China

On Thursday 5th April we commenced our epic train journey from Beijing West Train Station to Hanoi, Vietnam. Luckily we were not brave enough to go for the cheaper 6 berth 'hard sleepers' and had upgraded to a 4 berth soft sleeper. We were pleasantly suprised when we were shown to our cabin. It actually looked more comfortable than the hostel we had just departed from! There were four bunks in our cabin, with clean linen, thick quilts and fluffy pillows and the icing on the cake was that it looked like were were going to have the whole cabin to ourselves......no such luck!

Our room for the next three days

After travelling for around 6 hours, just as we tucked ourselves into bed at around 11pm, there was a gentle tap on the door and we were joined by our new neighbour. Well actually, we very nearly were not joined by him as when he opened the door and saw Gavin and I, he stormed out and we could hear a very heated exchange with the train conductor. I suspect the conductor must have said something along the lines of "that's your bed mate, take it or leave it" as he reluctantly returned and settled in for the night. Boy did he smell bad (although so did we by the end of the journey!).

Just to help you picture it, once he had tucked himself into bed, he and I were around 1/2 metre away from each other....it kind of felt like I was sharing a bed with him which you can imagine was fairly uncomfortable. We had very little sleep that night.

By the time our neighbour departed at Nanning we were buddies and he had spent the previous few hours pointing out places of interest to us and stopped checking that his wallet and phone were still in his jacket pocket each time he came back into the cabin.

The very best thing about the train journey was watching the scenery change from the grey, polluted city to stunning limestone rock formations and terraced paddy fields. The worse thing was the lack of food (which was totally my fault). I had read somewhere that basic meals are included in the price of the ticket for overnight journeys...erm nope! To make matters worse we had spent our left over Chinese Yuan on ciggies for me (yes I know I was going to give up but they are a pound a pack, cut me some slack) so were stuck on a train with very little food and no money. We survived on the Chinese equivalent of pot noodles and the odd shared apple, for three days, two nights (and you all now how much we like our food!).

Immigration at the border of Vietnam on the second night was an interesting experience to say the very least. We had already had our passports checked by both Chinese and Vietnamese immigration officers on the train. They had also checked our guide books for inappropriate material which was a little unnerving. We arrived at Dang Dong, Vietnam at around 3am on Saturday 7th April and were ripped off by immigration officials! We were subjected to a "health check" (and I emphasise the inverted comas for that statement). Basically a chap holds a thermometer in your general direction and then charges you 2,000 Dong for the privilege. As you cannot obtain Vietnamese Dong outside of Vietnam we had to pay in dollars. Initially he simply made no effort to hand us any change, following my questioning he threw a few dollars change at us. I walked away feeling all smug as I had sussed him out and came away a winner (then Gavin explained that he had still had us over as the exchange rate meant that he had more than quadrupuled the price for us based on the change he had given. Damn it.).

We will fly from now on.

We arrived in Hanoi on Saturday 7th April at around 8.30am. It had a totally different feel to Beijing and we both knew straight away that we were going to have a great time here.

Well hello there, it's Cardie here!

So you'll all be pleased to know we made it to Beijing in one piece. We arrived on Friday 30th at around 6am. Great flight over apart from massive turbulence during the last half hour or so (not great after we had just eaten our full English!).

We'd organised for our hostel to collect us from Beijing Airport and so had our first experience of the roads in Beijing. Lordy was that a frightening experience. Basically it seems that lane markings are ignored, as are pedestrian crossings, bikes and other cars. You simply use your horn to let other road users know you are coming through and drive where ever you want whenever you want. Pedestrians dice with death each time they try to cross the road.

At 7am we arrived at our home for the next 7 days, The Red Lantern Hostel. The immediate thought running through our minds was "what have we let ourselves in for?". Our room was basically a cupboard, no windows, freezing cold and smelling of something rather strange. We had to walk through our neighbours room to get to ours which meant waking him up during the night if we needed the loo or anything. It's fair to say that we were quickly aware of what hostel life had in store for us.

The very first thing we needed was sleep! Once suitably refreshed many hours later we decided that we would head out to the streets of Beijing to explore. Thus we commenced the longest walk EVER. Let me just explain a little about Beijing, it's huge! Something which Gavin and I did not fully appreciate when we first took our little guide book map and set off to explore. What we thought would take around half an hour turned into three hours to find a bar which we were later informed had been knocked down...great! Another quick realisation, guide books are often wrong! It was however a great opportunity for us to get under the skin of Beijing. We had read about all of the construction in the city ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games - the reality is far greater than you can imagine. It feels like the whole city is a huge building site, there is construction everywhere. We have found it particulary sad actually, as all of the building work seems to be at the expense of the traditional way of life. Traditional 'Hutong' (alleyway) homes are being bulldozed to make way for endless skyscrapers. This along with how cold our first couple of days were made Beijing seem a very grey city to us. The void between wealth and poverty is very apparent, it seems there is no real middle ground. Another thing that is apparent, is that they don't get very many black folk around these parts! For our entire week people literally stop in the street and stare. Not at all in a threatening way, just out of pure curiosity. It was little unsettling to start off with but it's amazing how quickly you get used to things and by the end of the week I am completely unfazed by it.

At the end of our first expedition we did in fact find a bar and were quickly introduced to Beijings dual pricing system ie tourists pay more! This rule applies to food, drink, accomodation, public transport in fact any where they can get away with it. We quickly wised up to this and learnt that you need to ascertain prices prior to ordering and need to have the exact money ready as you will almost definitely be given the wrong change back otherwise. It's easy to get very annoyed about this until you realise that in our money it's only the difference of a few pence here and there and it probably means a lot more to them than it does to us...however we did still get annoyed! So we got ripped off for our beers and had to listen to karaoke to add insult to injury (I resisted the temptation to give them the Brummie version of Tainted Love).

We also had our introduction to Chinese toilets....

So back to our freezing cold room for a very poor night's sleep. We had not prepared for the cold at all and only really had one set of very warm clothes...these are the clothes we have worn virtually all week. It's amazing how quickly you can settle into this crusty traveller lifestyle!

Saturday 31st March. We head off to the Temple of Heaven and another mammoth walk (when will we learn). Hours later we arrive and are stunned at how beautiful the place is. To quote the guide book The Temple of Heaven "is the most perfect example of Ming architecture and has come to symbolise Beijing". Beijing feels so hectic, dusty and loud, your senses are constantly bombarded and here we were right in the centre of it all is this beautifully peaceful place (if you can block out the tourists).

The Temple of Heaven Park

Any opportunity for Cardie to grab a picture of Chinese children...

We then walk (again) to Tiananmen Square which is full of plain clothes police and if I'm being honest felt quite eerie. Here we meet "Jack". A really friendly chap who we first assume just wants to have a chat and practice his English....oh how naive we are! It's usually tours or artwork or something but generally there is something that you are being sold! We used the 'we are meeting friends' line and got out of there before we ended up spending all of our savings.

Our new 'friends'....

In Tiananmen Square

Jack did however introduce us to Snack Street. A little corner off a main shopping street that houses numerous food stands selling everything from spicy beef skewers to delicious candied fruit, quite similar to toffee apples. We both had a feast for the equivalent of 1.50 each (no pound sign on this keyboard) and this includes the tourist supplement that we paid for each snack!

Eating again...!

Once we'd had our fill we headed around the corner to find a whole street of similar food stands although what was on offer on a number of them was a little more than we could stomach. There were crickets, some sort of sea slug and animal testicles mmmm looks lovely but we'll give it a miss today thanks.

The Night Market

Did I mention I'm drinking beer now? Obviously the locals do not often partake in a bottle of Pinot or Chardonnay so unless I want to drink the local rice wine I have had to resort to an alternative tipple. The beer here is quite weak so perfect for me and at 20p for almost a litre it makes perfect financial sense too! I'm not sure Gav would agree with me on the taste side but he is definitely happy with the price.

Sunday 1st April. We head to The Forbidden City, named as such as it was out of bounds to commoners for 500 years. Apparently it's the largest and best preserved group of acient buildings in China and was home to to two dynasties of emperors, the Ming and Quing (I just typed that straight from our guide book). It is stunning but very busy with tourists - the equivalent of trying to see the Mona Lisa at The Louvre. The sun was trying it's very hardest to come out by now so it was lovely to sit in the Imperial Garden and watch the world go by....in fact I actually nodded off for a short time. We used the Metro for the first time to get there, damn all that walking, the metro is so easy and cheap. It's not an extensive network so you often have to walk a short distance or get a cab once you get off but for 20p a journey that's fine by me. To be honest we are aching so much from all the walking we have done so far that it's is just too painful to contemplate any more.

On Monday 2nd we had an organised excursion from our hostel to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Around a two hour drive from where we are staying. A great spot as there were hardly any tourists so we really got to enjoy our day. It really is breath taking.....no literally, I couldn't breathe by the time we had walked for an hour or so. It's so steep in places that we were virtually on all fours to get up some of the steps and came back down on our backsides. What did I say about no more walking? The weather was perfect, gorgeous sunny day with enough breeze to stop us overheating on those steep bits. The views from the wall are awe inspiring, we stopped every few minutes to drink it all in (and to get our breath back). After walking as far as we were allowed from one side to the other we deiced the best way to get down again was by cable car.....has Gav mentioned that he is scared of heights? He kept his shades on so that we couldn't see the tears.

Are we nearly there yet?

We met a cool girl called Hannah on the excursion, she is staying in the sister hostel around the corner from us and is travelling for a month following teaching English for a year in Xian. Hannah and her boyfriend, Tom, took us to a local restaurant for dinner that evening. It was great being out with someone that speaks Chinese as it meant we could order what we wanted and didn't get ripped off - bonus! We ate like kings, drank beer and the bill came to around four pounds each. We ended the evening with a few beers at our hostel....aaahhh this travelling lark isn't so bad!

We managed to change our room on Monday and now have room with a view (of sorts). Well it's got windows and therefore isn't a fridge as our original room was so that'll do nicely thank you.

Yesterday, Tuesday 3rd April, we headed off to the Summer Palace. This is one of my favourite sights in Beijing. It was bascially the emperors summer residence which is surrounded by lakes and parkland. The main residence overlooks Kunming Lake and we spent a leisurely afternoon strolling around the lake in the glorious sunshine. It was so peaceful and exactly what we needed. We decided that we would brave the buses to get there and back as it's only 10p each...never again. Nuff said.

The Summer Palace

We've had our first accident! Luckily we have a well stocked first aid kit. So here's how it happened, being a typical girl I was whinging that I was cold last night. We have a twin room so are are in seperate beds and I wanted Gav to get into bed with me to keep me warm (quiet at the back!). As he did so he managed to smash his head of the corner of the bed side table and has given himself a fairly nasty cut. He is now sporting an attractive band aid on his forehead.

The walking wounded

Tomorrow we check out and start our two night train journey to Vietnam. We are both really excited about moving on now and are planning to just spend today dossing around and repacking ready to go.

Sorry this has been a long one, we'll try to update more often from now on so that our entries are a little more bite sized!!!

I hope everyone is well. Lots of love Cardie xxx

Cardie's obsession with Chinese babies continues.....