Beijing: Orientation and Tiananmen Square

We rolled into Beijing late on Sunday morning. Fully expecting the station to be manic we were not disappointed. Outside wasn't much better but we ploughed through the hordes of Chinese people to purchase our metro ticket. Despite the initial struggle the man eventually got the gist of where we wanted to be heading and we got our incredibly cheap ticket. Again, we had been dreading the experience of a horrendously busy metro but at midday on a Sunday it wasn't too bad. We squeezed on the trains and made quick time on our journey. The hardest part was making our way up Nanluogu Alley, which is where our hostel was situated. The crowds were moving at a snails pace and with our large backpacks it was a bit of a struggle to force our way through. We were drawn by the smells of enticing Chinese street food as we made our way through but had to hold off until we had checked in. We were tucked well out of the way in what was probably the worst room in the hostel but it was still a comfortable room with a roof over our heads in this noisy, polluted city. As ever we headed for the “local” supermarket, which was quite a trek away, across some dodgy roads. We were taken aback by what was on offer in the supermarket, even our everyday brands such as Coca Cola and Head and Shoulders were almost indistinguishable from what they are at home. We found some scoop your own rice and decided to have that with some form of mince meat and make some form of chilli with a ready made seasoning that Charlotte's mum had picked up for us. It was interesting but still filled us up for a good first night meal.

Our first morning we were up early on a beautiful day to enjoy our free breakfast of egg, bacon and watermelon on toast. As you do! Afterwards we had a wander up and down Nanluogu Alley to see what it had to offer. Other than hordes of people all the time, there were loads of places to pick up food, as well as knick knack shops and cafes. After settling the room bill and trying to sort out some banking issues we decided to go for a wander to orientate ourselves with the massive city of Beijing. Our map made us feel confident that we could cover a lot of ground in no time at all but we reckon the scale was off. By the time we'd reached the place marked as the Lama Temple, we had already been walking for over an hour. We left the temple visit for another day and carried on through a park that ran with one of Beijing’s rectangular ring roads. Along the way we encountered a play area or 2 that we couldn't resist a quick play in. We broke left sooner than we had anticipated thanks to the crazy map and moved in the direction of our hostel once more as by this time we were becoming peckish. Our road seemed the place to be for food so we ended up back on it hunting some down. We picked out a place that sold pancakes (they do have a Chinese name), cooked infront of you on a skillet, with a wafer thing in it, a soy-like sauce, a cracked egg and some vegetables.We struggled through the ordering process and just plumped for “No.1” on the menu, to save a struggle. It was very tasty and we both devoured it in seconds. To finish we had a bowl of ice cream with some Churros thrown in for extra measure. With that, we went back to our hostel to decide what to do with our evening. Surprise, surprise it involved food again! But when your food is as big a tourist attraction as China’s we don't want to miss out. We headed out in the fading light to a place called Gui Street or Ghost Street, called because they used to carry the dead bodies out of town here. We took in both sides of this neon signed road. Passing restaurants whose staff were oerforming songs outside on the roadside for our own entertainment it seemed. Charlotte and I are notoriously bad at picking places to eat so it is no surprise we managed to pass EVERY restaurant on the road. Eventually we doubled back and picked one out that seemed acceptable. We were greeted by loud acknowledgements from every member of staff as we walked through the doorway, which was better to see from a seated perspective that from when we actually entered. Still it was a nice gimmick that made us chuckle every time. The biggest menu ever was dumped on our table so we perused through what was on offer, which took a good quarter of an hour. Call us boring but we went for sweet and Sour Pork and a beef in garlic sauce concoction. Granted, we could get them in any Chinese restaurant back home but we didn't fancy going straight in at the Turtle, Tripe or Pig intestine level straight away. We also procured a bowl of rice each. What we had was really tasty (and slightly spicy) and really cheap, we even managed to semi-master the chopsticks. We finished our large portions and actually weren't hungry again in an hour!

Today we had planned to visit Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City but decided against both when we left the hostel and could hardly see 20 feet due to the thick smog that had come down overnight. We had experience pollution in Ulaanbaatar but not to these levels. We just went for a visit to Tiananmen Square in the hope that the pollution would clear over the week. It was another long trek to our destination but we eventually arrived, skirting around the forbidden city and through the security checks into the square. It's a funny place, surrounded by fences and heavy security everywhere and only accessible by underpasses and road crossings after the security. After some quick snaps outside the front of the Firbudden City we entered the square in all its smoggy glory. It seemed as though it was just clearing up after a large event and there were some pieces just being taken down as we arrived. In the centre of the square is a monument to the heroes of the revolution and next to that the mausoleum of Chairman Mao (Mr.Lenin, eat your heart out!). After having walked a fair distance in the dense smog for we decided to head back towards our hostel to pick up some lunch. We'd noticed along our street some fast food places selling a whole deep fried squid. I couldn't turn this opportunity down and picked one up but Charlotte sensibly stuck with some chicken instead. We had to head for the supermarket again and picked up a healthy dinner to counteract the fatty lunch we had just eaten. It was going to be Tuna, Pasta and Veg but when we opened the tuna we had bought in Mongolia, for some reason, we just didn't fancy it anymore, so just had the pasta and veg with the Mongolian beer we picked up but never got round to eating last week. We had spied a turtle residing in our hostel kitchen while eating dinner, I fear he may be heading for the soup pot and not the wild in the not too distant future.

We had an excursion booked for the next day, to that little known place called the Great Wall of China.

Ulaanbaatar & the Trans-Mongolian part II

I'll start by saying Ulaanbaatar was an absolute right off. Charlotte caught a nasty cold from the train from Irkutsk, suffering a terrible cough, high temperature, shivers and blocked sinuses. I caught it off of her the day we arrived and after a couple of days we were both bed ridden, spending the majority of Monday to Friday in our room. On the day we arrived we had booked a tour to a national park for a few nights but Charlotte had a hunch and we pulled out. It did cause a few issues with our hostel saying that had never happened before but we didn't believe that and stuck to our guns. We had emailed and spoken to a receptionist who spoke hardly any English but they claimed they hadn't heard anything from us. They tried to get us to pay the drivers off, claiming they had driven for miles to be there to take us but we refused as they had been at the train station the day before when we got picked up from the station. The only thing we really achieved was a visit to Sukhbaatar or Chinngis Khan Square (I'm not sure they can make up their minds what it's called) on the Sunday and trying the local Mongolian cuisine of Büüz (mutton filled dumplings) on the Monday. Despite our brief time out and about we also managed to hunt down a pin badge. The rest of the week was spent in bed, trying our best to feel better. Our room in the hostel was right by the reception which made it rather noisy. We had been due to leave straight for the train station on the Saturday but instead booked a room in a hotel for the Friday night so we didn't have a mad dash across the city first thing in the morning.

(Our £6 bag of grapes)

 By the time Saturday morning came round, we had both started to feel better, which was a huge relief for our journey to Beijing. Our roommates were once again with us the whole way and were once again Dutch. The journey was just over a day and was pretty much uneventful. From Ulaanbaatar to the border it was Steppe followed by the vast expanse of the Gobi Desert. Every now and again we would pass a herd of camels and then we were treated to a beautiful sunset as it set behind the sand dunes. The border was also somewhat uneventful, apart from when the Chinese passport control appeared in our cabin doorway and informed me that there was something wrong with my visa. At that point Charlotte and I were both thinking that our diversion to Edinburgh may have been for absolutely nothing. It turned out my visa was fine and the lady was very apologetic for the problem caused but we all had a good laugh. After that, we settled down, while they changed the wheels (they use a different gauge track in Russia and Mongolia to China) for a good nights sleep. We awoke to a change of scenery, rolling hills and large towns were followed by mountain passes, cliff-top views over sheer drops and a more than 50 tunnels. With an hour still to go we started chugging through the sprawling suburbs of Beijing. This brought to an end our Trans-Continental train journey, all the way from Moscow, in Europe to Beijing in the Far East of Asia.