Craig & Mel's World Tour: Beijing

We said goodbye to Koh Samui on Sunday afternoon at about 5pm and arrived in Beijing 6.30am Monday. It was a looooooooong night. Our flight from Koh Samui arrived at 8pm in Bangkok and then we had a 5 hour wait for our next flight which was terrible. 5 hours in an airport with nothing to do and tired = terrible!!! We got a little sleep on the plane and then arrived in Beijing just as the sun was coming up. We made the decision that we would catch the subway to our hostel rather than a cab. The hostel website gave great directions but wow – if we were tired on the plane, it definitely didn’t take long to wake up.

We took the Airport Shuttle Train to connect with the main subway of Beijing. Apparently a lot of people catch the subway at 8am on a Monday morning?!?!?! I have NEVER seen so many people before in my life, except maybe at a festival and even that probable didn’t compare to how many people were in such a small space. We were shit scared because we still had 2 more trains to catch, we had our big backpack on our backs and our little day packs on the front and each train is so full, you just have to push to fit on. When the doors open you just push for your life to fit on. Craig’s bag got caught in the doors once or twice, which was fun. Finally arrived at our station (Dongsi Station), which was a massive relief! Walking out into the sunshine was just bliss!! All in all the train rides took us just over an hour, which was pretty good. The subway is really well signed and relatively easy to use but just so dense or should we say THICK with people. I have never played such a hard game of ‘spot the aussie'.

Our hostel was a short walk from the station, which we managed to find. We dropped off our bags but couldn’t check in until 12pm. We decided to go for a walk and see what we could find. The weather here at the moment is just beautiful and such a nice change from the hot and sticky Koh Samui. First thing we noticed while walking around Beijing is how it seems to be the norm to hawk up big gollies and spit them on the ground (men and women). It is the most disgusting thing we have ever experienced! Everyone seems to be sick here which is comforting but hopefully because we are only here for a short time we won’t catch anything. The language barrier is also a little hard. In Thailand they at least spoke a little English but here it is a lot harder to find someone. The people in our Hostel speak fairly good English so that is comforting.

We checked into our hostel (The Happy Dragon Hostel), which is SO cheap and really good. It is costing us about $25 a night and we have our own private room with ensuite! There is a little bar down stairs in the Hostel that sells food and drinks. Monday night they had a ‘Free Roast Duck Night’ so we went and experienced Beijing roast duck! It was awesome!!! We only had 2 full days in Beijing so we booked a tour for each day. Tuesday – The Great Wall of China and Wednesday – City Tour!!!

The Great Wall of China

Seeing The Great Wall of China was absolutely amazing to say the least. There are few different places of the wall that you can visit but we were told that some of them are very touristy and over crowded! It was recommended that we go to the part of the wall called Mutianyu. This section of the wall is approximately 4kms long and has 23 watch towers. There is a chairlift that takes you from the village up to watch tower 6. We took this and walked from watch tower 6 to watch tower 14 (approximately 2kms). It was hard walking – there are SO many stairs and they are all different heights and extremely steep at times. We were exhausted by the time we got to watch tower 14 so we had a little rest and then did it all over again. Thankfully, the way back wasn’t quite so hard because there was more down stairs than up but don’t get me wrong, it still wasn’t easy. It was worth the walk though and we managed to get some amazing pictures!!! I think most of the time we were there it was hard to comprehend that we were actually walking The Great Wall of China. It didn’t seem to sink in!!!! Another reason it was worth it was for the way that we got back down to the village – by Toboggan!!!! It was awesome fun – we only wish we could have gone faster!!!

After 3 hours on the wall we had a beautiful Chinese lunch and then back on the bus for a 2 hour ride back to our Hostel. Another thing you quickly notice about Beijing is the traffic!!! I thought that driving in Thailand was bad but Beijing takes it to a whole new level!!! There are buses, cars, scooters and bikes EVERYWHERE and no one gives way. They are all everywhere over the road and constantly beeping because someone is in their way! I am not sure why they bother having lanes marked and traffic lights because no one seems to pay attention to them anyway. I was scared for my life just being a passenger and I think it was an achievement for us to drive 2 hours there and back and not collect a bike rider or scooter on the way!!!

The Great Wall was definitely one of the high lights of our trip and I am sure is one of the most amazing things that we will ever do.

City Tour

The city tour was a great day. We got to see The Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace and we also went to a silk factory and a Tea House. What made it better was that we had our own personal tour guide for the day. Her name was Laura and she spoke really good English. She is studying Chinese History so she was able to tell us a lot about the history, which was really interesting. All of the places were so huge!!!! You would walk through one building and then come out to another huge opening with another group of buildings and this just happens over and over again. It is amazing that such huge places fit in such a compact busy city! The Summer Palace was definitely our favourite. It has a beautiful lake and all up it is over 700 acres in size!!! All the cherry blossoms have just started to bloom so it was very pretty and they have a Dragon Boat that you can take across the lake to the other side. All in all it was a great day but again – so much walking. Not such hard walking but we were exhausted once again by the end of the day.

We had imagined that we would have an early night and be fresh for our flight to Vancouver on Thursday but when we got back to the hostel we decided to have a few drinks…… This started a long night with all the people in the hostel and we managed to get to bed at about 1am. It was definitely worth it though; we met so many people and had such a great night. Thankfully – not sick in the morning so that worked out well!!!!

Well that’s all for Beijing so next adventure is Vancouver so keep a look out and we will post again soon!!!

Mel and Craig xoxox

p.s. Sorry about the long blogs - I hope they are not too boring!! Just been hard to get online so when we do, there is so much to tell!!!