Cathrine's Blog

We are back! Well, we’ve actually been back for a few weeks now, and I’m FINALLY able to look at the pictures of the rest of our holiday! Rather than write posts for every day, I’m just going to put up some photo’s from the last week of our tour to give you an idea. The first few days were the best anyway!

XIAN: 11-12 July

We arrived in Xian and were met by our guide, who delivered us to our hotel for breakfast and a very welcome shower. Then it was off to the Terracotta Warriors (via a scam factory to try and make us buy stuff. Didn’t fall for it, and Nathan got to pose up-close with the concrete people…)

Hundreds of soldiers…

The Fallen Soldier

That evening we went to a Tang Dynasty Show and Dumpling Banquet. This is hard to even think about – I never want to see another dumpling again! Even the thought if them makes me queasy…

The next day, we went to the Big Goose Pagoda and the Great Mosque.

Hard to take pictures of the Mosque as it was a random collection of buildings, but there were pretty flowers in ponds…

CHONGQING: 13 July

After another night on a train, we arrived in Chongqing for a day before our river cruise. The main attraction of this region is the giant panda’s.

Nathan with the baby panda:

Big panda:

Well, this is taking longer than I thought! Time to go to work. Will try and finish this off soon…

Today was Nathan’s birthday!!! So before we continue:

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Nathan,

Happy Birthday to you!

Ok, moving on! Today’s excursion’s took us on several LONG drives all over Beijing. The first stop was the Summer Palace, where the Imperial Family would go to escape the oppressive summer heat in Beijing. Don’t know what it felt like for them, but I thought it was still pretty warm! The centrepiece of the Palace is the massive lake in the middle. I would put a picture up, but it was so foggy and hazy none of them really show what it is like! Lots of paddleboats available for hire, and even a boat that caught on fire while we were there. The artwork around the Palace and inside the buildings was just as ornate as in the Forbidden City, although the pictures were a bit more decorative here.

We didn’t spend long here at all, as we had to start driving again. About 2.5 hours later, we reached our destination, only to be presented with the scariest, most terrifying experience of our trip to date (edit: hoilday is now 3/4 over, and this was STILL the scariest part!).

The Jinshanling Cable Car is the ricketiest, least stable looking, highest, attached by nothing at all cable car that I have EVER seen! These tiny little cars seem to be suspended from the cable by little more than a bolt, and if you lean too far in one direction, it may just fall off! Something which Nathan delighted in telling me all the way up… “If we fell here, we’d probably die”. So I sat as still as I could, FREAKING out quietly (ok, not so quietly) while Nathan took photo’s of the drop, and of my face (which will NEVER see the light of day, don’t even bother asking!).

Once at the top, though, it was totally worth it. We wandered about 5 minutes along the top of a hill until we could climb up to the Jinshanling Great Wall. This is a mostly un-restored section of the wall, in a state of ruin. However, it was just stunning! The views out either side were amazing, and again, the history of what we were standing on was breathtaking.

You can actually hike between this section of the Wall and another (Simatai), however, we were a bit shattered by now with all the walking! The tramp takes 3.5 hours if you’re fast, and up to 5 hours if you’re not, and we didn’t have even 2 hours to spare. So back to the Death Trap it was!

The only downside to this experience was two creepy “local farmers” who followed us the whole way… knowing they were going to try and sell us stuff later that we didn’t want was SO off-putting! It really put a dampener on the day, and we ended up leaving early to get away from them.

After lunch (at about 3pm) we headed back towards Beijing. Due to the Olympics, security for people entering Beijing is high, and we had to go through 2 security checkpoints. Complete with armed guards confiscating pieces of pipe, bomb detectors, and a traffic gridlock, all vehicles entering Beijing are thoroughly searched. We got pushed through quickly cos we were tourists though – THAT was funny to see our driver yelling out the window and being ushered through!

Eventually we arrived at Beijing West Rail Station to catch our train to Xian. We arrived somewhat early, and being nervous about trying to catch the train, our guide Jenny found us a friend of hers who was ushering another tour group onto the train. So, for a couple of hours, we joined up with a great group from Sweden! Followed the Swedish flag around and everything. It was great. Finally we found our way onto the train, and into our deluxe soft sleeper carriage (which means only 2 bunks instead of 4), an armchair, and a little bathroom just for us. A very nice way to travel!

Our second day in Beijing began with a tour of traditional hutongs (narrow and winding streets with distinctive style houses) on a pedicab. This was the most awkward thing for me so far, as I feel VERY uncomfortable being pulled behind a bicycle driven by a person! Fortunately our driver didn’t look TOO emaciated, so that was ok, we also walked a fair bit of the way ourselves.

We drove around the narrow alleyways for a while, then stopped at one of the houses. Once a home of officials, now a family home and B&B, the dwelling consists of 4 buildings around a central courtyard. The courtyard is filled with trees and animals, although the animals are birds in a cage and fish in a bowl. There was a couple of free sparrows around though, and our local guide tells us that the sparrows have only recently returned to Beijing.

The wildlife tracking continued on into the afternoon. After lunch, we took a drive out of town for a couple of hours. As we were just about to climb a rather large hill, Nathan spotted something small on the ground:

Yep, that’s a tiny, tiny white kitten. Totally starved, shaking, but still able to move and purr when we touched it. It was so sad to know that it would probably be dead in a day or two, but we just couldn’t bring it home with us! So we reluctantly left it to it’s fate.

After looking up that large hill, walking about 50m up, we decided we would catch the cable car. Wise move, as it turned out, even the cable car took a long time to get to the top! Once at the top…

Mutianyu is a restored section of the Great Wall, however it has the added bonus of not being as crowded as the main section, Badaling. There are a few steep bits, however it is generally easy to get around. Honestly, this was the most incredible experience for me – totally surreal to be standing on the Great Wall of China! We were just blown away by the scale of this defence structure. Nathan climbed to the highest point of open walkway – I stayed at the bottom to record the ascent.

The scale is a bit hard to get across – but this was taken on full zoom on my camera (10x) and it was a REALLY long way up! And that IS Nathan standing at the top, I promise!

After some more walking, we reached our transportation DOWN the hill. No nice, sedate  cable cars this time, NO, toboggan it was! Nathan raced on down the aluminium slideway – I took things a little slower (ok, a LOT slower) but it really was quite fun! Once at the bottom, it was time to head back to the city again for Peking Duck dinner. Interesting meal, felt sorry for the duck cooked in it’s entirety, but it was ok. Then back to the hotel to recover and get ready for the next day!

We hit Beijing about a week ago, and the internet has suddenly become very hard to access! I have been writing posts on the laptop in Word so I can copy and paste when we get to Hangzhou in 4 more nights, but in the mean time, I’m sitting on a computer on the cruise ship with the slowest internet in the world. Can’t post properly cos all the pics are on the laptop!

Many apologies, will have LOTS of posts in a few more days for you to catch up on.