Day 74: Summer Palace

Mood: Pensive

Music: REM - Out of time

Today I got a lie in! (hurrah!) I was to be met at 1pm by Stephen. I surfaced in plenty of time to wash and dress, then pack up my bags once again. The few things that I have bought over the last few weeks are starting to have a serious impact on my ability to close my bag with everything in it. The amount of time required to close the zip seems to grow each time I  have to try doing so. At this rate I'll be buying more baggage just to stop me going mad trying to fit everything in this one.

An admission I failed to make previously, was my purchase and use of what amounts to a man bag. This was initially used to carry that which was living in my pockets. In Malaysia it was far too hot to have all of my pockets full to bursting with the things I would need for the day and as such I bought a small satchel to hold these things. Anyway, it started to also function as an overflow bag on days I was moving hotels, but can no longer do so due to the books I bought in HK while in transit. I guess I now need something that I can check in that will also hold this bag!

We started today at the Hutongs in Beijing. This is an area filled with traditional small houses and small alleyways. The living areas are interspersed with communal toilet and shower/wash areas. It was slightly odd at 2pm to see people in pajamas walking past on their way home from the shower. I had an explanation by a local guide as to some of the local history and the meanings of some of the features of the home gateways.

I was then transported by trishaw to the house of some locals who welcomed me in, sat me down and poured me copious amounts of tea. I was free to ask questions about the housing and the area but could not think of much to say. Instead I asked about the legacy of the Olympics to the people of Beijing. I was told that things had got better for them, from improved transport (the underground system is growing at a massive rate) to cleaner streets and air.

I have to say that I didn't see a single clear day in or around the city but this might be to do with the time of year. It has just finished winter here and everything is very dry. It has been growing increasingly warm over the last few weeks (22C today) but has yet to rain done winter ended. That might explain why there is so much dust in the air. On a side note, the dust is making it hard to photograph anything as the whole sky is a very diffuse light source, appearing washed out every time as that is what the eye actually sees.

After a while of talking to the lady and then her husband I returned to Stephen to be driven to the Summer Palace. We walked around the grounds for a while, him talking about the history of the palace and gardens, while I listened and took in the scenery. The palace was the summer residence of the Empress Dowager, who ruled over the last 3 (puppet, as she held the power) Emperors of the Qing dynasty. It has a huge lake, occupying three quarters of the park's size.

This evening I was taken to the train station for my overnight train to Xian. It is from on this train that you see the picture of Rolf, looking down over me, and me scribbling this entry into my phone.

I'm sure that this is the most disjointed blog post yet. I'll stop rambling now and try to get some rest...

Day 73: The day I forgot Rolf! (and saw the Great Wall of China)

Mood: Distraught
Music: Kings of Conveinience - Riot on an empty street

Well. Yes. I think the title says it all! Today I forgot Rolf. I left him sat in the combat pocket of the trousers I was wearing yesterday and for some reason just assumed he was in the pocket of the other trousers when I did my final checks for the day. I only realised when I got to a particularly good vantage point and then started tapping my pockets to find him!

It was from here that I took the above photo of Hachi, who will have to substitute for Rolf in today's excursion. I really don't think Rolf would be too happy with that but I could hardly leg it 45 minutes down the mountain and then demand a 3 hour round trip just to fetch him for a photo call... He does have a photo today, as ever, just peeking out of the pocket he spent the day in. This is below.

Anyway.... I was picked up today at 8:30am and we set off away from the nation's capital in the direction of the section of wall we were to visit (Jinshanling). A new expressway was built for the 2008 Olympics and as such the journey time has been cut significantly. Apparently it used to take almost 4 hours to do the 90minute journey. From a car park Stephen and I set out on foot up to a steeply stepped path that led from the northern side of the wall up to it. The Great Wall was built in its current state in the 14th century to keep out the Mongol raiders who were frequently attacking the local villages.

We joined the wall at a platform a short way from one end of this, the longest publically open section of wall. There were a couple of people at a number of the towers on the wall selling water, cola and beer at hugely inflated prices to the tourists en route. I had to make used of one of these on the way back, it being a hot day and me carrying my whole camera bag on my back. That and only setting out with 500ml of water, which was all gone before I had gone half way along the section of wall we walked, and we had yet to return the way we came. Obviously I gave my money to my guide and let him haggle the price down rather than paying 5 times the going rate.

From the high points, the wall streched for as far as the eye could see in both directions. Unfortunately the sky has been fairly dusty and that has made visibility more limited than one would like in such a place. I also makes photographing the area rather tricky as the whole sky appears as a very bright diffuse light source, washing out the sky in all but the most carefully framed photos.

The wall was much steeper than I'd imagined in places with sections of very steep steps. The section I walked was also uphill most of the way to the point where the continuing path in to the Simai wall area was closed for renovation.

On the way I met a British group who were walking to raise money for charity. I first passed them as they sat in one of the towers resting. They caught me up after a few minutes as I've stopped to take some photos of the wall in the distance with my telephoto lense. I did get a little confused when I heard them suggest that I might be papperazzi who had followed them out there. At this point Stephen caught up too and we continued in amongst the group for a little while. It turned out to be number of people raising money for various charities. After a minute or two I gleaned from other conversations going on that some of them came from Solihull and one of them was the wife of a Birmingham City player. It turns out that I met this group, from some googling after I got back to Beijing this evening. I left them after they stopped to rest again and met them, me going the other way, after walking another half mile or so and back. They were only a few hundred meters from where I'd left them.

On my way back I picked up Stephen at the tower I'd left him at. He'd been struggling most of the way as he has a cold at the moment. As such I left him there and walked the last few tower sections by myself. We made our way back down the wall and then down the hill to a restaurant for a late lunch.

The return to Beijing was only notable as we arrived back in time for rush hour. This extended the time taken considerably. I would note that Beijing is the craziest place for traffic that I've seen so far. With cars driving all over the place mixed with bikes going in all directions and people walking out fearlessly infront of streams of traffic. Even the green walking man on crossroads doesn't really cut it here. I've mostly ensured there was at least two people between me and cars coming from any direction while I've been crossing the road...

Enough for now. I'll not be posting tomorrow, most likely, as I've an overnight train to my next city.

Night all!

 

Day 72: Tian' Anman

Mood: Awestruck
Music: Greenday - Nimrod

I woke up earlier than I really needed to today, but set about finishing the work around for the connectivity issues and posting yesterday's blog.

After an amount of unnessesary farting about I realised I'd no time left for breakfast so headed out to meet Stephen to start the tour for today. The first destination on our trip was Tianaman square. The square is huge. It is longer than Red Square in Moscow and at least twice as wide. The square was built in the 1960s apparently and the building on it that most people recognise (with the portrait of Mao on the front) is called Tian' Anman, after which the square is now known.

From the square we walked through Tian' Anman and into the Forbidden City. So called because it was the home of the Emporor for the last two Chinese dynasties and as such only the very highest members of society were ever allowed to set foot inside.

The Forbidden City comprises of a series of coutyards with gates and large buildings with set purposes between each section. The last three are a banquet hall, followed by the Emporer's office and sleeping quarters and then the Empresses living and sleeping quarters. At the far end is a garden used by the royal family to relax and entertain themselves. Feng shui of the palace is obtained by a stream that connects the mote, through the inner courtyard and the artificial hill behind, created from the earth excavated to form the moat.

On exiting the North Gate of the Forbidden City we walked a short distance to where our driver was waiting to pick us up and take us to the restaurant next to the Temple of Heaven. After a rather tasty lunch we entered the park surrounding the temple. Local people have free access to the park and a number were in an area next to the main walkway where a large stereo was playing slow music. In ones and twos they were waltzing around in the park in the middle of the day. I was rather nice to watch but I decided not to take any photographs, lest I make anyone self concious and thus less enjoy dancing their day away.

The main building of the Temple for good Harvest was renovated in time for the Olympics and the marathon's blue line still passes the outer walls of the building. It is an impressive three story circular building (the ancient chinese believed that the heavens were circular and the earth square) with a blue roof glaze, symbolizing the heavens.

From here it is a short walk along a long raised terrace that divides the park in two even halves, up to the alter of the heavens. It was here that the Emporor performed an annual ceremony asking for good fortune from the various heavenly deities.

Following this I was dropped back at my hotel. As I had yet managed to get a photo of a national flag I decided to set out on foot back to Tiananman square to photo the large flag there. There are surprisingly few state flags flying in the city. The only fly outside the main government buildings.

After this I headed back to my room and managed to get the hotel to bring some food to my room for dinner.

Tomorrow I start at 8:30am and head out to some little garden rockery thing... it looks a bit more like a wall maybe, I guess...

Day 71: The Great Firewall of China

Mood: Woohoo!
Music: CD 1 Mix Tape - Various

Not much happened today... I got up early to get to the bus to the airport. I got to the airport a little early as my local itinerary had my flight listed at 9:30am but my itinerary from Audley had it as 10:15am. No problems there, just a bit of sitting around. As I planned to get to the airport 2hrs ahead of the flight all would have been fine even if it was the other way around.

After an uneventful flight to Hong Kong I rushed to my new departure gate, only to remember that my watch was now an hour out so I had plenty of time to eat some lunch before the onward flight. Rolf is pictured with my pre-flight/lunchtime beer.

The onward flight was similarly painless and I got to Beijing around sunset. The terminal I landed at was built for the Olympics and is, quite simply, massive. I also has a lovely deep red roof, curved to look like a dragon, with triangular skylights which look like scales.

Passing through the airport was easier than I expected. On the far side I met Steven, who will be my guide for the next couple of days in Beijing. After that we drove to my hotel. It is a single story courtyard building, very traditional but very comfortable. It seems to be located a stone's throw from the main shopping areas but I'll find out more when I look around more tomorrow.

I have discovered that access to my blog and also to facebook are blocked by the Chinese government and as such I'm having to bounce encrypted connections off a server to in the UK to bypass this. For some reason the static content on facebook seems not to like this but I can use the m.facebook.com site to keep tabs on everything.

Tomorrow my exploration of Beijing starts! I have to admit I'm rather excited.

Day 70: And on the 70th day...

Mood: Sleepy
Music: Bluetones - Expecting to fly

I had to be up fairly early this morning in order to get on the flight back to Seoul. As it happened I arived at the bus stop just as a bus was about to leave. It was only after arriving at the airport that I realised that I'd not actually confirmed which airline I was flying with, I only knew my flight was at 10:25am! There were so many flights leaving between 8:30am and 10am that my flight wasn't shown on any of the boards either. A quick call to Victor later and I was checked in and ready to go.

After an uneventful flight I was in and out of Gimpo domestic airport in less than 10 minutes flat, bags now in hand. This afternoon, after returning to my hotel, I've had a good go at fixing my laptop, but to no avail. I think it might be consigned to the computer shop in the sky on my return to the UK...

This evening I went ot the bar over the road from the hotel to get some food and a quiet drink. I think it's just me but anything on a menu that says "very hot chicken" is like a red rag to a bull. It was pretty hot, and most definitely chicken meat today too (although a fair bit of skin with it). Before leaving I took a photo of Rolf in the open beer casket. This was full of ice the first time I visited the place (St Patrick's day) but I think as it is the end of the weekend they might have let it melt away. I also had a cheeky bottle of London Pride, just because I could.

I'm up early tomorrow and fly to China. My next post will be from there (all things being well)!

Day 69: "Grilled Chicken"

Mood: I ate what!?!
Music: Various (same playlist as last night for a chunk of this morning)

I woke this morning in plenty of time to actually make it down to breakfast before being met by my guide for the day. I opted for the Western breafast over the Korean on and was pleasantly surprised when it consisted of a bowl of huney nut cornflakes and a plate of scrambled eggs, fruit and two cold chips.

Once I had finished this I met Victor, my guide for the day and the person who'd put together my whole tour in Korea . Victor is a Russian from Vladivostok, who first moved to Korea to teach foreign languages in schools but after moving around a bit, settled in Jeju and now runs a small one man tourist company. His English is near perfect and this allowed me to converse in a little more detail about a few subjects and also discuss the state of Russia at the moment.

The first stop on our trip was a free standing and fairly tall rock formation on the coast, just out of the town where my hotel is. Next up was the Natural History museum. It's a fairly small museum detailing the lives of the local peoples and also some of the geography of the area. It was fairly pleasant as museums go but hardly something to write home about.

After that we went to the airport to pick up another couple, who would be joining us for the rest of the day. Micheal and Patricia are a German / Malay couple who happened to meet in Glasgow of all places and now live in Malaysia, just north of Singapore.

The next stop on the island tour was a rock formation said to look like a dragon's mouth. Rolf is photographed next to this formation.

After that we drove across the island to a folk village, where people live in the traditional thatched housing of the area. As it is normally very windy on the island, the thatch has a rope lattice covering the surface.

Apparently, the thatch is mostly paid for by the local government in order to maintain the area as a local tourist attraction. It works fairly well as the place is very scenic. We also stopped here for lunch.

Next was one of the largest and busiest tourist spots of the day. That of a large volcano on the coast that had formed underground and made a castle / crown shaped circular island, now joined onto the main part of the island by a small spit. It is a couple of hundred meters climb to the top but the views are quite impressive.

Penultimate on our tour was the end of an overground lava tube. This had worn much of a rock away in a long trench that leads down a few hundred meters to the sea. At the end of this was a black sand beach from which we skimmed stones for a while.

Last up was the other waterfall in the region of the town I'm staying in. It falls into a rock pool which leads directly into the ocean via a short stream and is really quite impressive.

As the other two are staying in the same hotel as I, we decided to go out for food this evening. After much wondering about, Patricia plumped with a place that said "grilled chicken" on the outside. The thinking was... at least we know what animal this comes from!

After realising that they had no menu at all other than what was displayed on the walls we decided on a spicy dish that appeared to contain chunks of chicken, according to the photo. When it turned up it was actually grilled chicken intestines in a spicy sauce. We only discovered this a mouthful in each and then tried to communicate with the owner to find out what part of the chicken this came from. Needless to say that we did not make much headway into the meal before leaving!

After that we went to a bar and drank a couple of beers and also some of the soju (local rice wine). The bottle of soju costs the same as a bottle of beer but is the alcoholic equivalent to a bottle of wine!

I really ought to go to sleep now as I'm up early to catch my flight in the morning...

Day 68: The day I got offered a fork

Mood: So so, I guess.
Music: Various

Yes. Today was the day I got offered a fork. I'll get back to that shameful episode later though...

I was to meet Trueman at 9:30am again today to start our final trip together south towards the airport. As I had no details on the flight I was to take I had asked him yesterday when it was and he thought it was early afternoon about 2pm maybe. He told me this morning (as I rolled up 10 minutes late as I had every day so far!) that the flight was actually at 12:35pm and it was over an hour's drive away.

We were due to stop off on the way at Tongdosa, one of the largest and most important Buddhist temples in Korea. On the way we decided that we would still do so but would have to severely restrict the time we could spend there. In the end the time criticality was added to the motorway reports of traffic jams up ahead. When we got to the temple we nipped out and virtually legged it up to the far end of the site and back. The site consists of a number of gates and many prayer rooms. It is supposed to have been founded in the mid 7th centrury AD and houses what are said to be relics of Buddha himself, including bones.

I had been assured that arriving 30 minutes before a domestic flight in Korea would be fine, and although I was skeptical at the time, I now think he was spot on. Either way we arrived about 50 minutes before my flight and I quickly checked in. The boarding time was 10 minutes before the flight was due to leave and I'd barely sat down by the time the plane had started to taxi to the runway. I've not mentioned this before, but the national motto or Korea is "Hurry hurry". This seems to pervade everything they do, from driving to eating (you lucky ladies...). This does tend to mean that everything is done on time and everything is very punctual. The journey was only short but on the descent I worked out that they were having a raffle to win a number of prizes depending on the plane seat. I wasn't actually sitting in the seat I'd been assigned as I decided it wasn't worth the effort of turfing the lady in the seat out, so I sat on the isle seat one behind.

Lo and behold my original seat number was called out as the winner of the first prize to be given. The lady in my seat couldn't display the boarding card matching it and so when I showed the correct boarding card I became the proud winner of two boxed airline pens... As it happened, the seat I was actually sat in got drawn for another prize but nobody had that boarding card so they drew again.

On landing, I got onto the first bus leaving the plane and had to wait about a minute at the belt before the baggage started arriving. That is "hurry hurry" in action! I was then to take a bus to the south of the island and then a taxi to my hotel.

After a bit of faffing around trying to get a wifi signal in my hotel (it can only be achieved rammed up against the window) I set off to haev a look around town and to get some food. After a few minutes walking down hill towards the harbour in the small town (pop. 85k) I spotted signs for a waterfall which is one of the local tourist attractions. I umm'd and ahh'd about this for a while, not having a camera with me, but decided to have a look.

I then walked around the harbour and up into town to try to find somewhere to eat. Eventually I plumped with a Chinese place recommended by the Lonely Planet guide. As it was really cold out, by this time my hands were frozen and I'd mostly lost mobility in my fingers. After ordering (spicy crab noodle soup) I sat on my hands to try to warm them up but it didn't do much good. When the soup arrived I found myself faced with shelled arms and chunks of body of crab again but decided I'd give this one a better go that the last and picked bits up to try to rescue the meat from them. It was at this point I discovered that my frozen hands simply weren't able to control chopsticks yet and I must have looks so incompetent and helpless that the waitress brought over a pair of wooden chopsticks (rather than the aluminium ones on the table) and also a fork. I normally pride myself on my chopstick use but being offered a fork. I have to say I cried a little on the inside and blamed the cold. As my hands warmed up I changed back from the wooden chopsticks to the finer point nose metal ones again, just to prove to myself that I could.

After that I went to find a bar that the guide said attracted ex pats on qa weekend, just to find someone to talk to. After the first beer I got fed up of waiting and came back to my hotel.

Tomorrow I look around this place with a new guide for the day.

Until again.