Travel Tales of 2

We arrived in lijiang and we are staying in the old town and its a beautiful old city - nicer than the old city of Dali but there are lots more tourists. The town has two or three streams running through it and they come from the mountains around the city.Its a bit like Venice not as big though. It took us ages to find a hostel though cause it’s starting to get busy with the Chinese holidays coming up.

We went strolling around the town in the evening and its lovely when the old town is lit up the town rises up into the hills around. We stumbelled onto a street were down one side of the street was bars and just across the stream was an identical set of bars down the whole street. The bars were not more than 12 feet away from the other side. We thought the chinese were quiet, but throw a few beers into them and there is crack to be had. The whole street was singing,on one side a bar sang first then taunted the bar on the other side to slag them with a song. This song went on for ages and was great crack. check out the small video we took

We watched this for an hour and headed off

This morning we went for a walk to the market on the edge of town. It was a fruit,veg and animal market.everything for sale. We went shopping for fruit but the prices tripled in price when we asked how much - we know the crack now and laugh and go - more often than not they lower their price when you go to walk away. We went into the animal market again everything for sale,even mans best friend. A chinese man was busy blow tourching a dog getting it ready to sell to whoever wanted it nothing goes to waist either (as we saw in Datong-intestines,brain,feet the menu had it all)!! I showed the pictures I got of the dog to the Canidians and they were’nt too happy. But it is China after all.

After the market we went walking back to the hostel.  Sinead bought a bracelet (lots of souvenir shops), it started to rain and the guy in the shop invited us in for tea - they sold tea. and eventually they were asking us to buy some for the folks at home. they even gave us jade stone necklaces - to make us feel guilty about buying tea - they were ripping us off though - they wanted 45yuan for the tea, when we finally escaped from the shop I went into another shop (to check the price) and found we could get the same tea for 5yuan. Chancers - we were meant to go back with money and their umbrella but…..

All the shops make their crafts by hand. Jade necklaces and bracelets in the shape of dragons and Buddha’s, they also make the usual clothes- scarfes, skirts, and so on. They carve wood paintings. They even have real white fox fur coats and handbags (not much animal rights here!!). Check out the photos we were snap happy here.

Went to Dragon pool park it was quiet as it had been raining climbed the mountain (1200 steps- Sinead is getting it hard to keep up) at the back of the park got a great overview of the city and some villages on the other side of the mountain.

Heading off tomorrow to do a trek of Tiger Leaping Gorge its a three day trek- really looking forward to it, it’s meant to be really picturesque and they’re thinking of damming this as well, so it mightn’t be here in a few years.

Well signing off

S & G

 Since last tuesday we have travelled approx 1500mile from Beijing, We were on the trail down to xian - where the terracotta warriors were - the 8th wonder of the world!!! so they say. But we got to xian and got on a plane the next evening to the provience of yuannan - in the south east corner of China. We were fed up with the smog and pollution in the cities that we had been to so we left. We looked for a train to Kunming - 36 hours on a train for 400yuan (40euro) and a plane journey for 2 hours for 1000yuan(100 euro). Needless to say we took the plane.

Met up with the Canidian couple and set of for the mountian. The journey up the mountain was up the bumpiest road Ive ever been on,and this was our “jeep” with  4  wheel  drive!!!

it didn inspire confdence when we seen a bottle of brake fluid in the back of the van. The road we took was a river in winter. Our guide for the mountain was 56 years old and on the way up the mountain i dont think he broke a sweat once. It was 3 1/2 hours to the top. up a stoney river that was 70degree uphill in parts . we  were dissappointed when  we got to the top as there was a communication station there. So back to the van we went,  couldn’t believe how far we climbed until we went down. The van ride on the way down,I think I got whiplash and we had 2 hours of a descent.

We passed some quarries at the bottom where they were digging the rock out of the quarry by hand and then breaking the rocks into building stone with a chisel, futher down there was a small crusher grinding some rocks into stone. everything done manually in this quarry. There was also a marble factory, where they were making all sort of furniture, ornaments by hand.

We are off to Lijiang in the morning to do another trek on the tiger leaping gourge.

Keeping well G& s

Currency conversion : 10RMB/yuan = 1 euro

Cheapest and dearest we paid

Beer: 2yuan - 6yuan(restaurant) - so 20cent for 2ltr beer

Hostel:25yuan/night - 60yuan/night (dorm room)

Food: 25yuan for 2meals and 1&1/2 litre of coke - 300yuan for 3(they seen us coming - then again we did get a whole duck)

Internet: 2yuan/hour - 10yuan/hour

Public transport: 1yuan(city buses) - example - train journey for 36hours -400yuan. Plane 2hours instead of 36 hours train journey - 1040yuan each(ouch)

Bottled Water(2ltr) : 2.5yuan - 8 yuan

After the Great Wall we were pretty tired so took it relatively easy the next day, took the Beijing metro and found Yonghe Gong , which is a practicing Tibetan lama temple in Beijing. Lots of great buildings and people (lots of people in china, you can barely get a photo without people in them). What was really cool bout the temple though were all the budda statues, big ones (one as tall as the building it was in), small ones, wooden ones. They had statues were they’d loads of arms like in the sinbad cartoon. Its really weird it was a place of worship for at least two different religions, Confuciuism and Buddism. There were lots of people burning incense as an offering to the different buddas as well. Definately worth the visit. After the temple we got back on the metro and then got a taxi to the Summer Palace. This is were the emporer and emporess went to escape the city. So not only did they have their own city (forbidden city) they also had a massive summer home and i mean massive, there was a Lake (not a pond a proper lake), which had a small! lake house in the centre which you get to over a marble bridge, surrounded by a forest park and at the north of the lake up on the hill was the summer Palace. We didn’t get to see it as it was closing as we were arriving but it looked fabulous (i wish i could live in that kinda luxury). We spent about two hours walking around the garden buildings and walkways. You could’ve spent all day here anyone heading to Beijing definately needs to go here but early in the day it gets packed in the evening with tours.

Anyway after all our exploring we headed back to the hostel and went for Beijing Duck (which was really tasty, crispy not fatty like at home). Food in China is fabulous and really cheap like 50Yuan (5 euro) will get two dinner, with two beers. We said goodbye to the crazy waitress at the street restaurant we used to eat at. After all that we got a sleeper train to Datong. Our first experience of trains here was quite a good one. We got hard sleepers so expected wooden boards but they’re actually quite soft and its easy enough to sleep. Got to Datong and half six and booked a day tour there to see the hanging temples (which are temples built on the side of a mountain) and then the Yungang caves (full of big buddas) it was interesting except people kept taking pictures of us when they thought we couldn’t see them.Although one woman actually came up to me and asked me to stand in a picture with her son and then another picture with her other son (we seem to be such a novelty). Its especially noticable when you’re in poor parts of the city i don’t know how they don’t get creeks in their necks, other people actually roll down their windows in their cars to get a good look, and others just stop their bikes. We took our first bus in Datong which was really okay and straight forward enough (well we had good directions) but when we were waiting for the bus there was a little girl who we sad hello to but was too scared to say hello back. In saying all this i’ve found most of the Chinese really friendly and helpful.

What was really cool about Datong though was that we got on really well with the other people on the tour.We went for dinner together afterwards (had to get our picture taken with the people from the table next to us but we got pictures of them too). After dinner and a couple of beers we headed back to the train station and onto another sleeper train to Taiyuan. The rest of the group were on the train and two of them were even in our carriage so we had another beer and provided entertainment for the Chinese (well when i say entertainment they sat and watched us talk, one guy we nicknamed him John sat with us all night we had to tell him to go when we were heading to sleep (he hadn’t a word of english i mean not one word!!). So got up at five, i was exhausted by this stage, we were going to try and get a bus to Xi’an but everywhere was closed and the people we met were heading to Pingyao so we decided to tag along with them. A two hour minibus drive away we reach Pingyao, at first we didn’t think it was much just another rundown polluted town but there’s actually a protected section, the older part of the city which is surrounded by a city wall. The area is pedestrian only and hasn’t undergone any modernisation so its like being back in time to traditional China. So thats were we are now just chilling out walking around, thinking of getting a massage or two and meeting up with the rest of the gang for dinner later (and maybe a  quiet drink or two, well it is Jacquelines birthdat (a mad canadian we met- prone to bursting into song).

Well going to go heading to Xi’an tomorrow morning on the long distance bus mmm!

S&G

Well it turns out we didn’t make it to the wall on Friday we met up with a fella from Cork, well Garrett met him i was taking an hours course in Chinese (sure i’m nearly fluent), so of course when i found them they had had a few beers and we decided to sit and have the Craic, until 2am. He was telling us bout his trip to the wall he’d gone with a tour from the hostel. we were going to try go by ourselves to a different part of the wall but in the end it worked out cheaper and a lot less hassle to go with the hostel. So we put our trip off by a day, cause we had to book it a day in advance, and headed to the temple of heaven instead. it was pretty cool actually surrounded by a massive garden it was were the emporer went to pray for a good harvest for the coming year. Massive ritual involved, fasting for three days followed by a procession a day of prayer and sacrifical offerings (mainly pigs i think). But the best thing about the visit to the temple of heaven was a long walkway which had a roof and there were loads of people playing cards together and people playing traditional chinese music, Dad (Pat) you would’ve loved it there was even a fiddle there. There were people practicing thi chi (not sure if i spelled that right) in remote parts of the park as well. So that was yesterday, today we got up at six and took a bus journey for three hours. It was an experience!!! There seems to be very few rules or if there are they just aren’t followed.Beijing is full of ‘Hutongs’ small side streets which are not one way and along with all the people, bikes, fruit stalls, restuarant tables, children playing football, etc…. there are cars driving in both directions pretty cool to watch actually. But today taking our bus to the great wall was something else i could only describe it as funny. When we hit some of the smaller roads for instance, these were sort of a dual carriage way where the second lane on either side were bike lanes, our minibus decided to overtake the car in front on the lefthandside (drive on opposite side of road here) but as we overtook the car a jeep over took us and another lorry undertook him on the inside lane. So bassically there were for vehicles all heading in the same direction with no space for traffic coming in the other direction, have to admit wasn’t too concerned by this as it seems to be normal practice here. And as for roadworks they get to work around the traffic, in the traffic and through the traffic. Anyway we got to the Great Wall, Jingshaling region, in one peace and walked 10 kilometers to the Simitai region. It took roughly four and a half hours to trek it, and i’ll tell you its a lot tougher than training in dun a ri park. It was really sunny and warm (26 degrees) and it was tough going but the scenery was amazing (you’ll be able to see for yourselves once we get pics uploaded). The scale of the thing is enormous we only did 10 Kilometers it stretches of in the distance as far as you can see up and down mountains i just don’t know how they managed it. Not all of the section we walked has been fully restored so you had to watch your step and speaking of step theres thousands of them and a lot of them veer straight up. Your followed almost the entire day by locals (mainly mongolian cause your not far from their border) trying to sell you water and tea at crazy prices which can get annoying after a while, but its definately worth it, really fresh especially after all the smog in Beijing. When we got to Simitai we took a tobogan ride, basically we were strapped into a harnass and sent down a cable swing from the top of the gorge to the bottom, which was a great way to finish the day off, well we still had the three hour bus trip back to Beijing!

Got into Beijing early on Wednesday climbed in a taxi and headed towards our hostel. Our superior language skills meant we had to exit the taxi and find someone who spoke english point at a map were we wanted to go and get the destination written in Chinese (it actually took six people before we found someone who knew the street we were looking for, extremely helpful and friendly people thank god). we then got another taxi pointed to the address, written in chinese thanks to our helpful friends, and arrived at out destination within two minutes (could’ve walked but guess that would’ve takin too much explaining). so first impressions were what have we got ourselves into!!

Dumped our stuff and headed off looking around (after a little nap of course, but hey we were traveling for over 14 hours so i think i deserved it). So we found Tiananmen square and some night markets and Garrett bid on something at a street auction without realising it we ran of course after his bid won!!that was enough excitment so we headed back to the hostel for a beer and an early night.

Today we got up early and headed back to Tiananmen square took a few photos thought it looked small until we had to walk to the end to reach the forbidden city. The forbidden city and Tiananmen square are actually being renovated for the upcoming olympics, but most the work has already been done with the buildings designs being repainted and the courtyards tidied up as well as the marble bridges being preserved by restriction to tourists. The main walkway through the city requires you to go through six courtyards all with marble steps and a main building in the centre were the emperor used to meet and greet people, each courtyard was used for different people, ie scholars, military, foreign guests etc. then to the sides of the courtyards were palaces with all the different rooms for servants etc. you can easily get lost as it turns into quite a maze as each Palace has small courtyards with doorways leading into other courtyards. Some of the buildings within these palaces are used to show exhibitions of art such as Jade stones with scenery carved into them, a gold globe which showed the constilations, as well as daggers emblazoned (you’ll be impressed by that one Edel) with jewels. What i really liked though were the gardens. The emperial gardens were at the north of the city and had weeping willows and pine trees and large limestone rocks with dragons and lion sculptures, but my favourite garden was within one of the Guolong Palace. It wasn’t thronged with visitors and had stone steps and weeping willow trees limestone rockeries with a terrace on top of a large limestone rock (they’re big on limestone). anyway it was really relaxing walking through it.

We finished off the day with a trip to a park north of the forbidden city. it has a man made hill with five peaks and theres pavillions on top of each peak. we cleverly decided to go up to the top and see the view. quiet a steep climb (we didn’t find the easier pathway until we came down again) Again couldn’t really get to the pavillions as they too are under renovation, but there was a good view out over the city which highlighted one of its negative aspects the smog. Anyway by the time we got down we were getting slightly weary and headed back to the hostel (we  walked all the way back again, i think training would’ve been easier).

well have to go we’ll fill you in on the great wall tomorrow hopefully.

S&G

Well, first post to this.

Ill post up pics of the good ridance get together’sthat we had before we went - some videos as well.but ya dont want to see them. Wednesday is the first day of the travels so getting ready for that - I know we’ll forget something