Shanghai!!
Sorry no posts for a while. There was an undersea earthquake which cut internet services to most of asia, may take up to three weeks to fix fully.
We have arrived in Shanghai, and will be here for three days, before moving to Nan Jing.
There is a high speed train from the airport, which got up to 430km! it was awesome and is well worth a ride.
On day one here, we have visted the Pearl Tower. The view is just awesome.
Sorry, cannot post images.
Chengdu x 2
Well, its been a week in Chengdu, and the weather has got progressivly worse, while the food has got better!
We have had fun zooming around the city on our bikes, which are tiny.
Not sure what we have been doing, the time has just rushed by!
We have helped our friends with some english lessons, teaching locals here, and have learnt how to sing jingle bells in Mandarin.
Heres some photos from around our apartment block.
Chengdu
Well, we have left Beijing and have gone to Chengdu, in Sichuan province.
And wow, what a difference. To start with, its warmer. Its been about 15 degrees, instead of the 2 degrees it was in Beijing. Also its cleaner, greener, less smelly and less noisy. The food is tasty, hot and spicy. In short, I love it here.
We are staying with friends who live on the top (7th) floor of an apartment block, and its 114 steps to their floor. We will be here for Christmas. We will not do much tourist stuff here, just visit the panda breeding/research facility.
today we did visit a silk brocade factory, which was just awesome. There were master craftsmen there, and the looms they were working on took six months to set up for one piece of cloth, and they could only weave 7cm a day!!
alis phone is still not working here, so we have brought a China mobile phone. the number is 008613980041493. You can text us on this number and we can reply. The people joining us in Shanghai in January might like to note this number down.
Our friends dont have wifi, so my laptop is not connected to the net. We will still check emails when able.
10 things I've learnt in Beijing........Alisons post.......
1) It's ok to spit. Everyone does it - but you are not allowed to spit in Tian'anmen Square or the Forbidden City.
2) Pedestrians have right of way. Traffic will stop for you.
3) There is alot of yummy food to eat and it is cheap.
4) Being indescisive is good when shopping, they will drop the price.
5) You have to squat in most of the toilets and they usually smell bad.
6) You should have a bell on your bike.
7) There are Christmas decorations everywhere, but they don't celebrate Christmas.
8) Standing on the great wall is an AWESOME feeling.
9) You can park your car on a corner and a pedestrian crossing at the same time.
10) When the bus is full there is always room for more - just push them in!
Finally, we find our own bikes
We had enough of looking at old buildings in Beijing, so yesterday we hired some bikes, and biked around the central city. It was cool, and a great way to see the city. For one thing, no hawkers can catch you with goods to sell, for another, cars and buses have to look out for you!
One of our tour drivers said earlier in the week that if they knock someone of their bike, the car driver has to pay all the medical bills of the cyclist. It doesnt matter who is in the wrong. Great rule, aye, but it means the cyclists think they are bullet proof, and they just pull out anywhere they want or go through red lights. I so want to live here.
These pics are from around our hostel.
Well we have had an awesome day today.
We visited the Ming Tombs and The Great Wall.
Words just do not do The Great Wall justice. Even the pictures dont really give you a sense of the size of the thing.
We spent a couple of hours climbing at Huanghua, together with George, a candian tourist staying at our hostel. We were the only tourists there for the whole afternoon. It was just awesome. We did not want to come down, but just wanted to keep climbing. I so want to come back, and climb higher.
On the way back, we passed the games village construction area. Beijing is just awash with construction for the 2008 games. there are cranes everywhere. But the games area is something else again. So much building, it looks like they are building another city.
its 2 degrees and getting colder..........
Well, it was 2 degrees today, and we were in Tiananmen Square.
It was very very cold, and should have been snowing, but its just too dry to do that. This is a huge space, very well controlled, with police and cameras everywhere.
We also went to the Forbidden City, another tourist haunt, but we managed to avoid the crowds and find some less popular spots. It has awesome spaces, with a sqaure large enough for 100,00 people to gather. Must have been an awesome sight in years gone by. Very interestinng watching people in these tourist spots. They seem to have no spare time, even though they are on holiday, rushing here and there.
Breakfast and lunch were on the run again, gotta love Beijing street vendors.
We traveled on buses again today, and went during the rush hour in the morning. Very interesting, seeing people squeezed into the last spaces on a bus. We choose one that the conductor didnt have to squeeze too much!
We are going to the great wall tomorrow, and are planning a day on bike touring the hutongs, maybe if it gets a bit warmer!
That could be dangerous however, the bikes seem to have the right of way over everything else, so we shouiild be okay.
Day 2 in Beijing
A day of firsts.
We found and ate a local breakfast. I have no idea what it is called, but it was purple and had beans in it.
It’s unbelievably cheap to eat here, esp if you keep away from tourist haunts. Breakfast was about $2 for both of us, and was as much as we could eat, included a pot of tea, and saw us through to 5pm!.
Our first ride on a Beijing bus. Its fun to sit up the front and watch the taxi drivers try and get hit by the bus. We only saw one accident, which is a real surprise. It involved a taxi, which is no surprise at all.
The bus ride was to our first tourist trap. Yuk. We went to The Summer Palace, which was flooded with tourists. The day was not as clear as yesterday, so the shots are a little hazy. The old buildings and history are awesome, but I did wonder what the empress would have thought of being invaded by Japanese tourists.
Paul and Ali land in China
Well we made it.
After 24 hours either in the air or sitting in airports, we arrived in Beijing!
We were really happy to see that our driver had waited for us, and brought us straight to our hostel.
We are staying here:
"http/www.lotushostel.cn/"
Its a cool small hostel in a hutong, like an alley, in the centre of the city. The staff are very friendly and are helping us with our Mandarin.
Ali and I walked around today, and sampled a lot of food from street vendors, which was yummy.
We visted a park called Beihei (north sea). its cool, frezzing cold, with ice about 3cm thick over most of the lake in the park.
Not bad for a 30ha lake!
