Shanghai

After another surprisinly good sleep (this time on the 'hard sleeper') we read our book and sat opposite a Chinese lady who said she wanted us to teach her English and kept passing us notes (strange but quite sweet!)! We exchanged email addresses, but hopefully we won't hear anything more!

We arrived in Shanghai with no clue where we were going to stay that night. It sounds good at the time to wing it but when time gets on you would just rather know! Anyway Emma led the way this time and after booking our train to Hong Kong and we were in a hostel in no time. Shanghai's lack of tourist information was most unhelpful however. Apparently its 'Tourism month' but we did not find one tourist information and no-one had a map!! Thanks for nothing!

Shanghai is so westernised in terms of shops (and people) but it does take it 100 times further. There are like 100 massive shopping malls. Not just 1 Gucci shop but 10! But it also means we are no longer being stared, which is a welcome break!

We went to the French Concession for dinner (which has French architecture but after hours of walking we couldn't find it!) - edit we found it the next day (not worth it). We eventually went to 'Roys' for dinner. It did have a more western menu (it actually served spring rolls!) so we enjoyed dinner and beer for about 8 quid.

Whilst we were walking around we saw this picture outside a cafe... what does it say or mean?!?!



Day 2 went to find the 55DSL shop hoping for a bargain but the t-shirts were 58 quid!! You're avin a laff! I didn't say that though - don't think they'd understand my Welsh bristolian!

Later we went over to the business area where all the cool buildings are on the post card (ie TV tower). We decided that it worked out cheaper to have the cocktails on the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt than the TV tower viewing platform, so you can guess what we did! After ears popping twice we got to the top (after 3 lift changes and having to pass the posh people in the hotel (we were in shorts and flip flops)) eventually we got to the Cloud 9 bar! Views were amazing as day turned to night and the cocktails were good to!

Next day went to the old area of the city with the old markets. It was pretty nice, again with market stalls and old buildings. However western influence still takes over with MaccyD's, Starbucks and Haagen Dazs.

We knew the locals like to keep cool on their mopeds, but this takes the biscuit! See picture below!



We bought a memory card as we needed one. Now a 4b memory card in a shop here costs 70 quid! Knowing that amazon sell them for about 10 quid we didn't want to pay much so haggled to get a fake one for about 7quid. As I write this, we have had problems with it!

We headed back to the hostel in enough time to catch our train from Shanghai SOUTH station. However on arrival we were informed of the correct departure station being the other side of the city! Thankfully an English speaking Chinese lady was present as our despaire unfolded and she managed to re-arrange our train to Hong Kong for 2 nights time for no extra charge. We headed back to the hostel, complained (as they sent us to the wrong station) and got a discount for 2 more nights.

As Shanghai is expensive and we didn't have money to spend, we got up late and read our books in the nearby peoples park.

No such problems the next night catching the night train from the correct station! An 18 hour journey to Hong Kong was waiting for us!

-Observations:
Food in China is nothing like the chinese in UK. There are no spring rolls, no sweet and sour chicken and no crispy duck wraps etc. Its still very nice but not what we expected. Plus adding not understanding the menu and then being causious that you don't order pigs ear or trotter or chicken feet! The street food is really good though, all sorts of different snacks. The chinese style stuffed breads are the best!

Some chinese people do actually wear masks to help combat swine flu. We saw 3 men having a business meeting and 1 was wearing a mask - maybe he had bad breath!

Electronic items are really expensive in China! Totally unexpected as everything back home says 'made in china'!!

Xian

We could only book a soft sleeper to Xi'an which did cost more, but secretly I think we were both relieved to be facing our first 12hour train journey in comfort! Beijing west train station was HUGE! Bigger than most airports in the UK. At the station we got chatting to an Iranian couple at first and then a German girl joined us. It was a huge hall with loads of people sitting around waiting to get on their train, and we seemed to be providing the entertainment...lets stare at the westerners (although we have noticed that the Chinese are generally nosey people! They're always looking over peoples shoulders to see what they're doing)! The poor German girl got even more stares however due to her being blonde and huge titibojangles! We got chatting to an Israeli couple on the train (every nationality seems to learn English in school!) and shared our room with two Chinese guys. After a good nights sleep we arrived in Xi'an.

Our hostel was really nice, decorated authentically Chinese. We just walked round the city for our first day. We came across a pretty amazing, although incredibly hectic, Market in the Muslim quarter. Mopeds and rickshaws were trying to get down the narrow streets with market stalls on both sides and loads of people!! Something else we've noticed about china is that mopeds (mostly of which are electric) travel on the pavement beeping their horns at pedestrians, even though there is a perfectly good bit of road next to it! The food stalls in the market sold all sorts of things that were completely unrecognisable, but we did see octopus tentacles on sticks, chicken feet, pig trotters and other random meats we steered cleared of!! We did try a piece of cake on a stick (which turned out to be stodgy rice with jujube syrup - not very nice) and mutton in spices on a stick - ok. Kris was an obvious prime target for all the Market sellers as he was wearing his 'I've climbed the great wall' tshirt. They do sell all sorts of knock off things here (there wasn't much in Beijing), Northface bags and jackets and loads of tshirts. Kris did buy a Beijing Olympics tshirt!

Xi'an has a lot more hunger hatches than Beijing which made it feel more 'authentic'. We walked past some amazing looking food but had no idea how to order it. When we felt a little braver we went into one that had some seating in the back. We pointed to what we wanted and then she started chatting away in Chinese and pointing at another small menu, we thought she said something about beer so nodded. Then our food arrived and we realised that they didn't sell drinks, so we'll never know what we agreed to!! But food was only 60p each so who cares!!

We went to see the terracotta warriors on our 2nd day. We booked the trip through the hostel as you didn't save anything going yourself! As we had seen pictures they were as expected, in warehouses all lined up in their pits. The most impressive is the first warehouse, the 2nd and 3rd not so, mainly because they don't want to dig up any more warriors as the colour disappears on the terracotta within a week of hitting the air. They want to ensure they are able to preserve the colour before the dig any more up. We were also dubious when in the largest warehouse they said they had made a discovery 2 weeks ago of more soldiers, right next to the existing ones. Now, I'm not an archaeologist but hmmm...maybe I would've looked there!

That evening we went to the supermarket and found big bottles of beer for 16p! 16 pence doesn't buy you a penny sweet anymore back home so we were happy about that. Again, the beer was cheaper than water but don't worry parents, we still drink our ridiculous amount of H20!

That night we sat in the hostel bar drinking. We watched in amazement at, I'll say Americans because I can't think of another nation quite like them, eating french fries with chop sticks!! Yes that's correct. They decided that there fingers could not cope with the demands of a French fry so used chop sticks!

We played a new game called Mah-jong with a guy born in Czech, grew up in Scotland and now lives in Boston, so the accent was interesting! Even that drew a crowd and a Chinese guy couldn't help stick his oar in. Those he helped failed miserably and Kris won!

The Boston guy told us a really funny story about a guy who bought a horse in Mongolia, but you had to be there!

New day and new challenge. The challenge was the 14 km wall which surrounds the city (and protects the city from enemies! - back in the day). Emma being Emma wanted to complete the ride on a Bicycle made for 2. Yep you guessed it, as if we don't get stared at enough, we get a blue and pink coloured tandem! It was pretty fun until we reached half way and realised we had used up a lot more than half of our allowed time!! Our gentle cycle ride became a frantic peddle as we cycled away our energy to avoid a hefty fine!

We went back to the cool market and EMMA bought a Beijing Olympics tshirt (like mine!) and we bought a painting of Chinese blossom (expect that in the post folks!) before going to the station to catch our train. There is so much stuff we would have loved to buy in Xi'an but can't!

Went for a hard sleeper this time for our trip to Shanghai as it was cheaper. On seeing the carriage for the first time I thought, where do I lay an egg but it was ok! 15 rows of 3 beds one on top of the other, all in one carriage, all 'open plan' and very cosy! Being the only westerners we drank our 16p beer and played UNO, which attracted a crowd. 2 Chinese guys joined in and we ended up passing a funny few hours! When we got our 2nd beer out we got a few funny looks, one lady asked how old we were! They drink herbal tea you see.

- Observations

-Babies in China don't seem to wear nappies, instead they have slits in the front and back of their baby grows and pee and poop whenever and wherever!!
-The trains toilet 'facilities' (and most public toilets) made use of a hole in the floor and a flushing mechanism which include a bucket of water and you pouring!

Beijing

Hello! We have found a way around the Chinese blockade on blog postage...get your dad to post it! (Facebook and google blogger is blocked by China!)

Our first stop is Beijing on our 6 months trip. We arrived very early and decided it would be a good idea to walk to our hostel, which it wasn't! Especially as a Taxi would've been £1!

Our first impression of Beijing was smoggy or foggy, couldn't decide which at the time, but it is definately smog!

After a refreshing lunchtime kip we went to the Olympic area. Only costs 20 pence a tube journey so quickly utilised this strategy! We got off the tube a little too far away and had to walk along a quiet promonade heading towards the smog. As we walked towards the smog we were getting freaked out by an old guy on moped playing chinese techno music going up and down the promenade for no apparent reason!

Went inside the birdnest stadium, where we realised we were also part of the attraction for Chinese tourists as a mother asked if her little girl could have her picture taken with us - so she just plonked her down in between us and took a photo!! The stadium is impressive, as is the water cube when lit up at night, we'll post pics later.

To add to the delight of 1st day tiredness, our camera broke! Our camera had been through thick and thin with us (mainly been dropped on floor) but it just couldn't handle the sunset smog picture which broke it.

On our way back home we decided to indugle in our first Chinese meal. 2 hours after the meal I was still hungry, so that is a clue to how it went. On the menu was Lamb testicles, Cow lung + stomach + random (animal + any body part). We pointed at prawns and vegetable balls, the women looked confused and kept pointing to other pages in the menu. We told her that was all we wanted, and when it arrived we realised why she was confused!! We had a broth with only prawns (with their heads, legs and often full of their eggs) floating around a brown soup with some vegtable balls!! Yummy it was not!!

On our 2nd day we had to jump in a taxi and go to the electronics area of the city. The hotel receptionist gave us chinese writing on a piece of paper and told us to give it to a taxi driver, so we did! He got us there in one piece, but their driving is crazy!! There's no point in having lanes as they weave in and out constantly beeping their horn! But we have a new camera, although bizzarly it wasn't any cheaper than from amazon at home! After that we went to The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Sqaure.

The square was as expected, a large concrete square! The forbidden city had nice buildings but there's only so much you can hear about 'this building was used for reading', 'this one for relaxing', 'this one for...'. Its the 60 anniversary of the peoples republic in 2 weeks time but they are preparing for it outside of the forbidden city and in the square now! (surprisingly there is no mention that it's also the 20th anniversary of the Tinanmen square masacre!!!!)

The meal was more successful that evening and were given an 'english menu' when everyone else in the restaurant had a different menu (no lungs or testicles on ours!!)!

Went back to the water cube that evening to get pictures in the dark. I managed to start a craze of taking pictures while resting on a bin (makeshift tripod). I was doing it to capture night shots but the chinese starting copying and did it for all photos! Quite funny.

3rd day mainly spent deciding what to do for Xian, our next stop and great wall trip. We are booked into go on Saturday at 6:30am! Then leaving for Xian via a sleeper train, arriving early Sunday.

After this we did goto a really nice park which overlooked the city and mainly The forbidden city. But when we left the park we got stuck walking around the area because all the roads were getting closed in preparation for 60 anniversary...in 2 weeks time!!!

It was a 5.30 wake up for a 6.30 pickup to go to The Great Wall of China. We decided to book through our hostel who took us to a less touristy area. The penalty, a 3 hour minibus ride there. I have to say it was definately worth it. It was absolutely amanzing.

The first part of the wall was unrepaired so was thin in places, rocky, sometimes with no sides and a big drop! It was so steep, at times steps were as high our knees and narrow so we had to do a lot of climbing too! We took so many snaps so will post when we can! When we got to the end we took a zip line down which was brilliant fun. We were both attached to the rope. Being the first couple to go together I wondered if it was ok. The lady attendent (who was about 80), looked at us and said '2 people go faster' ! I bought my first purchase - an 'I climbed the great wall t-shirt'. As everyone knows I'm a tourist here anyway (for obvious reasons) I don't feel so much of a pratt!

In total we hiked for 8.8 kilometres which took about 4 hours at a leisurely pace. 2 other things amazed me - 1) getting a phone signal on the wall! 2) the pace the local women walked up dirt tracks on the mountain to sell us souveniers (- included champagne!)

We took a night train to Xi'an that evening (which I was very glad we made - a story for another day!) and got a suprisingly great nights sleep! So far we've found that the Chinese are an inquisitive bunch when it comes to us, the immgrant card referred to us as 'Aleins' and they look at us like we are. It feels safe though and they are very friendly, especially when they want us to buy something! Next post Xi'an and the terracotta warriors....



Zip Slide video...