Day 4

Today was all about the Great Wall of China. Warwick was kind enough to organise a driver to take us there. So here we meet Beijing Mike (MIC = 8).

Mike was cool (like bow ties). He spoke English well, and was fun to talk to. I'd recommend him to anyone who wants to go to Beijing. Anyway, enough of the sales pitch.

On Mike's advice, we went to see the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, which was about 2 hours away from the city. 1.5 hours of that time Sandra slept (surprise surprise). When we got there the place was filled with tourists and hawkers, as expected really - "No, I don't want dried prunes".

We were offered 2 ways to travel to the top. A chair lift, or a cable car (well, 3 if you count walking, but stuff that). The chair lift looked a little bit rickety but came with a toboggan ride back down! Sold!

The actual Wall itself was amazing. The section that we walked (from the chair lift at tower 5 to tower 1) was all steps. Some were tiny ones (about half the size of a normal step) that you could two at a time easily and some were huge ones where Sandra was using her hands to help her climb up.

And it was hot. Climbing a couple of hundred steps in 28 degree heat with no shade - not so good. Needless to say, we were pretty gross by the time we got back. There was also the option to walk up to tower 14 (where the cable car connected) which we had toyed with before the walk but by the time we got back to the chair lift we were pretty ready to come down.

There was a huge variety of people there - we saw/heard Chinese, Germans, French, Brits and Americans. Mike had told us earlier that it was currently school holidays so during this period a lot of Chinese people travel to the capital to show their children the country's history. That explains why all the queues were so long...

One downside of the occasion was that even on the Great Wall there were people selling us crap (MIC = 11). Although I did actually buy a metal plate saying I've been on the wall. The people selling stuff on the wall were actually pretty cool, really friendly and keen to take photos with you. Unfortunately they also wanted you to buy their stuff and it slightly cheapened the experience...

The toboggan ride down from the wall was ok. It had the potential to be awesome but there was a traffic plug in front of us so for a significant portion of the ride down we were moving so slowly that we struggled to get down the mountain, even with gravity on our side! The issue was that there was supposed to be 25 m in between each rider but of course nobody enforced it so nobody followed it and you just ended up with slow groups of people moving down the track. The parts that the group moved apart though were pretty cool.

The guys scattered down the track were pretty funny. Their roles were to yell at you through a mega phone telling you to either slow down before a big corner or to keep moving because you had slowed down so much that people had caught up to you.

We left the Great Wall and Mike recommended a place for lunch. It was a Cloisonne factory with a restaurant attached. Essentially, they take copper and turn it into amazing vases, plates, cups, etc. It's a seven step process and we had a guide take us through each of the steps - except for the firing one. The room was really hot and smoky so we just stood outside. It was pretty amazing to see the moulding and welding of the copper objects and then the intricate gluing of thousands of pieces of tiny copper on to the object to create patterns such as phoenixes and dragons (they were tiny!).

The end of the tour concluded with their showroom which had an amazing variety of Cloisonne artwork that you could purchase. One of the last steps in the process is to gold plate the Cloisonne to protect the copper. So, as you could imagine - gold plated copper = expensive. It was still brilliant to walk around and look though.

The tour was followed up by an amazing lunch. There was just so much food for two people - they just kept bringing it out!

Lunch for two right?

That's one thing we've definitely noticed about China: the servings are huge! We mentioned this to Mike and he chuckled about it and said it was because everything is made to share so everything tends to be just bigger.

After lunch Mike drove us back to our hotel via the Olympic stadium. We didn't actually get out and walk in because it was late, we were tired and it was quite busy but it was still very impressive to see from the outside.

We farewelled Mike and thanked him for the great day and then went back into our hotel room to collapse. One thing we've really noticed being in Beijing is that although we're not doing overly strenuous activities (apart from the Great Wall), we're absolutely exhausted by the afternoon because we've been out in the sun and the heat during the morning and there's hardly any shade at the tourist sites (paved courtyards everywhere) so by the afternoon you're just worn down. It seems even worse in the afternoon - the whole city just heats up and then radiates heat for the rest of the day. Hot.

Once we felt rested again we ventured out for some grub and thought we might try and catch a movie at the local cinema. First problem - finding the cinema! We googled where cinemas in Beijing were and it pointed us to a cinema the next block up from us. Fantastic! We walked up and wondered down the street, keeping an eye out for anything that was cinema-esqe. We finally asked a guy at a fancy looking hotel (MIC = 11) who wrote down the name of a shopping plaza and then gave us some directions and a little map to find it. So off we went again!

We looked at the little map and it looked like he had circled the plaza just opposite our hotel but we weren't sure so we went in and asked some guys and, yep, we'd walked 3 blocks (1.5 each way) just to find out that the plaza about 200 m across the road from us had a cinema. Awesome.

We went up and looked at what was showing. They had "Avatar: The Last Airbender" on and we thought, "Fantastic!", so we queued up to go and buy tickets. We got up the front and were told that the movie was dubbed in mandarin and there were no subtitles (MIC = 12) so watching the movie was out. On the upside, we found out the plaza offered free wifi!

After our cinema fail we went looking for some grub. Sandra wanted to go and check out the Wafujing food strip - essentially it's a long line of stalls where they cook and sell a huge variety of small foods such as chicken skewers, dumplings and caramlised fruit. We also discovered that they sold skewered snakes and scorpions and some other weird looking things that we weren't too keen on. Umm... thanks but no thanks folks! We'll go find something that looks a little more familiar...

We went back into the plaza where the cinema was as there was a food court and grabbed some grub from there. It was pretty amusing trying to ask the vendors what the dishes were and what meats were in the dish (MIC = 14). I think we did ok considering the language barriers.

And that's pretty much the summary of day 4. Until next time...

Day 3

We started the morning off with writing our recap of the day 2 events for this blog. Unfortunately, this didn’t work so well, as the browser could not show blogger.com due to the internet big brother here in China. Fail. However, we ended up going through Sandra's work instead. Take that China internet filter!

We'd arranged to go to the Great Wall tomorrow, so we decided to just go around town for the day. After just getting out of the hotel, this guy starts talking to us. First to me in English, then to Sandra in Chinese. Mistaken Identity Count 3 (MIC 3). Ok, I've heard that Chinese people like to practice their English, so whatever. This guy is an art student, and "luckily for us" the exhibition he was in closes today. Hmm, not so into the art, but ok, let's see what you've done.

So we go with this guy and his chick to the 5th floor of a hotel to see his "exhibition". Looks like some students just hung up some paintings in the back of their classroom to me, but whatever. It came as no surprise that this was all a sales pitch. No thanks dude, good luck with it. When we asked if we could take his picture, he said no, and disappeared.

We then went towards the Forbidden City. On the way, this other guy started talking to us. MIC 4. Ok, cool, he seems nice. He then starts telling us about how he's a teacher, and is coming to Australia soon. Cool, what do you do? "I'm an art teacher, come see my work". *Scratch head*, wait a second... Can I take your picture? "Ah, no, my mother says that it will steal my soul". Hmm, much how like you are trying to steal our money.

LIE: "Sorry, we just bought some stuff by those students over there."
"The ones on the 5th floor of the hotel?"
"Uhh.....Yep".

So after having enough of the Beijing art world, we finally made it to the entrance to the Forbidden City. Hey, this place it pretty nice. Not many people, and cheap too. Very peaceful. Wait up, this isn't part of the Forbidden City, it's just some gardens.


That massive horde of people over there is the entrance to the Forbidden City. Bugger, we'll come back on Monday when people are back at work.

Massive queue!

After giving up on the Forbidden City for the day, we made our way to some comfy benches for some more chillout time in the gardens of peace, before heading into some small sidestreet food place for some authentic grub. Tasty. (MIC 5).


Since our hotel is right on the Wangfujing strip (awesome shopping place), we gave that a go. Not as many iPhone 4 cases as you'd think. A few cases of MIC here. Let's say MIC 6. We did find the most awesome bakery product ever:

Also, what would you buy here:

The night time entertainment was going to be a live show called "The Legend of Kung Fu". We booked at the hotel and got them to write down the address so that we could cab it there. We got told that it should be no more than 30RMB. The cabby said no less than 50. How about 30? No. (MIC 7). Ok, screw your cab, we'll walk. We have 2 hours, and it'll be a great way to see more of the city. Besides, how hard could it be to find?


After 13 sets of directions, and 1 hour and 50 minutes later, we were walking down what should hopefully be the right street. We were still not 100% sure if this was the right way, and even less sure if we would recognise the place when we saw it. But then:

Yeah, pretty sure that's it. In your face cabby!


We were expecting a martial arts display but this ended up being more of a cross between martial arts and performance theatre. Still, pretty good I have no idea how it shapes up to regular theatre (being the cultured guy I am and all), but I enjoyed it.

The walk back was pretty cool. Night walk! Although it did unfortunately bring out the beggers. Damn beggers. Some just don't leave you alone. Being white in Beijing just makes me feel like a walking magnetic dollar symbol. One distrubing scene was when we passed what looked like a pile of human bones. As we got closer, we realised it was some rake-thin child when they blinked. Pretty full on stuff. And on that cheerful note... until tomorrow!

Day 2

Woke up, packed up again and headed out to the Sydney International Airport for our flight to Beijing. Had completely forgotten how hideous the queues for international travel were!

Luckily we never had to wait too long. Had a very nutritious breakfast of chicken kebab and then headed into customs. After we got through customs we remembered that you can’t take more than 100 ml of liquids with you and then had to drink 0.5 a litre of water in the space of about 5 minutes before we went through security. I was pretty full.

While checking in we had our first incident of mistaken identity. In the line, Sandra rolled over a broken piece of someone else’s suitcase and had some Chinese lady speak to her in Chinese to tell her that her suitcase had broken. Sorry lady, no Chinese here.

Mistaken identity count 1.

Flight was good albeit boring – I guess that happens when you have to spend 10 hours on a plane. Steve wasn’t feeling too well on the flight though, not travel sick but he just had a dull headache for the last half of the flight which is always fun. Watched Alice in Wonderland, Aliens vs Monsters. The most annoying part of the flight so far has been the never ending queue for the loo when I had to go. I think it took me 15 minutes before I got in for a pee.

In summary, long flights = Fail, travel snacks = Awesome!

Our flight had a one hour stopover in Shanghai at 7:00 which was pretty crazy. We got told pretty much no information about what we had to do other than we had to go through immigration and then enter the “transit area” before returning back to the plane. So, we walked the 0.5 km of the terminal to the immigration and were chatting with some other confused travellers whom weren’t sure what the deal was and then they showed us these handwritten cardboard boarding passes they’d been given for the connection to Beijing that we didn’t have.

That was bad. So, we turned around, walked the 0.5 km back to the gate just to find that there was nobody there apart from a little Chinese man whom couldn’t do anything to help us. Although it was hilarious have him talk to Sandra in Chinese, and look strangely at her when she didn’t reply.

Mistaken identity count 2.

Traipsed the 0.5 km back to immigration to find that another plane had arrived while we were gone and the queue was now three times as long (oh yeah – another queue). At the immigration desk we asked the lady what was going on and she told us there would be a man with a sign to direct us to our next flight. She was lovely – they had little feedback buttons on each of their work stations. We gave her an awesome : )

We walked out and found the man with the sign. He was conveniently placed between some pylons in a large area, so we actually walked past him at first. He directed us down to the domestic terminal transit area where we approached the airport staff and got asked where our little boarding passes were. Umm....we never got them but here are our old ones! He gave a bit of a “stupid aliens” look, pulled out a massive stack of the boarding passes, filled in two for us and then waved us through. Hooray!

Made our way to the exit gate (another 0.5 km) and, needless to say by the time we got there we were pretty hot and sticky as the local temperature in Shanghai was about 28 degrees. Boarded the same plane we’d just left an hour ago, back into our same seats again for the two hour transfer to Beijing *groan*.

Finally arrived in the big smoke (literally), and made our way from the gate to the luggage area (not quite 0.5 km again but close). Picked up our luggage, I attempted to call our hotel using the international sim card and failed so we just decided to wing it. Followed the crowd out into the main terminal and fumbled our way along to an atm. The first one we tried was an epic fail – Steve put in our card, requested the cash, pulled out the card and...nothing. Nothing at all. We’re assuming that the atm wasn’t happy with international cards (as there were two and we used this one because the HSBC one was busy) but we’re waiting to check our bank account to make sure it didn’t just randomly spit the money out after we left...

Second attempt was slightly better than the first. Put in our card and then realised that it wouldn’t let us access our cheque account and the savings account had a balance of about $50 so had to pull out ye old Commonwealth Bank Travel Money card. Hooray for preloaded cards. Got out our hard found cash and joined the mob in the taxi queues. I don’t think I’ve ever heard as much beeping in a such a short period of time. The term “organised chaos” comes to mind.

Finally made our way to the front of the queue, got in a cab, handed him the hotel address in Chinese (which was totally convenient. Cheers Waz!), and were on our way. Unsurprisingly, the cab prioritised seat covers over seat belts, and proceeded to drive us to the hotel “China cabby” style. Since it was still hot outside (even though it was night time), we had the windows down, so we could take in all the ‘fresh’ smells that Beijing had to offer.

We finally made it to the hotel, and got here just before the reception closed. The lady managed to talk us into becoming VIP members (which gave us even more discount and breakfast for all 5 days). At this stage, we were buggered. It was about 1 a.m. local time by the time we got to bed, which equals about 3 a.m. Hobart time. Finally, sleep....

By the way, hotel room has an internal window into the toilet straight from the bedroom. Class.

Day 1

Nothing exciting to report so far. Flight from Hobart to Sydney was delayed by half an hour due to strong winds in Sydney earlier in the day. Arrived around 10:00, picked up our luggage and found our way to the Formule 1 Hotel to catch some zzz’s. About 11:00 by the time we got into bed – definitely past bed time. I can tell it’s going to take a bit of time to adjust to standard double beds again - we’re definitely spoilt at home having a ginormous bed.

I hate to say it, but iPhones are awesome for travelling. For example, finding hotels...

The beginning

Hey Team,

Being the sad sad man I am, I'm here at work creating the start of this blog. We're about to start a wicked lunch provided by Dave.

So, really, this is just here so I can tell you this exists!