China and all its cleanliness compared to India

We're here in Beijing! And its blemin clean compared to any other country I think. Actually, probably on par with Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur specifically...that place was clinical! So we arrived from a mental flight from India involving 4 hours to Sri Lanka (6 hours in the airport), then 4 hours to Bangkok, Thailand (1 1/2 hour wait), then 4 hours to Beijing...so 18 hours in total!! We were pooped!

13/04/08 - Beijing arrival

Luckily upon our arrival we were met by a representative of the tour company we booked online with (Focustourchina.com)...as we'd had understandably had reservations about only doing it online it was a big relief! So, the guy was all suited-and-booted...very professional. He proceeded to take us to a private, secret services type, blacked-out-windows, people carrier with our own private driver!!! What the hell have we gone and booked this time we thought?!?! Andy spoke very good english (with an American type accent which was odd) and gave us a great intro to China. Obviously we were knackered and so went straight to our posh hotel, but didn't fail to notice that Beijing is sooooo clean and tidy its refreshing, very American looking!
It was evening on the 13th and all we could plan was a nice big sleep ready for sight seeing the following day. We managed to drag ourselves out of our room to explore our environment and discovered that not a single person within a 1000 mile radius spoke English and there wasn't one thing we could eat (mainly due to the fact that ALL menus were in Chinese and involved meat..oh yeah, lots of different types of meat as well)....I take that back...we had bread and slices of crappy cheese for our dinner that night...delicious! Luckily for us we'd brought a new jar of marmite before leaving Delhi...thank god for the black stuff once more!!!

14/04/08 - Not such an Oasis

Our itinery detailed that we'd have 2 days with our guide Andy and then 3 days on our own, which was a good mix. Day one of our sightseeing was fantastic as we got to see the Forbidden City, Tian'amen Square in the morning and the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon; all driven there in our secret service vehicle!

Tian'amen was huge, its the largest square in the world and the Forbidden City shockingly beautiful with gorgeous gardens. It was quite plain to see as well that the Beijing games have profoundly affected public policy on how they are looking to portray the country and especially important monuments such as these.

Or maybe they always wanted to make it all look gleeming and VERY secure with a million police and stuff around. Well they succeeded nevertheless.

We also shared our airspace that day with at least 500,000 Chinese tourists (it seemed) all with their colour co-ordinated hats to keep them with their group! Hilarious!

For lunch on day one, we were taken to a very posh restaurant, perfect for all you meat eaters, we on the other hand had major problems (due to the vegginess)...and ended up eating plain rice. For some reason they put this sticky jelly type stuff on all their veggies....what the hell?!

The afternoon was very smoggy and quite scary for this reason. It felt like we were under some kind of toxic cloud, lol. That was the only downside so far for China, Beijing is surrounded by mountains and has over 30 million cars, theres no where for the pollution to go. You can see a clear smog over the sun everyday. Our guide took us to the Temple of Heaven in the avo which was gorgeous. The architecture over here in China is stunning, just as you'd imagine it in the movies...but so much better in real life as its on a huge scale! The Temple of Heaven was no exception and was colourful, spiritual and extremely historic, which we loved the whole time hearing about.

Interestingly, and further to my previous point about the portrayal of China to tourists, the guide took us to a 'Government approved' silk factory, where we were shown how silk is obtained from silk worms. Interesting, but poor little silk worms are just thrown away. Actually, I personally think they're sold to a local food market guy, as we saw them fried up later ready for sale!

That evening we decided to get dropped off on the way back to our hotel in the city centre shopping area. Not for shopping, no, but due to the fact that we discovered last night that our friggin flight company (for Hong Kong to London return journey), Oasis airlines....HAD GONE BUST!! Check this website out to see; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7338424.stmYep, so we didn't have a flight to come home, lost out on 300 squid and then had to BUY ANOTHER FLIGHT at a cost of 500 squids = 800 squid down! Rubbish! So we decided that a Pizza Hut was in order to make life better again.....which it did (for a reasonable 100 Yuan = 7 pounds ish). I know, I know, we shouldn't have, but we were still seething from Oasis!

Once we'd managed to find a cab driver who had heard of our random hotel road (as 6 so far hadn't), we got dropped off near our road and somehow stumbled across the right place! Knackered and still a bit sore from our loss of dosh we hit the sack to watch the one English channel on the TV.....a 'Government sensored news channel only detailing things about China'....great!!

15/04/08 - A new day involving The Great wall of China

Yep, you guessed it, today we planned on visiting the Great Wall of China baby!!! After our breakfast, where we opted not to eat the testicle and chicken intestine Chinese option, and chose the safe option of toast, we headed with our guide to the Great Wall. This time however we were taken to another Government approved factory outlet, this time making Jade items. And although it was interesting to see...dude, WE'RE BACKPACKERS...seriously, no way gonna buy anything. But again another way to portray China in a certain way!

We arrived at the Great Wall only to discover that we had less than 2 hours there! You had to be kidding right...2 hours! I wanted to see the Wall ALL DAY! Every bit, every step, every sight...this is the Great Wall. But luckily it didn't matter too much as the smog was so intense we couldn't even see the mountains around us. So 2 hours would be fine.

The Great Wall was pretty damn impressive and full of tourists. We were taken to the main part about 45kms out of Beijing and loved the experience. The Wall is built on the edge of the cliffs and took some climbing to get up there! I think this part in particular had been rennovated as our Canadian friends told us they'd been to a part that was mainly mud and stuff...this was all shiny brick and concrete, but we didn't mind too much.

Lots of piccies and me trekking to the top later (with Jen chilling a bit further down due to exhaustion), we had another belly-filling/rice-filling lunch to look forward to. And yes, it didn't fail to live up to expectation...we had rice for lunch! But this time there was the promise of spring rolls. Er, no, they were sweet filled spring rolls. Random! There were also plenty of slime-covered veggies to eat....er, no thanks dude. Lol.

After lunch we visited the Summer Palace here in Beijing. It was beautiful and spread out over a wide area. It was where the 'Dragon Lady' lived, who was a slightly-crazy-sounding Emperor type chick in the 1900's I think. After walking down the 'longest corridor in the world' (Andy'd claim not mine), and after a nice, Dragon Boat ride back to our starting position, we headed off to our hotel via a 'government approved tea shop'. Agh, thats interesting, I wonder why they took us there!!!! Yep, another attempt to portray Chinese culture in a certain way. Again, enjoyable though as we got to try out lots of different teas.

That concluded our time with 'government approved' (not even kidding) Andy and we hit the local supermarket in the evening to buy our nutritious dinner of bread. We also tried our very hardest to find an internet cafe.....to no avail!!

The building in Beijing designed to look like an olympic torch...succeeded. It is the main building next to the national stadium (the birds nest) below. Also heads up the olympic village which is parallel to it. Check out the smog all around it.....scary or what!?!

The national stadium, aka the Birds Nest, which we got to see on our way back from the Summer Palace on Day 2 of our trip.

16/04/08 - Independence day (1)

So now we are on our own and don't have a clue what to do! Haha, we're fine though as we're armed with a Beijing map (bilingual) and some leftover bread from last night. Today, however, we pretty much didn't do anything other than planning the next few days and eat stale bread. Our guide had told us that it was 'too unsafe' to use anything other than a government approved taxi to take us everywhere. Also, if we wanted to go anywhere we should hire an approved driver and car for the day...he mentioned something about 600 Yuan as well!!! 600 Yuan..I dont think so dude, thats crazy money (80 dollars!!!)...so we'll be taking public transport everywhere.
The only major concern of ours is now money. Up until now I've managed it just fine to the extent that we had a surplus....but nothing else can go wrong otherwise we'll be like that Chinese guy from the old proverb:

'Ching-chong China man went to milk a cow. Ching-chong China man didn't know how. Ching-chong China man pulled the wrong bit. Ching-chong China man got covered in sh*t'!!!

(P.S. We just saw on the BBC website that a bus in India had fallen off a bridge, 40 people dead, very eerry considering we were using these buses just a few days ago..we are definately counting our blessings...check it out...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7350086.stm