Oh my China!

DAY 1: ARRIVAL 

 Not knowing when or if we will be in this part of the world again, Lindsay decided that China had to be visited. Hawie had already been to China his first year in Korea and didn't feel the need to go back. The other draw was that my good friend Kim was finishing up her 6 months of teaching in China around the same time I had vacation. Kim was going back to the good ol' US of A to get her graduate study on. Kim and I thought it would be nice to meet up in China, even if it was only for a day. It was set, tickets were booked, plans were confirmed with Kim, and the Chinese visa was in the passport. Kim and I planned our flights to land at the Beijing Airport about the same time. What we did not anticipate was that Lindsay's flight would be delayed for 9 hours. Super bummer but still got to see Kim for a bit. Luckily, I had booked a hotel room already and had the address. So Kim made her way to the hotel to chill and wait for me. She had flown in from a visit to Mongolia that day and was a bit tired as well. She got us some Peking duck and other food and a few beers while she waited for me to arrive. I was supposed to land at 1pm and didn't make it to the hotel til 11pm that night. But better late than never! ;) The hotel was high class. We decided to splurge as both of us always travel on the cheap and stay in hostels. But we went all out!



DAY 2: Kim's Departure

We woke up early and decided to get our workout on! Best part, well two best parts, were the buffet breakfast in the morning and to counter act that, an awesome workout room. The treadmills and bikes had virtual trails you could run and bike on. I want one! After Kim and awoke early and got our workout on for an hour, we proceeded to stuff our faces full of Western and a bit of Chinese food for breakfast. We then headed off to the airport. Kim had kept her bags at the airport but were both over weight. We spent a few hours going through the suitcases and sorting stuff, throwing away stuff, and I took some stuff so I could mail it to her later. It was as success! Her bags made weight and no extra fees were paid! After a hiccup with airline company and luggage, Kim was off to her next big adventure. After 5 years overseas, she headed back to the states. If you have lived over seas for a period of time, you know this is a bit frightening and overwhelming. I feel blessed I could be there to support her and send her off. :)

After saying farewell to Kim, I headed back to the hostel to regroup. I had no plans and was going to take each day as it came. I bought a map, inquired at the front desk about how to get some places, sat down with a beer in the beautiful courtyard and started to plan at least the next day. At this point it was close to 5pm so I decided to just plan, explore the area and call it a night. siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighborhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.

Road down the Hutong on the way to the hostel

The area the hostel was in, is called a Hutong. Hutongs are a type of narrow streets or alleys, most commonly associated with Beijing. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of
Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. More recently, some hutongs have been designated as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history. (wiki).  It was really cool to stay in an area like that. It really gave you the feel of how everyday Chinese live. There was a group of older men who played Chinese checkers and card games outside the hostel almost everyday. There were a couple of stalls and a hole-in-the-wall restaurant up the street that we ate at a few times.

No eggs for dinner tonight. Ah man..

Later that evening I met another teacher from Korea. We were staying in the same dorm room. We chatted a bit and she was headed to the Great Wall the next day and invited me to go with her. SWEET! She was headed to a less crowded part of the wall called Muitanyu. The hostel wasn't very helpful at all with directions but we were resourceful and felt we had enough information to get there.

The cool doggy at the hosel. She was very sweet and kept me company!

Courtyard at the hostel

Courtyard at the hostel

Courtyard at the hostel

Everyday life in a Hutong

These guys hung out on teh stoop of the hostel almost everyday and played games.

If go to Beijing, I would highly recommend staying here! :)

DAY 3: Great Wall Muitanyu

Thank you random Chinese man for posing for the picture. :)

Supposedly there was a tourist bus that leaves the bus station (close to the hostel) at 7am. We aimed to catch that bus, not anticipating not being able to find the bus at all. We didn't find the bus and missed it's 7am departure time. So we stopped for a cup of coffee to go and then made a new plan. New plan, head back to the hostel and ask for more details on where exactly to get the bus and then head back again. The hostel people, again, were not very helpful. The information we did get was to take a local bus, get off at the last stop, then either get a minibus taxi or catch a connecting bus to the wall. This sounded doable for sure! The morning was off to a rocky start as you can see and didn't get much easier after that. The girl I was traveling with realized while back at the hostel periodically that she had lost her debit card. She decided to try adn not worry about it too much and take care of it when we returned. Still putting a bit of a damper on the day though.  We then trekked back out to the bus station again and hopped on the bus. We got stuck in massive traffic on teh way out to the next small city. I just assumed this was normal for Beijing but turns out we hit two accidents on the highway on the way out and it is not typical for Beijing to be in this much traffic.

After the highway we started to come back into a town area. As we did, the bus made a stop. The second stop it made, there were 2 men getting off the bus and signaled for us to get off too for Muitanyu where were going. I like to think of myself as a pretty smart traveler but for whatever reason that day, my guard was down. It might have had something to do with our rocky morning and being up since 5am or who knows. But we followed them and got off the bus at a bus stop not even quite in the city center yet.  Turns out they work for a minibus company and just wanted us to take their company (of course to make money) to the Great Wall. We told them no many times and ignored them til they went away. Luckily the bus we were on ran every 10 minutes or so and we grabbed the next bus pronto. The bus was quite full and we ended up standing in the front of the bus. Turns out the next 4 stops were full of the minibus drivers trying to lore unexpecting, off guard tourists off the bus.  I'll tell you what, China is full of scammers. I wouldn't trust most Chinese as far as you could throw them. But it's part of their culture and they're all used to it, I suppose. We eventually made it to the last stop! WOOO HOOO!!!

There was a sign for the next bus we needed to catch but no 'sign' of where to catch it. We tried asking a few people, they spoke no English and we had no Chinese so that deemed useless. We headed toward a bigger bus terminal in the back and thought that might be a good place to start. We were being followed by a very persistent minibus driver so we ducked into the women's room for some reprieve and to use the facilities. Double whammy. That didn't matter too much because the driver waited outside for us anyway. I saw some Chinese, what looked to be tourists, on our way back to where the bus dropped us off. Luckily one spoke English and helped us. Turns out, the bus we needed to catch doesn't run any more due to the construction on the road in to the great wall. Ok, great! At least we had an answer. He helped us negotiate with a really nice minibus driver who wasn't pushy at all and very laid back. As we got in, 3 exchange students from Hong Kong, jumped in as well. They spoke pretty good English and a bit of Korean (they love Korean dramas) and we had a fun little talk on the way to the wall. They were got off earlier then us but were super fun and made us feel better about getting into the minibus with a random driver as well.

Approaching the wall

Just in case you need a souvenir for the way up to the wall

very authentic chinese man selling food and metals on the wall

A 20 minute, speedy gonzales, race car ride up to the wall and we were off! We were super excited to be there and it now being 12pm, were just happy we made it in one piece after the rough start we had. It was very hot by this time but at least it was a pretty clear day and the sun was out (not lucky when you are hiking in it but lucky because we could see so much more of the amazing surroundings around the great wall). There's all sorts of things you can do at the great wall. It's less crowded then the Bataling part but still a bit touristy. There are cable cars you can take up and down from the wall (it was a bout a 20 minute hike up just to get to the wall itself) and you can even toboggan down if you so please. Looked pretty fun but was super expensive for a 2 minute ride down so I passed on the ride down.  We hiked the wall for about 3 hours. It was amazing! The views were incredible, the wall itself was incredible, the million billion steps, not so incredible. Never in my dreams would I thought I would be on the Great Wall. Seeing that the word excercise was not in the vocabulary of the girl I was hiking with, we took the cable car down. She was exhausted and thought that the cable car might be the better option. We got down, ate lunch, took our speedy taxi driver back to the bus stop, jumped on the bus and within an hour we were back at the Beijing bus terminal where we started. All in all, a good day!

Flames! Please! Cover yourself!

Very lucky to have such a clear day!

Yep, we hiked up to the where the wall disappears out of sight.

We only climbed a few stairs that day

We made it!

Unrestored part of the wall

DAY 4: Pearl Market

Day 4 was pretty chill and laid back. The Great Wall chica wanted to go back to the Pearl Market and invited me to go with her. The Pearl Market was not as cool as it sounded but still super interesting. It is basically similar to a huge department store (Asian style) where you can bargain and talk down the price of everything. We did a bit of souvenir shopping there and ate some lunch. It was a nice relaxing day after the hectic great wall day previously. Beijing is super easy to get around by subway. We headed back after the Pearl Market because she had to leave to catch her flight back to Korea. That evening I met an Aussie, Lisa. Lisa and I hit it off right away! Lisa didn't really have a game plan for the next day so I invited her to go with me. The plan was to head to the Summer Palace then to the Lama Temple that was super close to the hostel.

Lama Temple from teh outside

Around town. All sorts of bikes

hungry?

DAY 5: Summer Palace, Lama Temple and Night Market

We got up fairly early and hit up the Summer Palace. A famous emperor long ago built the Summer Palace for his mother. Lucky woman. It was really like a small village of temples and buildings and gardens and a huge lake surrounding it. There were many many people and it was super hot. But Lisa and I had a fantastic time and cruised around the lake and took in the scenery. We then headed back towards the hostel to Lama Temple. This is a famous temple, huge and gorgeous! By this time of day, the crowds had thinned out! There was barely anybody at the temple! This was a nice reprieve from earlier in teh day. Super relaxing and nice to just chill at the temple. I always love the energies at the temple! We came back and chilled out a bit then decided we had enough energy to hit up the famous Night Market. This I was pretty excited about! In the mean time, Lisa had to change rooms (the hostel is bit unorganized) and she met two girls in her new room. So the 4 of us ventured out to the market. The market is famous for many items you can eat on a stick that are fried such as: spider, centipede, snake and scorpion, among other things. I will let you enjoy the pictures!

Lama Temple

Across from the Night Market

Yummy! The silk worms in China are much larger then the silk worms in Korea.

Spider and Centipede fried on a stick

Dumplings I had along the way.

Scorpion BIG and small.

Snake

So that's what starfish look like in the middle

lots and lots of seafood

Belle had bought a lotus flower from a woman near the hostel. We didn't know how to eat it or what you do with it. The cute little Chinese guy showed us how to eat it. It was good!

DAY 6 Great Wall Second Round and Super fancy restaurant

The cool aussie chic wanted to go to the Great Wall and I wanted to see another part of the Great Wall. We decided to go back to Muityanu part of the wall again due to ease of getting there and little to no stress. It was unclear how to get to the other part of the wall I was interested in and honestly did not want to deal with scammers.  It was awesome! The cool aussie chic and another girl we met while trying to get a minibus up there were great and in shape! We hiked the wall at a nice speed that day! The weather was cloudy and misty that day so it was a totally different experience then the time before. Still just as awesome! Worth it to do it again! I couldn't decide which day was better! We were super pooped out by the time we got back! The girls we met the day before were just chillen that day and had found a vegetarian restaurant that looked interesting and they wanted to go (one of them was a veggie). Lisa and I waited patiently for the girls. We were getting very hungry by this point as we didn't have much to eat in terms of real food all day. After a few hiccups in trying to find the place, we found it! It was not what we expected at all! It was a beautiful 5 star restaurant apparently run by monks. It was one of those, you def need a reservation place to get in. We obviously did not know this. There was a small area in the front of the restaurant where they said that we could eat. Not as fancy as inside but still pretty cool. We looked at a menu, which were huge and beautiful filled with pictures.  Looking at the menu, it looked good but Lisa and I were starving by this point. We made the decision, as nice as it would have been to eat with the girls, it just wouldn't be substantial enough for us for that day. It was pricey and the portions inevitably would have been small. We need something much more than that! So we thanked the girls for the invite and apologized. One of the girls, who was already on a roll earlier, did not want to take no for an answer. So after some stern "no's," Lisa and I were on our way back towards the hostel to find food. We had seen a small place a block or so from the hostel that always had a lot of people there. It was a definite hole-in-the-wall local place but we decided to give it a try regardless. We did and it was perfect!! We got a huge amount of food for a minimal price, were stuffed and happy! :) Job done!

The menus at the super fancy restaurant

DAY 7 Temple of Heaven and Peking Duck

I was bit bummed it was my last day. I wish I would have stayed much longer in China. But, China, we will return for you! I was excited to hit up the Temple of Heaven knowing there were people in the park around it doing tai chi.  Hawie had seen it when he went and I was hoping it was still part of the culture and going on. The Aussie and I woke up super early again. Feeling a bit tuckered out from the hike the day before we pushed through. We got to the Temple of Heaven quite easily and meandered in to the park. When we entered there were elderly people old school dancing.  As we got further in there were more and more people doing tai chi, playing a form of hackey sack, meditating and doing aerobics. It was fantastic! One of the best parts of the trip. The park was gorgeous and the energy from all the people exercising and feeling refreshed so early in the morning was incredible! We spent a lot of time chilling and watching the people and taking it all in. There were all sorts of forms of tai chi, from super slow to medium paced to tai chi with swords. People of all ages joined in. They seemed to have no concern that hundreds of people were passing by and observing. It was like they were in their own worlds' enjoying every movement. Fantastic! The Temple of Heaven was pretty cool. There weren't many people there so it was quite and nice. The energy was powerful and relaxing at the same time.

After a great time in at the Temple of Heaven and surroundings we decided, because it looked close on the map, to walk from there to to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden city. We pushed through, made it and arrived in Tiannamen an hour later. Not as close as we thought. After a relaxing morning at the temple, the square and Forbidden city were an abrupt wake up call. Loads of people everywhere and on top of that, it is in city center. The square was not much to see but absolutely gigantic in size.  It was still nice to be there. We then went over to the Forbidden City where it was just a mass chaos of people.  Looking back, it would have maybe been better to have a guide so you knew mroe what you were looking at and the significance but to be honest, we were so tired at that point, we didn't care. The buildings were beautiful but we couldn't go or really see the inside. After about an hour and half of wandering around, we decided to head back to the hostel. The buildings were starting to look similar and we felt we got the gist. My partner in crime for the past three travel days was definently feeling it! Besides, I needed to pack and get my stuff organized for the flight out the next morning...very early!

Tai Chi in the park outside the Temple of Heaven

Tai Chi in the park outside the Temple of Heaven

Tai Chi in the park outside the Temple of Heaven

Adding swords to the mix

Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven

There are three paths. Only the Emperor was allowed to walk along the middle path.

Tiannamen Square and Forbidden City behind me

Inside Forbidden City

Inside the Forbidden City....not so forbidden anymore

We wanted to see the Kung-fu show and the hostel would have arranged tickets and transportation to the show for us. But we weren't really feeling the show that night. My partner in crime really was itching to Peking Duck. So with a little bit of research, we found a place. Not only was it close to the hostel, it had great reviews AND there was a free show along with it! Perfect! We had the afternoon to relax then headed out for some Peking Duck!! We had the address in Chinese and had a sense of the general direction (thank you google maps). We went to a place we thought was it. We asked, and it wasn't but they pointed us in the right direction. Half way down the street, mind you it's a street full of nice restaurants, we asked a guy standing outside. He said, "oh yes, here, here. Come in." We had a sneaky suspicion that it was not the correct place but went in anyway and asked the waitress who then pointed us in the right direction. Sneaky suckers they are! It was actually one thing I did not expect as much in China. Cambodia, sure, they are a 3rd world, trying to revive themselves coming out of the Khmer Rouge. But China...come on! We found the place! It was set up as you were in a courtyard and was gorgeous! We had a great time eating duck and watching the "show." It was a perfect end to the trip!

Inside the Peking Duck Restaurant

Beautiful Menus

Preparing the duck

Delicious-ness!

Desert they gave us. They were almost too pretty to eat but very delicious as well!

After coming back and running into a few Aussie blokes, who were VERY entertaining, I finally made it to bed. The next morning I shipped out. A bit worried I was cutting it close with my flight time and the time I left, I didn't sleep much. My travel partner in crime was super awesome and walked me to the airport rail at 5:15am. It was an entertaining wait for the rail to open the gates as the taxi drivers tried to get us to take their taxi to the airport. I was very thankful to have her there with me to fend them off. Got to the airport, the wrong terminal pretty fast! I had to then jump on a very slow bus to the next terminal, then ran the opposite way of the ticket counter, came back, checked in and found out my flight was delayed 3 hours anyway. So it goes. At least I wasn't rushed through security. Which was a tremendous hassle anyway. All in all....an amazing trip filled with incredible people, an awesome hostel, time with Kim, a few adventures and tons of fun! Oh China!