China Syndrome

I know it has been a while since the last update. So here we go!!

As I was in Beijing, I thought, first day, I'll go and see the "Forbidden City". So I set off in the morning to find my local subway station and set off towards Tiananmen square which is in front of the forbidden City and Mao Zedong's mausoleum.

As I walked past the front gate outside the subway station, I was eyeing up some photo opportunities, then a young chinese girl started talking to me. She said her college had an art exhibition near by and would I be interested in taking a look. I thought it was quite an innocent proposition, so I went. She was very pleasant, spoke very good English and the exhibition wasn't bad either. Then of course, as I saw the number of foreigners there, I was about to get a sales pitch. I shunned this, and made my way out. It was good stuff, but I haven't got the room in my bags for it!!

So, with my money intact and still in my pocket I went to the forbidden city. I got the Audio tour, my ticket and a map. I have to say, it was fantastic. I have to admit though, that I had to laugh at some of Roger Moore's commentary. The first thing he said was "Hello, i'm Roger Moore and I'm delighted that the management of the forbidden city have asked me to do the Audio tour". I was there thinking "yeah right mate, you're just a washed up actor who's just happy to get a job, whatever it is!!". There was also a moment when he was talking about the Emperors concubines which made me think of him raising an eyebrow as he said it. A la, his cheesy James Bond persona!!

After the forbidden City, I walked to the top of Jingshan Gong Yuan, from which I could get a top down view of the city. I was a cold, sunny day, but there was a lot of smog in the atmosphere, so the pictures aren't as clear as I would have wanted.

As I walked through Tiananmen square back to the Subway station, there were many people flying elaborate kites in the afternoon sky. Loads of children were about, and all of a sudden I realised that it was a saturday. I had lost complete track of time. So back to the "red house" hotel I went. Also, I think it was called the red house because it had something to do with communism. They were advertising trips to north korea in there. I would be half tempted if I had the time!!

The next day I went to the Summer Palace and Old Summer palace. Stunning, but I forgot my camera. So I thought. As I was on the bus coming back from the Old Palace, I entered my bag for a drink to find my camera underneath a coat. I was gutted because I now had no account of going there. Once back in Beijing I went to Tiatan Gong Yuan, which is a site full of temples from the Ming Dynasties!! I got pictures of that. It was turning dark so I head for home, bloody freezing cold, with my Jaw numb, hands blue and with no feeling in my toes. A warm room was too inviting!!

Now Monday came and it was my last day in Beijing, so I had to fit in the Great Wall before leaving for pastures new. I got to where the lonely planet said would have tour buses that would get me to the wall, as well as a few other sites along te way. I found such a thing almost straight away. It came to my attention, that we didn't exactly move straight away, and this wasn't particularly organised. So I used my time constructively to create an itinerary for my remaining time in China.

I was getting mightily cold as the bus was gradually filling up over an hour and 20 minutes. Finally it set off around 11:45. There were a few other foreigners on the trip, a grumpy german, and what I thought were 2 fat American lesbians (I found out later that they were mother and daughter, I just saw one of them put their arm around the other). So we first stopped at a tomb of some person, I wasn't really interested at this point, I just wanted to get to the wall!! Then they took us to a place to buy some jade in the form of Jewelry or trinkets. I used my time here to warm my hands on the radiators. Then we stopped for lunch, that I didn't know was included in the price I paid. SO, the dished that got rushed to our table were some kind of fish (it was the whole fish, just there, looking at you), white stuff (later discovered it was tofu), some dumplings, red stuff, brown stuff, seaweed, soup, some vegetables (celery etc) and a big bowl of rice. As I was at the table with all Chinese people, I felt obliged to try some. I first tried the white stuff, because I thought it may be chicken. It was tofu, but edible, I didn't feel sick. Now the dumplings, these were lovely, I filled up on these, and almost ate the entire plate. The red stuff was suspect, and the brown stuff tasted like raw gristle and almost made me sick. Once we had chowed down, it was time to get back to te bus. I spoke to one of the Americans outside, and she told me that people were just spitting out the food they didn't like on to the tale if they didn't like it.

What I didn't tell you, was that there was persistent arguing on the bus. Apparently, culminating with one of the tour guides leaving the bus due to the fact that her country men had basically told her to shut up!! That was quite funny. After lunch, we got put on to a different bus. It was small, no air-con, and the was it was riding, no suspension!! By the time we got to the wall my ass was numb.

The wall was a fantastic site. We wentpicture main tourist spot, but it was quiet as it was winter. We took these bobsleigh things up to where we could start walking. It was a little odd, but we did get to ride them on the way down as well. We had about an hour at the wall. So I took many pictures, walked up a number of steps to basically the last safe place it was to go in the time we had. I got caught in the moment, bought a certificate with a picture of me on it, a book of the wall, and a medal. All very cheap, and I haggled to get all that for half the price that some guys from Hong Kong paid, suckers. I was tempted to have a picutre taken on the top of a Llama that was there, but decided, no, it didn't look trustworthy!! I tell you what, I've never seen steps like are on this thing, almost vertical steps, and each step about 17 inches in height in some areas. At the altitude it was very tiring!!

Time to go back to the bus, off we went back to Beijing. As I said, this was run by some cowboys, so thy decided to drop us off somewhere where no one knew where we were. There was a subway station no to far away, so not too bad. BAck to the hotel via Pizza Hut, as I found out that day that day that Marco Polo had taken the recipe of Pizza back to Italy from China. So a 12 inch box of authentic old chinese food is what I consumed. Very nice it was too.

Tuesday, I had to get a move on and get out of Beijing and get to Datong ASAP. Got to Beijing train station, got my ticket (departing 15:03, 5 hour trip) and had to make my way over to Beijing West train station. Dropped my bag off, then got some food and got on the train.

I arranged a soft sleeper carriage, which I share for part of my journey with a mother and son, and later a middle aged woman. The young man seemed quite intrigued by me, so he took the opportunity to try out some English on me. Very good he was to, he couldn't have been more the 4 or 5. I did get somewhat taken aback when he said goodbye to me in french. That was a little odd.

Got to Datong, got my hotel room. As I went to get some food from a store, I went to go through the revolving doors which broke after I left them. I came back in quite embarrassed. It stayed broken until today. Anyway, it got to about 10pm, and the phone started ringing. I had read about this i lonely planet, that hotels let out information if a man is staying in the hotel on his own to local "call girl" organizations. So, I unplugged the phone after to calls, and went to sleep.

Now to yesterday. I went to cloud ridge caves in Datong (after organizing my rail ticket for today) which was really good. But that only took up the morning, so there wasn't really anything else to do. I went back to the hotel with the help of a local bus. It was a basic thing, huge crack in the windscreen, people smoking everywhere, stopping for someone to take a piss at the road side etc.. Cheap and cheerful. As I went to use my rooms key card, it wouldn't let me in. Here we go. I went down to reception, and found there had been a bit of a misunderstanding the night before. Sorted. Now I had no money, so I walked down to the bank of China, about 5 km, to get money out (I didn't have enough for a taxi). I tried every cash point along the way (there were only 2). I discovered that this town has virtually no cash points. Lonely planet said this main bank of china that I got to had an ATM. Did it, did it f*ck!!! Pissed off, I dejectedly walked back to the hotel a different way to which I came. As luck would have it I finally managed to find an ATM that accepted my card. So, I carried on walking back to the hotel and had some dinner.

I swear that place I am in at the moment is a complete hole. It doesn't have any fast food outlets, hardly a cash point to be found, holes in the road, holes in the pavement (about 3 foot deep), oil slicked everywhere, dirty as hell.

I should have just used this place as a day trip from Beijing on reflection. Never mind, down to Zhengzhou tonight and most of tomorrow. I have an 18 hour train ride that's leaving at 8:30pm.
Got to go get food for the train now. Apparently, it's much warmer in Zhengzhou, I hope so!!

Little Trouble in Big China

Hello,

Since I wrote last, not a great deal has happened. All I've had is a couple of wasted days which I shall tell you all about now.

The day after I last spoke to you, I went on a walk around Nanjing hoping to eventually end up going to the top of Zijin Shan mountain. After walking around Nanjing for several hours (about 8 or 9) I had visited a park that would probably be superb in the summer. But, as it was winter, there were no "flowers" as such to see. It was a sunny day however, so it was quite a pleasant excursion.

So, I tried to find where this f*cking cable car was that was going to take me up the mountain. My god, I could kill lonely planet, the book is f*cking useless. It's two years out of date, and as China is in a production and development boom, most of the road maps they have given are very much out of date. So I thought, in the morning before I go trekking to this mountain, it would be better for me to find this "foreign language bookshop" that they had on the map. Off I went. Did it have foreign language maps........no. Foreign language books.............no. It didn't have foreign anything. So all I had to go by was this map that was full of errors.

After 8 hours I decided to give it up as a bad job, I was hungry, my eyes were getting tired from the smog of the cars and decided to head home. Then I got lost for another couple of hours, but eventually got back. Relaxed, had some noodles and planned what I was going to do the next day.

I woke up in the morning and knew that I needed cash to get the train to Ji Nan. Of course, no bank in a 3 mile radius took visa. I thought about cashing travelers cheques, but i want to keep those for an emergency. So I thought, screw this, I'll go somewhere, a couple of hours away that would be cheap to get to. So I checked out and went to the bus station. If I was traveling with someone else, this probably wouldn't have been a problem. But here, there doesn't seem to be a queuing system. I was in this crowd of shouting Chinese people as they forced their way to the desk that was dispensing tickets. I was getting pulled all over the place. I thought, I'll walk over to the train station and everything will be different. Wrong, worse. No English anywhere, no information desk, just dirt from the new station they were building and beggars. After this I consulted my lonely planet. I should have listened to them, and booked tickets a day or so in advance.

After that, pissed off at myself for wasting time and energy, I went back in to Nanjing and booked in to the Nanjing hotel. These were marvelous, they could do enough to help me. It was a 4 star hotel and they gave me a discounted rate that came to about 20 quid for the night. It was 2 pounds more expensive than the budget accommodation I had been staying in. It was a lovely room. I asked them if they could sort out a plane ticket for me to go to Beijing tomorrow. They did, and it came in at about 40 pounds, 5 pounds more than a sleeper train and hell of a lot more secure.

So it was sorted. I went and got some noodles and mineral water from the shop and went to sleep.

In the morning, still needing cash, I went to the bank of China that accepted Visa. Got my cash, went back to the hotel, checked out and they put me on a minibus to the airport (40 minutes away) for 50p. Checked in at the airport. But of a bumpy ride in the plane, there was also a meal given on board. Some kind of meat, with nuts and rice. It was quite pleasant.

Bus then to this area in Beijing where a hostel was recommended, and that is where I am now. Just saw a strange insect go down a drain, looked like a cockroach or something, so I've taken all my stuff off the floor. Anyway. Things are looking up now that I'm in the capital city. I shall probably be here for the next 5 days or so, then journey south to get my plane out of Hong Kong in three weeks time.

One thing strikes me as weird here, people spit everywhere. The food manners is something to be desired as well. This guy sitting next to me on the plane was just hocking up and spitting on to the floor all the time, as were other men. I'm glad the women don't do it.

The smog seems to be getting to me a bit as well, as does the dust from all these new developments. It's strange, lots of the building here are like those in the ex-USSR but with an oriental flavor. Depressing all the same, just with slightly curved roofs.

Well I'm off to get some food, then it's on to the Forbidden City tomorrow, where the guide tape is narrated by Roger Moore apparently. Woo hoo.


P.S. As I am writing this, it's about minus 6 degrees outside. Sometimes I wish I picked somewhere warmer to go first. Damn fool.

What a suprise, a Shanghai Suprise!!

Hello, I've just arrived in Nanjing, which is north of Shanghai, from which I will be going to Beijing in a few days.

Anyway, this is what has been happening!!

Well, I caught the bus from Swansea at 7am and I tried to get a little sleep on the bus as I knew I had a long day ahead of me. The one thing that really stuck in my head were this bunch of middle aged women. The thing was, was that they were wearing pink tracksuits. You know, the kind of furry ones. I thought, has the trend of being a chav or "Vicky Pollard"-esque reached the middle aged. I was shocked.

Anyway, once at the airport I tried one of these self check in things, which was quite good, I could even change my seat number. So I thought, I might as well get a window seat. Once I had waited, and gone through everything, the flight took off on schedule. Being a boring sod, I decided it was time to catch up on some films I had missed in the cinema. So I watched Dodgeball (very funny), Super Size Me (quality, slightly scary documentary), Collateral and some old episodes of Father Ted. The meal was Pork Loin with pasta, and breakfast was an Omelet (which I did not eat, but there was more besides). I had a couple of glasses of red wine as well, so that got me off to sleep after a few hours.

Once at Shanghai airport, all of a sudden I felt slightly overwhelmed. But I met a early thirties business man from germany in the queue for Taxi's which seemed to calm my worries. He paid for the taxi in to the centre of Shanghai where he was staying. As he was staying in the 5 star sheraton grand, we stopped here and the concierge got me a taxi to the hotel that I was actually staying. You see, the original taxi driver did not know where it was!! Useless!! Once I got to my hotel it was around 2:30 pm, so I could check in.

The room was very spacious and turned out to be a business suite with a complimentary breakfast, so I decided to keep it for another night, as I didn't want to rush around shanghai carrying a 25kg bag. So I settled there, had a bit of a sleep, then decided to venture out in the evening to get some food and have a look about. As you well know, I am not a picky eater, but over here, I just don't know what's what. So I decided to stick to what I know, Chicken McNuggets, Pringles and some beer.

After that feast, it was time for bed. My first proper day started with a breakfast of butter and Jam on toast, some fresh coffee and some fruit juice. Marvelous! Now I was set. During the previous evening, I had noted down what "places of interest" I would like to see. So off I set at 8:45 to look around shanghai. The thing I found with Shanghai, was that there isn't much TO see. There was "The Bund", which is where all the investment banks established themselves in the late 1800's, "Frenchtown" where it looks a little like a paris backstreet until you go 200 meters north to find huge shopping centers.

Pretty much, Shanghai is a typical major city. Full of Hustle and bustle, and little to see. Imagine how one would feel if you visited Birmingham as a tourist attraction. However, there was one quite funny thing I did do. "The Bund Tourist Tunnel", this put you in a little car and took you from one side of the river to the next, during the time it took to cross, it gave you a light show, dubbed as "Hi-tech spectacular", which made me laugh. It was like a tripping sequence from a sixties film.

While walking around Shanghai I got offered or saw all kind of things. A whole fox fur going for next to nothing, cats being able to just walk all over fish in the fish markets, so buying food unless totally air sealed is a no no as far as I am concerned. I walked for 8-9 hours straight around Shanghai, with only water and a chocolate bar to fuel me. So I thought on the way back to the hotel, I'd get some supplies for me to have a snack and to make some sandwiches for tomorrows train journey. I bought some bread, ham (couldn't'd find and processed cheese), crisps, 100 % apple juice and some water. Once back in the hotel, I discovered that most of China's savory type food also has sugar in it. For example, the crisps and the bread. I asked why, and someone told me, that's just the way it is in most of China, apart from the northern provinces.

Still feeling jet lagged I fell asleep early, when I wanted to go out and experience some of the nightlife and get a proper meal. Also, in Shanghai, there aren't pubs / clubs spaced all over the place, they seemed to all be located in a particular district. I could hardly find an internet cafe anywhere as well, then again, everyone here seems to carry computers.

To give you an idea of how cheap it is out here, you can get an iPod for about 99 quid. Bargain.

Today though has been quiet. I checked out of the hotel at 9am, went to the Shanghai train station and got a ticket for Nanjing. My train didn't leave until 12:30 so I sat in the waiting area reading a book I brought with me. I paid a little extra for this 3 hour train trip, because I wanted a "soft seat". It only cost about 2 quid more than a standard, which get overcrowded with the possibility of theft. So, why not.

I arrived in Nanjing at 3.30, and the place is like a bomb site. There is development going on everywhere, including a brand new train station. The gentleman who I sat next to on the train sorted out a taxi driver for me to get to my first choice (and lonely planets) budget accommodation in the Nanjing university. I got my room, on the 20th floor, for 2 night, all for about 30 quid. Twin bed, air con, fridge, safe, TV (pointless) and not much of a view. I have a building site in front of me!! Nevermind, well I'm off to get some grub, a pint, then an early night ready for a trek around tomorrow.

Also, it's bloody freezing here, and it gets worse as I get further towards Beijing.