Xi'an Adventures...

Hello friends!

Well, Martin and I have been in Xi'an for almost 2 weeks now (aaargh!) and the only sightseeing we've done was accomplished in 2 days! The reason we're still here is that we've been struggling to get a train ticket out of here... we refused to pay the Y40 surcharge the hostel asks so instead had to spend hours in fat queues (on different days), putting up with the stinky stale smokey air and fighting with locals for precious tickets. We eventually got a ticket - but not to the place we want!! So now we're off on Saturday to Lanzhou, the most polluted city in the world - quite a tourist pull hey?? When we arrive there, there are no plans for sightseeing, we're just going to hang in the train station until we can get tickets for an onward journey!

So, about Xi'an. We've actually been having a lovely time in this city. It's smaller and cleaner than others we've been to, and the youth hostel we're in is a nice place just to read books and relax. The area we're in is unfortunately a bit touristy, but by walking a little way out we've found sidestreets and alleys that ask us the local price for food and other things. If we were to eat in the restaurants around our youth hostel we'd be paying through the nose!! Too many tourists who come with too much money :)

The view from our hostel: (The Bell Tower)


The first few days we were here were rather manic, we met 3 Chinese guys (Gavin, Ben and Jiang) who were sharing our dorm room and got taken under their wings! They were really cool - students from Shanghai - but had a knack of spending lots and lots of money!! The first night we met them, they took us out for a really fancy meal with so much food we almost popped! Of course, in true Chinese style, they wouldn't let us pay anything. From that moment on they clearly decided we needed lots of help and company. The company was great, the help we didn't need, but it was still a fun 3 days.

Day 1:

I met the nice Chinese guys by chatting to them in our room, while Martin read his book outside. They were full of questions about foreign tourists and foreigners studying Chinese in Asia as they study marketing and advertising and wanted opinions and views on various matters. I was exhausted after hours of being plied with questions, so was quite relieved when Martin joined us and I could sit back and just listen for a while. That evening they took us out for dinner, which we ate with gusto (not having seen food like that since eating with our Zhengzhou family!).

Day 2:

We were woken at 7:30am with Jiang fully dressed and ready for the day of sightseeing. Luckily we didn't feel too bad about letting them down as Ben was still in bed, just as "lazy" as us! After a very quick shower, much to their amusement (Chinese people generally only shower/wash in the evenings), we were ready. Martin grabbed us a quick breakfast from a vendor at the bus station (sweet buns, boiled eggs and processed meat sausages), and from there we boarded the tour bus to the various sights around Xi'an.

First stop: Huaqing Hot Springs:



The Huaqing Hot Spring is famed for both its dainty spring scenery and the romantic love story of Emperor Xuanzong (685-762) and his concubine Yang Guifei in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It is said that King You built a palace here during the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century BC-711 BC). Additions were subsequently made by the First Emperor Qing (259 BC-210BC) and Emperor Wu during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24). During his reign, the Emperor Xuanzong spent dizzying amounts of his funds to build a luxurious palace, changing its name to Huaqing Hot Spring or Huaqing Palace. Over the course of 41 years, he visited the palace as many as 36 times. The palace thus has a history of 3,000 years and the hotspring a history of 6,000 years!



The hot springs were also the temporary residence of Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party during the world-famous Xian Incidence in 1936. We found this the most interesting because of Chiang Kai-shek's connection with Taiwan. If you can't remember who he is, this will help: He was a Chinese military and political figure who led the Nationalists against the rising Communist forces and was driven from the mainland to Taiwan (1949), where he served as president of Nationalist China until his death.

Second stop: Terracotta Warriors:



The Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses are the most significant archeological excavations of the 20th century. Work is ongoing at this site, which is around 1.5 kilometers east of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum, Lintong County, Shaanxi province. Upon ascending the throne at the age of 13 (in 246 BC), Qin Shi Huang, later the first Emperor of all China, had work begun on his mausoleum. It took 11 years to finish. It is speculated that many buried treasures and sacrificial objects had accompanied the emperor in his after life. A group of peasants uncovered some pottery while digging for a well nearby the royal tomb in 1974. It caught the attention of archeologists immediately. They came to Xian in droves to study and to extend the digs. They had established beyond doubt that these artifacts were associated with the Qin Dynasty (211 --206 BC).



We thought the terracotta warriors were just amazing. I can't believe that some rich arrogant emperor just decided that he would be buried in the same style and magnificence that he was used to in life. Apparently, his tomb (which has not been excavated) was created with palaces, outhouses etc etc and he even had prisoners and place 'maids' buried alive with him.

After the exhausting day of rushing from place to place, we took the bus home. I was grateful as I felt that my brain was just too full of information and historical facts!! Again, we went out for dinner with our friends, and this time they actually let us pay for ourselves... we half-regretted it afterwards though - we could have eaten for 3 or 4 days with the total of our bill!!!

Day 3:

Today we finally convinced our friends that we were too tired to go sightseeing with them again (actually we just felt that we couldn't afford it!!), but agreed to have dinner with them and take a trip to the local supermarket.
Dinner was wonderful (so was the cost!!) and our trip to the supermarket ended in such a lovely suprise. When we got back to the youth hostel, the three boys whipped out presents for Martin and I, as well as a bottle of red wine and a birthday cake!!!
Such lovely guys. We went through to the restaurant area and proceeded to enjoy glasses of wine and vanilla sponge cake. Gavin gave me a watch-ring, and Martin got a Chinese flute instrument thing.

After our days with the Shanghai boys, we spend a few days simply reading books and catching up on emails. The western food in the youth hostel is so tempting - but we managed to only splurge on our birthdays :)

So yes, it was my birthday on Saturday August 26th. I didn't have the most spectacular of days, and managed to cry many times (feeling rather far away from home, family and friends), but wonderful Martin helped me feel better!! That evening was nice, we'd met some Dutch, French and an Australian guy earlier and we sat around chatting and having beers in the common room. Once they discovered it was my birthday they insisted that I have my own beer (I don't really like the stuff) and tried to convince me to come out with them to a club later on. I was the only girl among them all and felt that Martin would have a much better time without me (just some good old men-bonding time) so I ducked out of going and went to bed earlier (or that was the plan - instead I met a nice girl in the bathroom when I went for a shower at 2am, and we chatted for a good hour, and by the time I got into bed the noisy boys were home and I had to listen to Martin's account of the evening :)

Martin's birthday (Monday August 28th) was a bit more eventful, we spent the afternoon riding bikes along the Xi'an city wall, which was great fun. We also splurged on a wonderful fry-up breakfast and pizza in the evening.



The real treat for our birthdays is still to come however. Our wonderful parents have both given us some money to spend on a fancy hotel and evening meal. We've decided to do this in Xi'an as we were walking past the Hyatt Regency (oh yes darling!!) the other day and just couldn't resist. So this is where we'll be larney-ing it up tomorrow night:



We're so excited... its more than 16 times the price we usually spend for a night's accomodation, but we'er really looking forward to all the luxury! We get 24hrs free soft drinks, a cocktail and snack bar in the evening and breakfast in the morning. We're going to check in tomorrow morning really early and spend the whole day in the hotel!! I'm planning on waltzing around in my robe finding the swimming pool, spa, tennis court etc etc........ HORRAY!!! Thank you mum, dad, Jan and Frank - you're wonderful :)

So that's Xi'an for you. We'll be back after the visit to the hotel and the trip to pollution-ville!!!

Living with Locals in Zhengzhou!

Well, after days of feeling so exhausted from being taken from here to there to everywhere, its nice to be in Xi'an going at our own pace again. In Xi'an you ask?? Yes, that's where we are. We had no chance to email during our time in Zhengzhou - we had no time to do anything really. Read on and I will explain...

Last week Friday, Martin and I were on a train from Taiyuan to Zhengzhou when we met a lovely young girl. She told us her name was Apple and she was 9 years old. Her English was so cute to hear... and really rather good. She was taken by Martin, playing games with him and showing him all her recent purchases (she and her parents had been travelling for 10 days during her holidays). Anyway, we spent the day chatting to her and enjoying her monkey antics (climbing all over the sleeper beds in the train!). When we were about 2 hours away from Zhengzhou, she suddenly asked us to come and stay with her and her family when we arrived. We didn't really know how to respond (what if her parents had no idea and we just followed them off the train... oops!) so remained vague and eventually I mentioned her parents. "Oh yes" she said and scurried off. Flip! She hadn't even checked with them yet!! But it all turned out ok, she came back (with mum and dad in tow), introduced us all and said that her father wanted to welcome us to his home. How lovely!! We were still a little sceptical but accepted their invitation (free accomodation, yeah!!)... and with that... we had new friends.

When we arrived in Zhengzhou at about 7:30 that evening we were bustled through the crowds outside the train station, onto the bus, and into their house. They lived on the top floor of a 7 storey building with no elevator!! Try walking up all those stairs with backpacks and daypacks and plastic bags full of water etc... nice and sweaty!!! Their apartment was lovely, clean and quite large for a Chinese family I think. Apple had her own bedroom, there was a lounge, a kitchen, a reading room and a little bathroom. Pretty much like something we would have rented in Taiwan I thought.

As soon as we'd set down our bags we were instructed to wash hands and faces and then we set out again to eat dinner. They took us to a lovely restaurant where we ate hand-pulled noodles, duck and all sorts of other culinary delights. Martin was immediately roped in to drinking baijou (strong clear liquor - about 45%!) with Apple's father, but I managed to opt out and sat with Apple drinking pineapple pop!! Of course after the meal, they wouldn't let us pay for any of it (typical of the Chinese when they invite people out to dine with them). And that was the course of the next few days as well... the whole time we were there they didn't let us pay for anything... we ate with them, drank with them, slept in their house... all for free. Such generous and lovely people!!

When we got back to the house we were told that we were sleeping in the parents double bed. What?? Such generosity! Mum was going to sleep with Apple on her bed and Dad was choosing the couch. We tried to protest but Apple told us very firmly that her father loves sleeping on the bed... "he always sleep there, he very like look tv!!"

On Saturday we were woken at 8am for a breakfast of fried eggs, Chinese bread (very heavy, quite dry and fried but delicious all the same) and warm milk made from powder. We weren't allowed to help clean up at all and just when we thought we'd like very much to crawl back into bed and get some more sleep we were told what was going to happen for the day. That morning we were going to see Renmin Amusement Park with Apple and her father, after that we would have lunch, then go and see Apple's English school. Ok?? Although we didn't have much choice it was nice being with people who really knew the city and all the nice places to go.

Renmin Park was fun... free entrance, but then all the rides and entertainment cost a bomb!! We had fun wandering around (staying under the lovely trees trying to be cooler) and munching icecreams. Martin and I took Apple on a ride similar to the London Eye, from which we could see all over the city. We also went to an ice-sculpture exhibition held right in the middle of the park. We walked through thick doors wondering if the room could possibly be cold enough to keep ice sculptures in the middle of China's summer heat... but the answer hit is in the face - it was freezing inside!! We had to wear thick winter coats which kept us warm on top but our poor bare feet didn't enjoy it very much. The sculptures were ok, but I thought they might be a bit more spectacular. Apple enjoyed herself though, running around and wanting to be photographed with all the sculptures :)

After the park we went to Apple's grandparents house (on her mother's side) to have lunch with the family. Her grandparents were really sweet, not a word of English but were always smiling at us and laughing when we said things. They enjoyed watching us eat with chopsticks (thank goodness we've mastered the art after so many years in Taiwan!!). Once lunch was over it was time to move on again (the Chinese never sit still!!), and we were off back to our home. From there we split into 2 parties. Martin and our adopted father were off to the train station to buy tickets for us to Xi'an, and Apple and I were headed to her English school. We had a lovely walk there, and then I was deposited outside to wait for her to finish her first hour of class. I sat in the garden and relaxed for the first time that day, but was soon disturbed by the arrival of Martin and Dad. We all sat together waiting for Apple and when she came out we met her teacher and her classmates. Such a small classroom - and so different from our experiences in Taiwan I think. The school was really small with different textbooks too (more for kindergarten than 9 year olds!).
After school we walked back to the house, and spent the evening with the family eating dinner and looking through photo albums.

On Sunday Martin and I had the day to ourselves as we were going to do the tourist sightseeing thing. Zhengzhou is a perfect place to stop if you want to see the Shaolin Monastery. The Shaolin Monastery is where Zen Buddhism began and is known as the cradle of Chinese martial arts. Hundreds of boys still study various forms of kung-fu here today.

We went to the bus station to buy a one-way ticket to the monastery and ended up on a tour bus to all sorts of places we hadn't planned on seeing. Not part of the plan, but it was really fun - we felt like real Chinese tourists for the day, being rushed around from place to place following a tour guide with a big flag!! It was fun.
The stops on the way to Shaolin included a Temple, a Confucious academy (temple looking place) and a small Shaolin (just another temple really!). By the time that was over it was quite late in the day and we were itching to see the real Shaolin!! But they were interesting places and I'm glad they were included in the tour. The first temple we went to was my favourite... it's many buildings stretched up into the mountainside and it was a really lovely walk in the trees. They also had a group of four iron men statues that we had to rub - the Chinese believe that if you rub these statues and then touch a sore part of your body, that part will be healed... so dutifully rubbed ourselves all over these iron men - ha ha ha!!

We finally arrived at the Shaolin Monastery at about 3pm and had to rush to watch the last kung-fu performance of the day. That was amazing!!! These boys certainly know their stuff... we ooohed and aaahed over all their cool moves!



Talk about flexible.


After the kung-fu show we were free to wander around the area until about 6pm. There are so many things to see here that we didn't get to half of them but we really enjoyed the things we did see. My favourite was the pagoda forest... loads of pagodas all over the mountainside, so many that I'm sure you'd get lost if you were there alone at night!! We also bargained for some beads from vendors, and I now have a lovely set of black wooden beads adorning my wrist!

Boys practicing outside one of the temples.


The pagoda forest.


Once the tour of the monastery was over, we jumped back on the bus and set out for home. I'd even begun to miss our adopted Chinese family over the course of the day. We got back at about 8pm feeling extreemly guilty as the family had been waiting for us since 6pm! Oops. But all was forgotten soon enough and we sat down to have supper with them and share our stories from the day. We were so exhausted that we could barely make conversation by the end of the evening, so excused ourselves and went off to bed.

On Monday we'd thought to have a little sleep-in as our train was only at midday... but that was not to be! Woken again at about 7:30 our 'dad' had breakfast ready on the table and continued to hurry us up all morning so that we were at the train station at about 10am. Two hours early but otherwise ok. They were such a wonderful family and took such good care of us that we can't really complain about being woken up too early!!

So what we've concluded is that the Chinese are the most hospitable and lovely people... you just have to find the right ones :)

The Grasslands of Inner Mongolia...

So we're back... back from the green green grass of Huitenxile (if you can't pronounce that don't worry! It's a bit like this: "hey-ten-she-ler").



Martin and I had a great time, only slightly marred by the annoying lack of tall grass. Before we left Hohhot on Tuesday, I had images of riding horses bareback through long grasses for miles on end. The grasslands are nothing like that. The horses we rode were led by people and cost a pretty penny, and the grass was so short it was as if a giant walked the lands each morning with an enormous lawn-mower!! But it was lots of fun nonetheless.

We left our hotel at about 9am in a little minibus filled with the two of us, 2 Japanese guys and a South Korean guy. (We later met up with another minibus with 2 Dutch girls, a Korean/American guy and an older Korean lady) Our guide spoke wonderful English so that was a huge plus! But he was rather obsessed with getting us to sing songs in the car on the way there... he kept saying "Japan sing song now", then "Ok now you Korea!". It was very funny, the entire 2-day trip he refered to people by their nationality... screaming "Oi Holland, come here!" or whatever. This country-name-calling didn't extend to Martin and I however, for some strange reason he'd decided that we were a lovely couple and needed special treatment - he refered to us as "happy family". Sweet.

After a 2-hour ride through some gorgeous lands (mountains, green hills, rivers etc) we finally arrived at the gatepost to the grasslands. It was so beautiful, just miles upon miles of grassy plains in all directions, sheep and horses dotted all over and nothing else to be seen. As we drove further in we started to see small groupings of yurts here and there. Some were rather touristy, more like round concrete houses than anything else but, luckily for us, we stayed in slightly more authentic ones. They still had concrete floors but with material sides and roof. The "happy family" were given a yurt all to ourselves... continuing the special treatment (I'm not complaining!), which was nice because we could then make a nice big bed in the middle so we could sleep away from the sides (where all the nasty bugs live!).



After we'd all settled in, we were given lunch in a big communal yurt in the centre of our little 'village'... I went in rather sceptical as I'd heard from the American's we met in Datong that Mongolian food consisted purely of mutton, with salty milk tea on the side! True enough, there was the mutton, all on the bone ready to be gnawed. But luckily enough, there were enough tasty side dishes to fill all of us - lots of veggies and other Chinese delights. (I must say though, that Martin really enjoyed the mutton, I think he was filling up after almost 3 years of no lamb!!) I had been craving steamed buns before we arrived and there were even some of them on the table for me!! Lovely lunch. Pity I can't say the same about the milk tea... lovely black tea with milk, all hot and ready to be drunk, with salt instead of sugar!!! What's going on??? It's a traditional Mongolian drink which is served throughout the day and with every meal... but I just couldn't stomach it. Even when the wind picked up and it was really cold outside I couldn't bring myself to drink it, I would rather have plain hot water!!!

After lunch we were given free time until the evening, and after chatting with all our new tour buddies, we all decided that this was a perfect time to go horse riding.
I was excited, having not been on a horse since my own horse died when I was about 15 years old. 10 years later... could I still ride? Did I still know what to do? Help! But Martin was even worse off... he'd never ridden before!
Neither of us needed to have worried however... the Mongolian horses were really small and we weren't even allowed to ride freely... we were all led by the horses owner! A little disappointing but nothing compared to what happened to Martin and I next...

We all set off in a big group, all of us planning on a one-hour ride (too expensive for any longer!). Martin and I soon noticed that we were lagging behind the others though, and wondered why?? My horse, poor thing, kept stopping and trying to turn around as her foal had not followed us so she was worried. We knew our guide had spoken to the two people leading our horses and told them to keep the "happy family" together, but this was still no reason to seperate us from the rest of the group (also only riding for 1 hour). After a while we were turned around and headed off back to the yurts, strange considering we'd only been riding for about 20 minutes. After taking us back past the yurts, collecting the foal on the way, I made a comment about the time and they agreed to continue walking us a little further.

This entire time the woman leading my horse bugged me by banging my leg and asking for money. We thought that they were trying to say that after the ride, we should give them the money directly instead of giving it to the offical guy back at camp. I had no problem with that, thinking that unless we did that they wouldn't see half the money we paid, but was still really irritated by the constant leg-banging!

As we walked across the silly little bit of grass behind our yurts, us thoroughly annoyed that we hadn't stuck with our friends, Martin's horse suddenly fell over!! I'd noticed it's leg was a little strange but hadn't realised it was that serious. Poor Martin got such a shock, but luckily didn't get hurt (he just leaped off the horse like an experienced rodeo clown!). After that, plus the troubles with the annoying woman leading my horse, we decided that we just wouldn't ride anymore. I got off and we started walking back to our 'home'. They followed, of course, not really understanding why we were cross. The guy just kept asking for Martin to get on another horse he had standing by, but he was frustrated and angry and refused to even talk to him. When we got back, we called our guide to help with interpreting and after many a word we finally settled on a price (much lower than our hour ride should have costed) and told the man to fix his poor horsey!

Once the money was settled, we sat down outside to take in a bit more of the gorgeous countryside around us.... that didn't happen however, as the rain clouds rolled in and within about 2 minutes it was pouring! The weather changes so quickly out there.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with our new friends inside a yurt and waiting for supper. At 6pm we were driven to a place to watch horse racing and wrestling... but that didn't happen either! The rain had made the ground really wet and slippery so it was too dangerous. Never mind... back to the yurts for dinner and some Mongolian music/alcohol/dancing.

The dinner was nice, pretty much the same as lunch (and more yummy milk tea!), but it was unfortunately accompanied by the strongest, most foul liquor I've ever had to drink. Nobody could bow out of drinking it as it is considered a Mongolian custom, and is presented to you by brightly dressed 'Mongols' with sashes... but I did at least manage to swop some of mine with my new Korean friend and fill my glass with water (sneaky!!). The custom dates back to the days of old Ghengis Khan, when he apparently out-drank an opponent and thereby won a battle before it had even began.

Later that evening Martin and I enjoyed some star-gazing (in the cities you just don't see them!) and then played cards with our two new Dutch friends.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am (as instructed by our guide) and went out to watch the sunrise. It was freezing!! I couldn't believe how cold it was... and the annoying thing was that the sun didn't bloody-well rise till almost 6am!! But by that time we were already back in bed... we'd given up after about 30 minutes. It was lovely and quiet out there, but sitting in a duvet watching the sky not change from bluey-orange to redy-orange wasn't that fun.

When we got up again for breakfast at about 8am, our guide told us that because we were the "happy family" and he felt so bad about our terrible horse ride the day before, he'd paid for us to go out for another hour. What a lovely guy. So off we went... riding lovely fit horses out into the wilderness (if you manage to avoid seeing the windmills all over the place!). We had a great time, got sunburnt, and came back feeling wonderful. While we waited for the Korean guys to come back from their 2 hour ride, Martin and I went for a gorgeous walk out into the grasslands... we met a lovely shepard there and just enjoyed the sunshine. It was so lovely that we almost got left behind - we had to practically run back to meet the car at 11:30!

Once back in Hohhot, we spent time just wandering around the city, buying food in the supermarket ready for the train journey, and doing nothing much else!!!

And that's the story of the grasslands...

From Datong to Hohhot...

Hello from Datong - the third most polluted city in the world!!!

Martin and I have enjoyed our time here, despite the non-changing gray skies and constant need to cough!! We're leaving this evening on a train bound for Hohhot in Inner Mongolia... from there we're hoping to take tours into the grasslands and drink yak milk while riding horses with our hair flowing behind us like in the days of old!!

Datong has been fun... we've done most of the touristy things there are to do here, and done it nice and slowly too. (I've been a little sick so it's nice not to have to run around getting everything done in one day!).

The day we arrived after our night train from Beijing, we pretty much did nothing. Wonderful. We slept, found the internet cafe, chatted to the foreigners in our room (an Italian girl and a French guy), and ate delicious knife-cut noodle from a smiley-faced man in a dirty little shop on the side of the road. The method they used to create this culinary delight was really fascinating... the chef moulds a huge piece of dough into a long poo shape (sorry no other way to describe it!) and then uses a huge grater thing to slice pieces off... the pieces fly through the air into a huge bowl of boiling water. After they're cooked, he puts some into a bowl, adds a meaty sauce and a boiled egg - and its ready!! Yum yum.

On Thursday we got on a local bus, off to do some sightseeing (the only reason foreigners come to this smoggy city). Located at the southern foot of Wuzhou Mountain about 16 km west of Datong, are the beautiful Yungang Grottoes. They were built against the mountain and extend about 1 km from east to west. The construction of the caves began in 453 and took 40,000 people 50 years to complete. The 53 grottoes in Yungang Grottos include about 1,000 niches with more than 51,000 statues – a treasure-trove of cave art that combines traditional Chinese art forms with foreign influence, particularly Greek and Indian. The tallest sculpture here is a 17-meter high Buddha, and Martin and I had a hilarious time trying to get a picture of it with us in the foreground :)

The big Buddha looking all tall!


Yesterday we were up for some more exciting sightseeing, but decided to stick to what the city itself had to offer, rather than take a bus for over an hour out of the city. After walking down a rather deserted and skanky looking road, in what we thought was the direction of the city centre, it started to rain. We were hungry (we'd missed the free breakfast provided by the hotel because we didn't wake up in time!), tired of walking and frustrated at not seeing anything that resembled a bustling city centre. We waited out the rain under the overhang of an old half-torn-down building and ate dry bread with some spam sausages (oooh mouth-watering!).
After the rain stopped, we set out again... and horray, we found a street that looked more like what we wanted. Managed to get on a bus into town and thought our troubles were over!

The only problem was I was getting tired and grumpy. Still not over my fluey sickness, I just felt drugged and could hardly put one foot in front of the other! I needed food... the only problem was it was that silly time between lunch and early dinner when nothing is open. The stalls on the sides of the road close, the restaurants shut their doors and us poor foreigners go hungry!! Martin decided he needed to look after his woman... and summoned up some ladies on the street to help us find some food! (seriously, usually he just calls out to any old person and they rush to his aid... very handy). Soon we were surrounded by 3 eager ladies all wanting to try out their English skills. We ended up spending the day with a lovely 20 year old called Shan-Shan. She said it was her first opportunity to speak to English people so she was excited to practice her English.

She was so sweet, walked around the city centre with us all day - showing us the sights. We saw various temples, a drum tower and the Nine-dragon Wall. I found the wall the most interesting... it was built in 1392 to conceal the palace of a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) prince. The walls were built all over the country during Imperial China to hide various palaces and temples from the common people. The one we saw is the biggest and best preserved wall left in China.

The nine-dragon wall:


Today we finally got up in time to make the free breakfast... and it actually wasn't that bad. We had steamed buns, boiled eggs and a fried dough thing that reminded me a lof of koeksisters back in South Africa! Yum. Martin did a good job of pilfering some extra eggs for our lunch and we left the 5th floor full and ready for the day.
Not that we've done much... packed up our stuff and walked all of 5 minutes down to this internet cafe! Taxing. Later we'll pop to the supermarket (we're going to find an electrical mosquito repellant thing... no malaria for us!!).

That's all for now... Inner Mongolia here we come :)

Dandong, Chengde and back to Beijing!

More news from Kate and Martin is here!!

Dandong:

Our last day in Dandong, before leaving for Chengde, included a trip to find the "Museum to Commemorate Aiding Korea Against US Agression". This is a story all of its own... a story of pain, suffering, and hunger - on our part!!! We were supposed to take a bus (directed by some dude on the internet) out of Dandong and get off at the sports stadium. Simple (supposedly!).

However, we ended up on a 2 hour bus journey so far out of Dandong that we started driving through potholes and flooded roads in rural China. No sports stadium in sight. Martin even forced us to get off at one stage (note: it was POURING with rain! serious thunderstorm) to investigate a building that looked like the one he'd seen on the internet... unfortunately it was only a school, surrounded by a moat of fast flowing flood water (which we crossed... me in trainers!).

What to do? After securing the help of the bus driver, the bus ticket lady and many locals from the streets, we decided to take the same bus back into Dandong and try again. We'd tried all our Chinese, even drawn a little picture of a fighter jet, and American, Korean and Chinese flag - all to no avail. No one had any clue of where we were trying to go.

At last, when almost back at the bus station where we'd started our journey, a guy pointed out the elusive sports stadium! Success!! We jumped off the bus feeling elated and ready to see the museum.

But Murphy was out to get us again! After another hour walk around following all the instructions from the internet and even searching up random streets we were still no closer to finding the damn museum. The only thing we could see was a huge memorial column on a hill. It couldn't be that we thought.

But in the end... it bloody was. After snacking on a few sandwiches we'd made earlier, we climbed up the hill and discovered to our frustration that the museum was there all the time!! By now it was 4:30pm and it shut at 5pm so we were reluctant to spend a lot of money on the entrance fee to get in. Martin did manage a good wander around and an oggle at all the manly machines outside though :)

Chengde:

We took an overnight train to Chengde... a great idea because it saves money for a hotel and we wake up in the new town early in the morning ready for the day! This was the plan, however, we made the critical mistake of picking the cheap upper bunks. They were stinking hot and mosquitoes ate us while we stewed in our own sweat (like when you wake up from smelling your own odour, sweating in a sticky tent). The fans turned off at 10pm and all the Chinese people wanted the windows closed... why? We're not so sure. We even sneakily tried to open the windows after everyone had gone to sleep, but the old man underneath us decided to close them again! Grrrr...

In Chengde we had a massive slice of sightseeing pie, but at a cost. Oh the pain of handing over all our hard earned cash to get a glipse of a temple and some mountains! We went to the "Temple of Universal Peace", which is one of the twelve temples built on the outskirts of Chengde during the Qing dynasty. Inside we were treated to the TALLEST, oh yes, TALLEST wooden Buddha in the WORLD. ("The Goddess of Mercy" rising to a staggering 22.3 metres, with 42 arms and weighing 110 tons, even if this was mostly dust!)

After this we headed for the Imperial Summer Villa, a vast area of land that is walled in and was home and office to many emperors, including Martin's favorite emperor who was one of the emperors during China's imperial boom period.

While wandering the acres of beautiful pagoda-dotted land in the Villa, we ate disgusting stawberry jam-filled rolls that we'd bought thinking they were normal plain ones in the shop! We went for a paddle in a paddle boat around the lake, saw some wild reindeer with massive antlers and generally had a relaxing day. We went for a walk into the outer regions of the villa (the mountainous untouristy areas), not bothering to take the internal bus (too expensive). What luck... we trekked for some time and then came upon a beautiful pagoda on top of a hill where we watched the sunset behind the mountains. Quite stunning! The perfect end to a perfect day.

We left Chengde the next day and now find ourselves super relaxed in a cheap Beijing hostel. Tomorrow we're going to get our jabs (the last ones) and then it's off to Datong. We haven't read too much about it but know that it boasts cheap accomodation and some fun stuff to see, including another part of the Great Wall and some caves and more temples. Cool.

So that's all our news for now.
Bye bye xxx