Beijing

At the end of July we were given 4 days holiday which including the weekend gave us a total of 6 whole days of freedom… wow! The holiday began rather stressfully with a broken laptop and our flights seeming to have vanished from anywhere official (leading us to believe that we had perhaps bought fake tickets). However with phone calls all over the world, the problems were eventually sorted and we were up at 4am the next day to head to Incheon and board our flight to China.

We were both feeling a little bit snuffly but tried desperately to conceal this as we passed through the swine flu inspections and thankfully we must have kept cool enough not to alert the men at the body heat monitors, as they stamped our forms and waved us through. We waited to meet mum and dad and tried to convince ourselves that we could tell the difference between Korean and Chinese people. We met up with mum, dad and Craig in Craig’s car and were whisked away to Beijing. After a quick welcome drink at Craig and Julia’s Alan and I went to meet the wonderful driver Jacky who was to taxi us around for our entire visit. He took us to our hostel in the hutongs which was amazing. A traditional courtyard building with cats everywhere. We slept in the biggest bed I have ever seen and were even given muesli for breakfast, which after a year without was very exciting.

That night we met up with the others and went to an amazing Peking duck restaurant, again in a traditional courtyard building, though this one was somewhat grander than our hostel. I could quite easily spend this whole blog listing the spectacular food that we had in Beijing but that might be rather boring so I’ll just say that Craig and Julia made sure that we were constantly well-fed at the best of Beijing’s restaurant and it was very nice to have hosts who plan their days as much around food as we do.

The following morning Jacky picked us up and took us to meet the others at the silk market for a bit of shopping Chinese style. Initially we were a bit overwhelmed by all the sales pitches and the prospect of having to bargain. It was no problem though as we were lucky enough to have Julia doing the bargaining and therefore paid far less for everything. By the end of the trip we weren’t doing a bad job ourselves and came away with jewelery, carvings and paintings. After another delicious meal Craig took us on a boat trip along the river to the summer palace. All along the river there were people bravely fishing and swimming. The Beijing river couldn't even tempt mum in for a swim on a hot August day, which is really saying something. The summer palace was a beautiful sight. The lake was crammed full of lotuses and people were selling the seed pods as a refreshing snack. We walked around for a long time looking at all the extravagant buildings and then tried to find our way to the back gate. This was a little more complicated than expected and we got a bit lost, which wasn't altogether a bad thing as it led us to some really beautifully neglected areas of the palace that we would otherwise not have seen.

The following day was the great wall! Jacky picked us up and took us first to the ming tombs. We then made our way along the winding road to the Great Wall and almost immediately started catching little glimpses of it. I would probably have appreciated this more if I hadn't started feeling extremely sick, and by the time we arrived at the wall I had to run out of the car and throw up... not quite on the actual wall but still one of the more impressive places that I've been sick. We tried to explain to Jacky that we wanted some lunch and after a bit of confusion he disappeared for a while and returned with KFC. It wasn't exactly what we had in mind for our meal at The Great Wall of China, but we ate it politely and it gave us the needed fuel for our hike up the wall. When we got up on the wall we decided to go in the opposite direction from the crowd which proved to be a wise choice as after about half an hour of walking we had the wall almost completely to ourselves. Just us and an extremely posey couple (they must have been Korean).

The next morning we headed for Tianaman square and the Forbidden City. The crowds were out in force and as we queued to get in we wondered whether it would really be worth battling with the throng of umbrella wielding Chinese tourists, however once we pushed our way through the first gate and turned away from the main path we actually found some quite peaceful courtyards and some really beautiful buildings. That evening we went back to a hostel and had a nice beer in the courtyard, surrounded by the hostel cats and then went for a Chinese Shabu Shabu. A pot of boiling water to which we added lamb, beef and all kinds of vegetables. After dinner Alan and I went for a walk around the area with a vague and fruitless aim of finding H&M.

Our last day in Beijing was spent first at the temple of heaven and then in the Hutong district, eating more delicious food, looking at the lovely little shops and cycling around this lovely area on tandems. I am a huge fan of tandems now. Sitting on the back I was able to look around and take pictures without having to worry about steering and neither of us had to work as hard to keep the bike moving. We ended with a beer on the roof of a hutong before heading to an incredible old courtyard house which had been converted into a restaurant. The food was wonderful and we were also entertained by dancers and singers while we ate. A very very busy 5 days!