque de Soleil. The most amusing part was the poor guy who stuffed up 5 times and just kept on trying. Finally made it in the end though...

Our biggest day was the day that we went to the Great Wall. We had a three hour mini bus ride from hell just to get there. Imagine if you will: stuck in a tiny, tiny bus. With a super, duper loud guy talking non stop for three hours, about nothing. And the driving was crazy! It seems like the best way to drive is to change lanes....every 5 seconds. Tooting constantly and cutting anyone off is also the go. As is driving on the wrong side of the road and honking for the people who are in front of you to get out of the way. Plus there was a possibly dead man lying on the road who had been knocked off his motorbike. Needless to say we were very, very pleased to get to the wall in one piece! We walked (& climbed) a 10km section of the Wall. Most of it is unrestored. We walked from Jingshanling to Simatai, shadowed all the way by people trying to sell us post cards, t shirts and even beer. Such an amazing day though. It is unbelievable how long it is and how much ground it covers. We were all so tired at the end of the day but it was totally worth it. Such an incredible experience to actually walk along it.

Finished our stay in Beijing with another night out with some more of the train crew, this involved some bloody awful martinis and just a little bit of impromtu karaoke. Our final day we headed off to the flea markets for a spot of souvenir shopping. Than it was off to the station to catch our train to Xi An. We only stayed in Xi An for one night. The main attraction there is the Terracotta Warriors, also pretty amazing when you see them up close. A word of warning for anyone thinking of going though....don't stand in the dark corners....this is where little children with their split pants go to pee.... You have been warned. That afternoon it was back on the train to Chengdu....to go and see some pandas!

The pandas were so cool! We went on a tour to the Chengdu Breeding and Research station. Had to go pretty early in the morning cause if you go to late than they don't do anything. They are pretty lazy buggers generally so we had to try and catch them when they are eating. This is prime time for moving & playing, otherwise they just lay around. Saw a few big ones, some middle ones and also a bunch of baby pandas. The little ones were only a 7 months old and had just been released to public view. We got there in time to see them get their morning milk, as well as a little bit of exercise. The handlers make them chase their milk bowls around because otherwise they might get to lazy and fat. They were so very cute and I think more than one person went away wanting one as a pet...or maybe that was just me! Kat and Kat said I wasn't allowed though so I had to leave empty handed. It's a pretty good thing that Chengdu has the pandas a a selling point, cause there wasn't that much else going on there. We went for a wander through the old town and also caught the bus around but it seemed like most other cities we had been to and though. So after two nights it was back on the train and off to Chongqing....

We didn't actually stay in Chongqing. We went pretty much straight from the train to our cruise boat for a Yangtze River cruise......

To Be Continued.............

We have just realised the computer battery is nearly dead and we can't find the charger. Oh no! So have to finish this one up once we get all charged again....