This first picture is of the sunset in Hangzhou - v.v. beautiful. The second one is obviously of the Terracotta Warriors (or some of them anyway). and then the computer has had a fit, and not let me put up any other photo's.
Notes about this entry - as per usual, I spend a long time on the first bits, and get sick of it by the end and just rush it all...
For two weeks in March, Sue Ellen visited me in Shanghai, and for six days of this visit, we left Shanghai to do a bit of travel around China. This is a super monster post, but seeing as this is just my travel diary, I will write it how I like, thank you very much!
On a grey Holy Thursday, we flew out of Shanghai to Xian. Unbeknownst to me, the airline regulations had recently changed so that you can no longer take liquids on board, ruining my idea of taking my small suitcase on board and saving a lot of trouble. In fact, it caused extra trouble, as I was stopped at security and sent back to the check in to put my bag through….soooo annoying.
We flew on Shanghai airways which was really quite ok, I have flown them before. This time we actually got fed (not fantastic, but it did have something I could eat amongst it), and also the man next to me had a laptop and was watching some English movies, so I got inflight entertainment and everything (a romantic comedy and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
When we got to Xian, the nightmare of us getting ripped of by taxi drivers was about to begin…after Harbin it is what I expected…however, for some reason, my newly acquired confidence and Chinese skills actually got me taxi’s cheaper than what the trip advisors recommended! Hooray! So I recommend for all of you going to China, learn how to say your hotel name in Chinese, find out how much it should cost, and be irate and pretend to take photos of their licence if they are costing too much.
Then, after that good luck, we arrived at our hotel The Grand Mecure on Peoples Square (yes, Xian has a peoples square just like Shanghai.), we got upgraded to a suite!!!! It was so huge and lovely and had cable tv, and the weather outside was so extremely crap, that we just wanted to stay inside for the whole time.
I have never stayed in a hotel room before that is more than one room,a nd this one was like two bathrooms, a bedroom and a loungeroom. Only one bed, but who cares. It was huge.
The only down side of the hotel was the attempt at the in-room scam by the tour director. Sue and I wanted to go visit the terracotta warriors the next day. So, we asked the concierge, and he said he would send up the tour lady. Sure enough he did, and she sold us the tour, we paid the money, and she left. Now, I counted the money, Sue counted the money and the woman counted it.
Nevertheless, she was back in ten minutes saying we were 100RMB short. Now, usually I would be a sucker for this, and just fold completely, and hand it over. But I am a white (kind of) person in China, and I am so SICK of people trying to scam me, so I refused to pay, and she was nearly in tears, and I still refused, and then I said, well fine, give me all my money back and I just won’t go with you at all, and then the concierge intervened and apologised.
They think I am so dumb!!!!! But I am not! I am on to them all.
So then after that, Sue Ellen I went out for the rest of the day. We had some Chinese food (Sue Ellen had vinegar pork, masquerading as sweet and sour pork), and I had hard dry noodles. Gross. So I needed a double che after that as you understand. So we went to McDonalds, and I got my che, and we sat in this “fine dining”section of the McDonalds, on the tables that had tablecloths and vases. Very weird, I have not seen that in any other Mcdonalds anywhere. And I have been in quite a few!
Then we went to see the Drum and Bell Tower which is in the middle of the Old City. See, Xian is a huge city, but a big section of it is walled, and this is the Old style city (even though it is all just old stuff, that is where most of the hotels, etc are too). And so we found the bell Tower, and it was in the middle of this big roundabout! It was so weird, you couldn’t even get near it, because of the cars. The Drum Tower is a one minute walk from it, and to be truthful, I wasn’t overly impressed by either.
The Drum tower stands right next to the Muslim quarter, so we had a meander through there, and it was cool, even though it was raining. And then we went into the mosque, which was interesting, as it was not like a usual mosque, it was still all Chinese architecture.
The most hilarious bit though was when we were leaving the Muslim quarter, and I was bargaining for a tuk tuk to take us back to the hotel, and Sue Ellen got grabbed on the ass, THREE TIMES by the same man, in the two minutes I was talking to the Tuk Tuk driver, it wasn’t till we were in the tuk tuk and driving away that she was able to tell me.
So then we had the hilariously dangerous drive home in the tuk tuk through the mad streets of Xian, with crazy u turns in front of buses and everything.
Then that night, we stayed in the room ordered room service, appreciated the suite, and watched SVU.
The following day we set off in our own private van to the Terracotta warriors. First we saw the Neolithic village, which is just ridiculously old, and to my delight, was a village/society which was totally matriarchal. It even still had skeletons. And it showed how children were buried in big pots, and the pots were out the front of the house, and how men lived in separate villages, and people were buried in different ways depending on how they died. (Although I never really understood how archaeologists find all this out).
Then we went to the terracotta soldiers, which were amazing also. They were discovered by a farmer in 1979, and it covers a huge area of land, and they show you this Hitchcock-esque film beforehand, which is scary, and then ther are three different excavation pits they are working on. The guy who discovered it almost 30 years ago, sits there everyday signing autographs – you would have to be hating on it.
Then we went for a Chinese meal, and tour of silk factory, where some man spent a lot of time trying to sell us a silk doona. Sue didn’t understand what he was saying, and so was smiling at him, and so I had to put my foot down and say, NO of course we don’t want to buy a doona! Why would travellers want to buy a doona?!?! Use your thinking skills people!!!!
Then we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which is where Tripitaka kept all his scriptures. As you would know from Monkey Magic, he brought the Buddhist scriptures all the way from India to Xian (which used to be the old capital you see), and then spent a bazillion years translating them from Sanskrit to Chinese.
And then we went back to the hotel, without stopping at the city wall, as scamming tour drivers told us there was no parking…such a massive lie.
Then we went to the airport, and got on best flight ever with Hainan Air. Video screens in back of seats for a domestic flight!!! Only two seats across. It was heaven.
Then, happily, when we got to Beijing, I got a taxi for only 80 RMB, to the hotel, when the hotel said it should be about 130RMB. See, you can’t trust anyone
Next morning, taxi tried to scam us by driving this long convoluted way to the Forbidden City, but I had the map in my bloody hand, so I started saying in Chinese “too long! Too long! Too expensive! “(limited Chinese skills here), and then get out my camera and pretend to take photo of his id, so then he gave it to me for half that price, so ahahahaha. So that is my tip for taxi drivers in China – try and get an idea of how far you are going, and what route it should be, or alternatively, get the hotel to tell you so when you get in the car you can tell them how much you expect it to be,! And then if they are troublesome, pretend to take a photo of them or write down their ID number. Aha!!! No more scamming me!
The Forbidden City is huge, and impressive in its size, but it was so full of people, that it was a horrible experience. Also, the day was truly horrible pollution wise, and it was all under construction in preparation for the Olympics, so it wasn’t the best experience. After this we went to Tiananmen square (and just stood around, didn’t know what to do there), and then walked up to this park with a hill, and a pagoda on top of the hill, to try and get scenic photo of Forbidden City, but the pollution was just so bad there was no view at all
Then we got a taxi (no scam), to the other side of the city in search of a Hard Rock Café. Sue and I like to eat in Hard Rock Café’s around the world, whenever we travel together, and have been to those in Barcelona, London, Oslo, and although there was none in Shanghai, there is one in Beijing. However, after we got all the way there we discovered it was closed and had to go all the way back to the City.
Then we went to this bar/restaurant area around this lake, and it was polluted and ugly, but we had a nice lunch (sue ellen drank hot coke with ginger in it) and the people next to us had grubs. Seriously.
Then we walked around the lake, and I bought one of those sticks with the candied little fruits on it…like a lot of little toffee apples on one stick.
Then we went into the city for some shopping (we had like 5 cabs this day, with only the first being troublesome – so there are some good taxi drivers), but the shopping street was crap, and horrible, and the weather was like a nuclear winter. But there was this fantastic night food market street thing, where sue got candied strawberries on a stick, and we walked around, and it was getting all over here and this nice man gave her some of those wet towellette things, and we saw all interesting things to eat, though we didn’t eat them. Our tour guide the next day recommended that we don’t go there, but tit was great I thought. The sad things we saw were a stickful of roasted little tiny seahorses (so sad, but cute, but sad, even though I love meat on a stick I couldn’t eat this) and also starfishes…
Then we caught a cab home and watched the movie Wallace and gromit and the Were rabbit, and it was surprisingly good!
So my impressions of that day of Beijing were – dirty ugly polluted, boring, nuclear winter. Luckily for us, the next day was a lot better, the skies were blue, and the air was relatively clean. This day we went to the Great Wall, at Mutianyu. This is a bit of wall that isn’t too popular, and therefore, not very crowded. We got a chairlift up to the wall and walked around on it for a couple of hours. To the horror of authentic travellers and backpackers everywhere, we actually went on a tour this day. Just because it was easiest, and we didn’t have much time to try and figure anything else out – the tour just dropped us off at the wall though, and we got to meander around on our own.
The whole tour was full of oldies, which Sue (who works with oldies), commented on like David Attenborough. Here is what I learned - Oldies will repeat over and over the same question, for the whole day –they will repeat it immediately after others have just asked, after they themselves have asked, later in the day, just all the time. Oldies will also have conversations among themselves, where they do not listen to each other, but continue talking as if they were talking to each other. Waiting till the other pauses, filling in the silences, etc. etc. American oldies are super inappropriate and kind of racist, in an ignorant and not intentionally mean way.
In any case, the wall was absolutely amazing. It is built along the mountains, at the highest point of the mountains, which must have been an absolute biatch to build. But it is so amazing, curving away into the distance in both directions, and it was pretty well preserved (or rebuilt I suppose). On either side of the wall was just wilderness.
That evening, Sue Ellen and I wanted to have some Peking Duck somewhere, and although we were not trying to be fancy, we ended up going to the Beijing Ritz. It wasn’t super expensive, about 20 GBP each, which is pricey for China, but not for Peking duck at the Ritz in general, so we think that was ok.
We ordered half a duck, and the poor waitress stood next to our table wrapping all the pancakes up for us – which took her a while. We also had some traditional Beijing dumplings. Let me just note that I am a terrible expat – I do NOT like Chinese food. I love Australian Chinese food, but I hate real authentic Chinese food (except Cantonese). In fact, sometimes I forget I hate it, and crave the Australian style so much, that I go and get some and it is horrrrrrible.
The following day we caught the plane from Beijing to Hangzhou, on what is the worst flight of my life, and I believe it gave me my first instance of sickness in China, possibly a mild case of Bird Flu. We flew Hainan air, which only days before had been so pleasant. In this case I was stuck between Sue and some strange man. This man was part of a tour group which (I know I am being offensive here), seemed to be from some sticksville village. The main problem I had here was the constant spitting into the airsickness bag. And for anyone that has been to China knows, the spitting is not subtle, and comes right from their bloody feet up or something. Also, the smell was not good, not good at all, although lucky Sue had her migra stick.
Then we arrived in Hangzhou, and driving from the Airport, it was like we were in a fairytale crossed with Dr Seuss book. The houses were hilarious – all colourful and shiny, triple storied, with purple roofs, and goldie/yellowy awnings, pagoda’s in the yard,…but of course, the surroundings weren’t all nice, it was the usual China grey sky and freeways. But they have made a real effort with the houses.
Finally we arrived near the lake. You see, Hangzhou is famed as being the most beautiful place in China, it is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese people, and Marco Polo described it as heaven on earth.
Now the actual city is the same grey, dirty polluted city like other cities in China, but the lake is different. It is beautiful, because they maintain it as a tourist destination. The surroundings are clean, there are those cute Chinese arch bridges, blossoming trees, weeping willows, etc. etc. and we saw a beautiful, beautiful sunset over the shimmering lake. There is also a Xintiandi style area where we had our dinner and some icecream.
The next day was not as nice. The weather had turned nuclear-winter-esque, as it is wont to do in China…and so the second day we just spent the whole day wanting to leave. But our train wasn’t till the evening, so we had lunch in a fancy hotel and went to do some shopping, because just wandering around was depressing, and intimidating, as we were constantly being stared at by men! I don’t know what we were doing differently that day, but at no time in China have I ever been stared at so much!
And then we got the super fast train back to Shanghai, and there was a big debacle over where we could sit, as our seats weren’t together, and even though the train wasn’t full, we weren’t allowed to sit in other peoples seats. Finally, the steward came and kicked some poor woman out of the carriage so we could sit together…which is unfortunate for her, but good for us, and what a stupid system.
And so that was my trip with Sue. My next trip, I went to Xiamen, for a search Engine conference…and I could blog on that, but as we were working much of the time, I don’t think I will bother. Suffice it to say, that it is just another city, albeit on an island, and the closest part of ‘mainland’ China to Taiwan. (not sure why this is noteworthy).
On a grey Holy Thursday, we flew out of Shanghai to Xian. Unbeknownst to me, the airline regulations had recently changed so that you can no longer take liquids on board, ruining my idea of taking my small suitcase on board and saving a lot of trouble. In fact, it caused extra trouble, as I was stopped at security and sent back to the check in to put my bag through….soooo annoying.
We flew on Shanghai airways which was really quite ok, I have flown them before. This time we actually got fed (not fantastic, but it did have something I could eat amongst it), and also the man next to me had a laptop and was watching some English movies, so I got inflight entertainment and everything (a romantic comedy and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
When we got to Xian, the nightmare of us getting ripped of by taxi drivers was about to begin…after Harbin it is what I expected…however, for some reason, my newly acquired confidence and Chinese skills actually got me taxi’s cheaper than what the trip advisors recommended! Hooray! So I recommend for all of you going to China, learn how to say your hotel name in Chinese, find out how much it should cost, and be irate and pretend to take photos of their licence if they are costing too much.
Then, after that good luck, we arrived at our hotel The Grand Mecure on Peoples Square (yes, Xian has a peoples square just like Shanghai.), we got upgraded to a suite!!!! It was so huge and lovely and had cable tv, and the weather outside was so extremely crap, that we just wanted to stay inside for the whole time.
I have never stayed in a hotel room before that is more than one room,a nd this one was like two bathrooms, a bedroom and a loungeroom. Only one bed, but who cares. It was huge.
The only down side of the hotel was the attempt at the in-room scam by the tour director. Sue and I wanted to go visit the terracotta warriors the next day. So, we asked the concierge, and he said he would send up the tour lady. Sure enough he did, and she sold us the tour, we paid the money, and she left. Now, I counted the money, Sue counted the money and the woman counted it.
Nevertheless, she was back in ten minutes saying we were 100RMB short. Now, usually I would be a sucker for this, and just fold completely, and hand it over. But I am a white (kind of) person in China, and I am so SICK of people trying to scam me, so I refused to pay, and she was nearly in tears, and I still refused, and then I said, well fine, give me all my money back and I just won’t go with you at all, and then the concierge intervened and apologised.
They think I am so dumb!!!!! But I am not! I am on to them all.
So then after that, Sue Ellen I went out for the rest of the day. We had some Chinese food (Sue Ellen had vinegar pork, masquerading as sweet and sour pork), and I had hard dry noodles. Gross. So I needed a double che after that as you understand. So we went to McDonalds, and I got my che, and we sat in this “fine dining”section of the McDonalds, on the tables that had tablecloths and vases. Very weird, I have not seen that in any other Mcdonalds anywhere. And I have been in quite a few!
Then we went to see the Drum and Bell Tower which is in the middle of the Old City. See, Xian is a huge city, but a big section of it is walled, and this is the Old style city (even though it is all just old stuff, that is where most of the hotels, etc are too). And so we found the bell Tower, and it was in the middle of this big roundabout! It was so weird, you couldn’t even get near it, because of the cars. The Drum Tower is a one minute walk from it, and to be truthful, I wasn’t overly impressed by either.
The Drum tower stands right next to the Muslim quarter, so we had a meander through there, and it was cool, even though it was raining. And then we went into the mosque, which was interesting, as it was not like a usual mosque, it was still all Chinese architecture.
The most hilarious bit though was when we were leaving the Muslim quarter, and I was bargaining for a tuk tuk to take us back to the hotel, and Sue Ellen got grabbed on the ass, THREE TIMES by the same man, in the two minutes I was talking to the Tuk Tuk driver, it wasn’t till we were in the tuk tuk and driving away that she was able to tell me.
So then we had the hilariously dangerous drive home in the tuk tuk through the mad streets of Xian, with crazy u turns in front of buses and everything.
Then that night, we stayed in the room ordered room service, appreciated the suite, and watched SVU.
The following day we set off in our own private van to the Terracotta warriors. First we saw the Neolithic village, which is just ridiculously old, and to my delight, was a village/society which was totally matriarchal. It even still had skeletons. And it showed how children were buried in big pots, and the pots were out the front of the house, and how men lived in separate villages, and people were buried in different ways depending on how they died. (Although I never really understood how archaeologists find all this out).
Then we went to the terracotta soldiers, which were amazing also. They were discovered by a farmer in 1979, and it covers a huge area of land, and they show you this Hitchcock-esque film beforehand, which is scary, and then ther are three different excavation pits they are working on. The guy who discovered it almost 30 years ago, sits there everyday signing autographs – you would have to be hating on it.
Then we went for a Chinese meal, and tour of silk factory, where some man spent a lot of time trying to sell us a silk doona. Sue didn’t understand what he was saying, and so was smiling at him, and so I had to put my foot down and say, NO of course we don’t want to buy a doona! Why would travellers want to buy a doona?!?! Use your thinking skills people!!!!
Then we went to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which is where Tripitaka kept all his scriptures. As you would know from Monkey Magic, he brought the Buddhist scriptures all the way from India to Xian (which used to be the old capital you see), and then spent a bazillion years translating them from Sanskrit to Chinese.
And then we went back to the hotel, without stopping at the city wall, as scamming tour drivers told us there was no parking…such a massive lie.
Then we went to the airport, and got on best flight ever with Hainan Air. Video screens in back of seats for a domestic flight!!! Only two seats across. It was heaven.
Then, happily, when we got to Beijing, I got a taxi for only 80 RMB, to the hotel, when the hotel said it should be about 130RMB. See, you can’t trust anyone
Next morning, taxi tried to scam us by driving this long convoluted way to the Forbidden City, but I had the map in my bloody hand, so I started saying in Chinese “too long! Too long! Too expensive! “(limited Chinese skills here), and then get out my camera and pretend to take photo of his id, so then he gave it to me for half that price, so ahahahaha. So that is my tip for taxi drivers in China – try and get an idea of how far you are going, and what route it should be, or alternatively, get the hotel to tell you so when you get in the car you can tell them how much you expect it to be,! And then if they are troublesome, pretend to take a photo of them or write down their ID number. Aha!!! No more scamming me!
The Forbidden City is huge, and impressive in its size, but it was so full of people, that it was a horrible experience. Also, the day was truly horrible pollution wise, and it was all under construction in preparation for the Olympics, so it wasn’t the best experience. After this we went to Tiananmen square (and just stood around, didn’t know what to do there), and then walked up to this park with a hill, and a pagoda on top of the hill, to try and get scenic photo of Forbidden City, but the pollution was just so bad there was no view at all
Then we got a taxi (no scam), to the other side of the city in search of a Hard Rock Café. Sue and I like to eat in Hard Rock Café’s around the world, whenever we travel together, and have been to those in Barcelona, London, Oslo, and although there was none in Shanghai, there is one in Beijing. However, after we got all the way there we discovered it was closed and had to go all the way back to the City.
Then we went to this bar/restaurant area around this lake, and it was polluted and ugly, but we had a nice lunch (sue ellen drank hot coke with ginger in it) and the people next to us had grubs. Seriously.
Then we walked around the lake, and I bought one of those sticks with the candied little fruits on it…like a lot of little toffee apples on one stick.
Then we went into the city for some shopping (we had like 5 cabs this day, with only the first being troublesome – so there are some good taxi drivers), but the shopping street was crap, and horrible, and the weather was like a nuclear winter. But there was this fantastic night food market street thing, where sue got candied strawberries on a stick, and we walked around, and it was getting all over here and this nice man gave her some of those wet towellette things, and we saw all interesting things to eat, though we didn’t eat them. Our tour guide the next day recommended that we don’t go there, but tit was great I thought. The sad things we saw were a stickful of roasted little tiny seahorses (so sad, but cute, but sad, even though I love meat on a stick I couldn’t eat this) and also starfishes…
Then we caught a cab home and watched the movie Wallace and gromit and the Were rabbit, and it was surprisingly good!
So my impressions of that day of Beijing were – dirty ugly polluted, boring, nuclear winter. Luckily for us, the next day was a lot better, the skies were blue, and the air was relatively clean. This day we went to the Great Wall, at Mutianyu. This is a bit of wall that isn’t too popular, and therefore, not very crowded. We got a chairlift up to the wall and walked around on it for a couple of hours. To the horror of authentic travellers and backpackers everywhere, we actually went on a tour this day. Just because it was easiest, and we didn’t have much time to try and figure anything else out – the tour just dropped us off at the wall though, and we got to meander around on our own.
The whole tour was full of oldies, which Sue (who works with oldies), commented on like David Attenborough. Here is what I learned - Oldies will repeat over and over the same question, for the whole day –they will repeat it immediately after others have just asked, after they themselves have asked, later in the day, just all the time. Oldies will also have conversations among themselves, where they do not listen to each other, but continue talking as if they were talking to each other. Waiting till the other pauses, filling in the silences, etc. etc. American oldies are super inappropriate and kind of racist, in an ignorant and not intentionally mean way.
In any case, the wall was absolutely amazing. It is built along the mountains, at the highest point of the mountains, which must have been an absolute biatch to build. But it is so amazing, curving away into the distance in both directions, and it was pretty well preserved (or rebuilt I suppose). On either side of the wall was just wilderness.
That evening, Sue Ellen and I wanted to have some Peking Duck somewhere, and although we were not trying to be fancy, we ended up going to the Beijing Ritz. It wasn’t super expensive, about 20 GBP each, which is pricey for China, but not for Peking duck at the Ritz in general, so we think that was ok.
We ordered half a duck, and the poor waitress stood next to our table wrapping all the pancakes up for us – which took her a while. We also had some traditional Beijing dumplings. Let me just note that I am a terrible expat – I do NOT like Chinese food. I love Australian Chinese food, but I hate real authentic Chinese food (except Cantonese). In fact, sometimes I forget I hate it, and crave the Australian style so much, that I go and get some and it is horrrrrrible.
The following day we caught the plane from Beijing to Hangzhou, on what is the worst flight of my life, and I believe it gave me my first instance of sickness in China, possibly a mild case of Bird Flu. We flew Hainan air, which only days before had been so pleasant. In this case I was stuck between Sue and some strange man. This man was part of a tour group which (I know I am being offensive here), seemed to be from some sticksville village. The main problem I had here was the constant spitting into the airsickness bag. And for anyone that has been to China knows, the spitting is not subtle, and comes right from their bloody feet up or something. Also, the smell was not good, not good at all, although lucky Sue had her migra stick.
Then we arrived in Hangzhou, and driving from the Airport, it was like we were in a fairytale crossed with Dr Seuss book. The houses were hilarious – all colourful and shiny, triple storied, with purple roofs, and goldie/yellowy awnings, pagoda’s in the yard,…but of course, the surroundings weren’t all nice, it was the usual China grey sky and freeways. But they have made a real effort with the houses.
Finally we arrived near the lake. You see, Hangzhou is famed as being the most beautiful place in China, it is one of the most popular destinations for Chinese people, and Marco Polo described it as heaven on earth.
Now the actual city is the same grey, dirty polluted city like other cities in China, but the lake is different. It is beautiful, because they maintain it as a tourist destination. The surroundings are clean, there are those cute Chinese arch bridges, blossoming trees, weeping willows, etc. etc. and we saw a beautiful, beautiful sunset over the shimmering lake. There is also a Xintiandi style area where we had our dinner and some icecream.
The next day was not as nice. The weather had turned nuclear-winter-esque, as it is wont to do in China…and so the second day we just spent the whole day wanting to leave. But our train wasn’t till the evening, so we had lunch in a fancy hotel and went to do some shopping, because just wandering around was depressing, and intimidating, as we were constantly being stared at by men! I don’t know what we were doing differently that day, but at no time in China have I ever been stared at so much!
And then we got the super fast train back to Shanghai, and there was a big debacle over where we could sit, as our seats weren’t together, and even though the train wasn’t full, we weren’t allowed to sit in other peoples seats. Finally, the steward came and kicked some poor woman out of the carriage so we could sit together…which is unfortunate for her, but good for us, and what a stupid system.
And so that was my trip with Sue. My next trip, I went to Xiamen, for a search Engine conference…and I could blog on that, but as we were working much of the time, I don’t think I will bother. Suffice it to say, that it is just another city, albeit on an island, and the closest part of ‘mainland’ China to Taiwan. (not sure why this is noteworthy).
