Beijing and North East China

So then it was on to the big smoke of Beijing where we spent over a week in the Lama Temple youth hostel.

The first day we were pretty tired we just had a walk around Tiananmen square and outside the Forbidden city where we saw an army of people cleaning chewing gum off the footpaths in preparation for the Olympic games in August. No stone left unturned.

The following day it was off to see the Olympic Stadium itself. There was a whole hoarde of people taking photos of it but from behind the fence as they are still carrying out work on it, mostly landscaping etc.

The "Birds Nest"

Ciaran and Dave from Cork arrived in Beijing shortly after us so we spent the next few days hanging around with then. We first met Ciaran and Dave in Nepal and then in Guilin, China.

One of the first things we did was the lads was go visit the Great Wall. We had been told to avoid the busier sections of the wall, particulary the sections that had McDonalds outlets at. Luckily we were given a tip off about a really quiet section of the wall and the tip-off turned to be true. See photos below. For me this was one of the highlights of China.

One of the must-do's in Beijing is of course the Forbidden city. We employed the services of a tour guide called Vanilla. Young Chinese often chose to use an english name as they understand that their real names are too difficult for westerners to pronounce or remember. Hence, Vanilla.

We spent many a night with Ciaran and Dave playing cards, chatting, relaxing, slagging. It was great to be able to spend time with some people who you could hurl abuse at and know they would not get offended.

The Chinese love convening on the street for many things. They love there street food, love flying their kites on the side of the street and love playing chess on the side of the street. When I saw the below scene for the first time I thought there must a fight going on or something. No, just another game of chess. As far as I could see there was normally a few wagers being passed. Maybe this is what draws the crowd! This scene is so typical in China.

We normally choose to eat at place that had english menus otherwise who knows what could end up on your place. Sometimes a restaraunt would have a sign up to signify the fact that they had an english menu. Some got a little confused, see the picture below.

Who are they trying to kid?

One of the highlights of the stay in Beijing was a trip to the temple of heaven where we stumbled across the echo wall. It was a wall built in a perfect circle. We would stand at opposite ends of the circle and whisper something. The receiver about 25 metres away could here the whisper perfectly. Here's Jeanette "talking to the wall"!

So it was time to leave Beijing and we decided to head north east. We were having difficulty getting the Mongolian visa so decided that we would go to South Korea instead. So the plan was to slowly make our way to Dalian in North East China over a number of days and then get the ferry from Dalian to the South Korean port of Incheon.

Our stop on our journey north eastward was at Shanhaiguan - the place where the great wall meets the sea. Again we had an entertaining train journey. You could see that the locals were very curious to talk to us but of course they had no way of communicating. We were seated with young and old but none had any english. Eventually were got talking to a young student who was able to translate for the entire train carriage. It was funny when a guy came over to the kids who were sitting opposite us to give out to them for not practising their english with us.

On our first day we went to the sea to see where the wall ends/starts?! See photos

Shanhaiguan is also home to what the Chinese call "the first pass under heaven". Basically it is the first gate or pass in the great wall and was of strategic importance for various Chinese dynasties. The Chinese come in their droves to see it.

We ate some great noodle soup at Li Jiangs parents place where her father cooks the soup in the biggest pot I've ever seen.

Another amusing thing we saw in Shanhaiguan was what seemed like the entire town dancing/doing aerobics in the town square with music blasting from the loud speakers.

We dropped off at the nice seaside resort of Xincheng on our way to our next destination of Shenyang.

On our train trip to Shenyang we had some more fun with the locals. First they were offering us some hard boiled eggs and some spirit of sorts for supper. Then they were amazed at how hairy my hands (Brian's) were and were putting them next to mine to compare. It hadn't really occurred to me before that but the Chinese don't really have too much body hair. When I pulled up the leg of my trousers they nearly fainted!! Good fun.

We got talking to a Chinese english teacher on the train also. She invited us to stay with herself and her husband at their apartment in Shenyang and also to come visit her students. Unfortunately we couldn't stay around long enough to make it to the school as the students were on holiday but we did take her up on her kind offer of accomodation. We just spent a day in Shenyang looking around the palace before we took the train to Dalian.

We spent 3 days in Dalian just relaxing, bowling, organising our ferry to Korea etc. We did have ago on the "Worlds first land-sled" however. This was great craic racing down the side of the mountain overlooking Dalian city. Dalian is noted for being China's most liveable city! In fairness we were able to see the sky there for 2 of the 3 days which was a bit of a feat in China. Dalian is noted also for its soccer team who apparently are Chinese champions on many an occasion.

So then it was off to Korea on the boat!

From Nepal back to China

Hello again, sorry we haven't updated in a while but will get up to date over the next few days, the fact that its pouring rain in Seoul will speed things along!!

So our last update was from Nepal, the final few days we spent in Kathmandu updating the blog, catching up on emails and enjoying the good food and on the last morning did a little bit of sightseeing. First stop was Pashputinath a sacred place for Hindus where cremations by the river are held. I was unsure what to expect but at the gate a guide 'found' us and showed us around and it was really interesting. The cremations happen on ghats, and there are different ghats for holy people, royal people, etc and ceremonies are held here before the bodies are cremated and the ashes put in the river, we discreetly watched a cremation with the traditions being explained by the guide before exploring the rest of the holy site. There are lots of holy men who live here and are legally entitled to smoke marijuana and practice yoga and some live in caves at the site. We also saw photographs of the Milk Baba a holy man who has lived on just milk for 30 years! We didn't get to see him as he was away on a trip.

Sadly we left Kathmandu and flew back to China and went straight to the city of Guilin, Guilin and the Li River are famous in China for the karst scenery and Li River but our first day there we slept all day after the overnight flight! Spent a few days relaxing and exploring the city, met up with Dave and Ciaran from Cork who we had met in Nepal, went on a river cruise down the famous Li River. This was absolutely spectacular. The photos say it all.

The Olympic Flame Torch Relay passed through Guilin so we decided to hang around for a few more days to see it and it was totally worth the wait. A big crowd of mostly university students had gathered since early morning to see the flame but we managed to get a spot with a great view, the atmosphere was amazing, the pride beamed out from each person there. We were interviewed for local television (with a lady from the Sheraton hotel stepping in to interpret for us) but never watched the news to see if we appeared! We could see the flame for about 15 seconds but there was a parade of soliders, advertising vans, media, etc as well which also kept us entertained.

The dragon boat festival was also on the week (one of 3 main festivals in China) we were in Guilin and then we decided to hang around until Sunday to see this, it is a boating race with dragon boats made out of one piece of wood are rowed by up to 100 people in the boat to the beat of a drum, this was pretty cool and we saw plenty of practicing boats. A bit of a mix up meant we were in the city for the festival but not the race, the practice boats were pretty impressive though.



From Guilin we headed to Chenyang where one of the famouse Wind and Rain bridges is located. Chenyang is also home to many Dong minority families. We spent a few days walking around the villages, looking at their pretty unique houses which are made entirely of wood and saw and took part in one of their cultural shows - dancing and knocking back a shot of local drink. It was pretty cool and nice to get off the beaten track in China again.

Chenyang - Bridge of Wind and Rain


From Chenyang we took the overnight train to Jishou in Hunan province, Hunan is famous for spicy food and woke ourselves up with some spicy noodles for breakfast and then went onto the lovely village of Dehang. Dehang is famous for its beautiful scenery, did a few treks including walking behind a waterfall and had fun ordering food, mostly pointing at what other people were eating!





Biggest waterfall in China, apparently! I say apparently because we have come across 4 caves which claim to be the biggest one in asia.
(video of Brian and the waterfall)



From Dehang we travelled onto Fenchuang, or the Phoenix city (when translated). The Phoenix city is famous for its old town, some of its buildings which hang out over the riveron wooden stilts, including a row of lively bars, this place had one of the best nightlifes in China we had come across to date. A lot of Chinese students were there on graduation trips when we were there so it was buzzing. The night market had great food and was very cheap so we ate out and spent very little - always a bonus- especially when the hostel was only 1.50euro a bed per night.



We returned from Phoenix city to Jishou to spend the night before we caught the 24hour train to Beijing the following morning. Jishou is the kind of place where tourists don't stay or at the least only pass through without getting off the bus. Hence, when some of the locals saw us a few nearly collided with lamp posts, they were so in shock. We also had our craziest driver in China here, a feat which plenty of drivers have competed for as the drivers we've encountered would get 12penalty points in one week at home, maybe having 2 foreigners in his minivan encouraged him to do the journey in less time, but honestly some rollarcoasters aren't as scary as that trip was. On that note- taxi drivers in China get offended if you wear a safety belt in their car! we have tried to put on safety belts on the few occasions we took one and have either not found the lock to slot it into or got covered in dust from the belt!!

Back to Jishou, we decided to go to the local internet cafe; once we recovered from the minivan, where we had a pretty bizarre experience. One of the local lads was intent in talking to us but he hadn't a word of english and our Chinese is improving to the extent now we can count to ten, ask how much, order rice and find an internet cafe but that's it, so conversations are still out of the question. None the less language was no obstacle. He openend up `Google Translate`, typed his sentence in Chinese and translated it to english. And we did vice versa. This continued for an hour and a half. He then rang his sister in Shanghai and put Brian on the phone, so that her sister could talk to a foreigner! Finally, we had to pose for photos with half of the internet cafe before we were allowed leave. Perhaps we were the first foreigners to frequent the cafe. A wierd but yet wonderful experience.

Internet Cafe photos.....






Sadly we left the Hunan province and got the 24 hour train to Beijing, yip you read that right 24hour train!