Beijing - Home. gutted!
Trip Start
Jun 29, 2008
1
21
Trip End
Oct 15, 2008
Beijing, China
Monday, November 24, 2008
so starting off i arrived,dumped my bags and met a pissed off italian who had, had all of his camera equipment stolen only the day before, (2000 euros worth to be precise!). so what better way to get over it than the infamous forbidden city. now even tho it was now a weekend ti was not a public holiday but you could be forgiven for thinking it was. trying to walk through the massive crowds of elderly Chinese people in groups with there lil red caps on following a flag was like a salmon swimming upstream! despite the place being vast. now it is damn impressive, an awesome piece of chinese architecture and you really get the feeling that this really was for the most important people of China. but after a couple hours or so you do feel it is a bit samey and you get a bit fo the 'temple' syndrome where every new building looks just the same as the last, so off we went to the Red square. apparently the biggest public square on earth but some reason smaller than i imagined, however the grand scale of the buildings and importance was nothing short of what i expected. having a bit of a wonder around beijing i set on doing the Summer palace the next day.
a bad start of 2 buses the wrong way didnt help to the 2 hour bus journey that it would originally have taken and higlights how serious traffic is in Beijing, to think it is this bad now makes you cringe as to how bad it will be in 50 years. put it this way, there is 3million vehicles in Beijing, and an extra 1000 cars being added every DAY!!!
the Summer Garden itself is really quite quaint and has pretty much the same numbers of tourists as the Forbidden city. expcept for on the high parts which deters most Chinese (they never will walk far if they dont have to!) it really is a full day effort but it confrimed that the tube was the definite means of transport afterwards.
so whipping out the tube maps we set off to see the olympic village as it was getting dark, to see it in both daylight and night time where it would be lit up. ...now this was built under a lot of controversy and apperently 50,000 people were rehoused/kicked out for it to be built, and man can you believe it! there is a massive area of just random park, statues and roads which all seem a little bit wasted, and considering that some of it was already in need of repair it makes you think what is this going to be used for in the future??? still it didnt make the stadiums any less impressive and they were even better at night. London is going to have to do something pretty novel to keep face as there is no way it can compete against it!!
anyways that night we had to sample some infamous Beijing food, and what better than Peking Duck! further showing us just how crap english food is!
So 3rd was my other highlight of my travels, the GREAT WALL!! with an early start and some 8km of hiking to be done it was every bit as impressive as i expected and more, much more. getting passed the rebuilt part of the wall, that is mainly used for tourists who do not want to walk far (mainly chinese, im not joking!) you really get a sense of how epic and ludicrous this wall is. 6400km long in all and goes through some crazy terrain such as insanely high and steep mountain tops, millions died building it and after all that they had to provide the manpower to guard it, but all in vain as it was constantly breached or guards were bribed. still makes for a bloody good walk though! i would love to walk the wall again, as it is truely a wonder of the world.something i think the pictures cant portrait well enough.
so last day travelling, what else to do but load up my bag with 'authentic replicas' and see the almighty cctv building, seeming to defy gravity in a daring new design of bulding.finally i made time to visit a park one last time to see the Chinese at their best, leisurely enjoying each others company in simple pleasures such as song, chess, dance or conversation. something that is seriously lacking back home.
so that was it travelling finished.6 countries, 1000's km, 300+ eat out meals, a couple of taxi fights and 3 empty bank accounts! loved it so much im off again in a couple years, but for longer and to new places. i dont regret much, if anything. and given the choice would love to visit China and Laos again, though China has the most appeal due to its shear scale and varying culutre.
Thanks for reading :)
