Day 2: Great Wall of China

The day started early at 5:45am when we woke up for our 3.5 hour journey by mini-bus to the wall. Getting up that early was not very difficult because we were still not quite adjusted to the time here, in fact I (Phil) couldn't sleep past 4am. Anyways, we were picked up at our hostel by a man in an old Volkswagen station wagon who brought us to the point where we met the mini-bus that drove us the rest of the way to the wall. In typical Chinese driver fashion, he was reckless; not using signals or even lanes and threatening the lives of pedestrians and cyclists. It's amazing that with such chaos, we haven't seen any accidents yet, it must just be how it is here. We eventually got to the place where we got on the mini-bus (in front of the Beijing Hard Rock Cafe, near the Hooters). The bus had about 20 seats. There were two seats on one side and one seat on the other however there were smaller seats that folded down into the aisle. Since we were some of the last to get on, Greame and I ended up sitting in the middle for the 3.5 hour trip. The seats had very low backrests so I came dangerously close to falling asleep on one of our fellow passengers.

When we arrived at the wall, we were in awe. We hiked for 10km along the wall over mountainous terrain. At times, the steps were more than twice as tall as they were wide, at other times the steps that used to be there had been worn away leaving only a rough rocky surface. It also seemed that when we were coming up to a high point (usually where one of the towers are) that as soon as we arrived we saw a higher point a little farther ahead.


Along we locals would come up and walk along with us trying to sell t-shirts, postcards, water and beer. We wanted to buy water from one of the Mongolian ladies who spoke very good English but after finding out that it was 10 Yuan, we passed, just giving her the two Yuan that we had thought it would cost (one yuan is about $0.15).

At the end of our wall hike we needed to cross a suspension bridge to get back to the parking lot. This bridge had a toll that was strangely not included in the price of admission. My theory was that a troll operates the bridge and refuses to make a deal with Wall administration. When we got there, an old, wrinkly, well weathered man collection the toll (5 Yuan – less than $1). After seeing a cave on the way up from the bridge with a blanket and pillow in it, we later confirmed that the old man was in fact a troll and that not paying the toll would have had dire side effects.

Our guide had told us on the bus that once we complete the hike that we have the option of walking for 20 minutes down to the parking lot from the bridge or taking a zip line down across crossing the river again (a boat then takes you back to the parking lot). We eventually opted to take the zip line but Melissa was VERY skeptical of the whole operation saying she wouldn't go down until she saw someone else go down. She was not sure how it stopped and this is what was causing the fear. After a few minutes, I just went for it and the lady operating the line pushed me over the side and off I went. It didn't take long for Melissa to realize that it is fun and she is not likely to join so she came down too (after Graeme who was on the fence the whole time).



After a harrowing ride back to Beijing, we met back up with Sabrina, a new friend from the hostel and she excitedly told us that we were going to Karaoke that night. Sabrina is from Austria but has been living in Shanghai for a while and she really really (really) likes Chinese Karaoke. We were a little skeptical at first but decided to join in with another girl from Portugal and crazy American dude (more about him to come...). Rick, one of the guys who runs the hostel called the place and made us a reservation for an hour later and we were on our way. Turns out Karaoke in China involves small private rooms. So 6 of us had our own Karaoke room and there was a big buffet nearby with Chinese favourites. Our skeptiism about Karaoke quickly went away and we had a lot of fun with our new found friends. For Waterlooers, this was no Silver Spur.

So I mentioned crazy American dude above and he deserves some attention in the blog. This interesting character came into the hostel the previous day telling everyone that he tried to leave China but his visa was expired so they wouldn't let him out. He had been in Taiwan for 4 years living out his dream of living in China and learning the language. He was resultantly very fluent, which you wouldn't expect from this early 20s, very scruffy, white guy. The reason we refer to him as “crazy American dude” is that he is so vibrant and expressive about things that he really shouldn't be. Things like having to leave China but not being allowed, bragging about how he was yelling at customs officials and having a generally crazy disposition. He did impress us however when he told us how much he loved Canada and challenged us to ask him a question about it (after he volunteered the capitals of the territories). We said “Alright, you're on” and asked him what the largest island was. He quickly correctly responded with Baffin island. We then asked him what the largest fresh water island was and he surprisingly knew it was Manitoulan. 10 points for you crazy American dude.

In one word, today was EPIC.

Day 1: Beijing, China

Hello all!!

Well, the last 2 days have been quite the experience. Since we have limited time in Beijing, we have been packing in the sights and activities. At the hostel, we are staying in a 4 bed dorm room, and we only took up three of the four beds. The person in the fourth bed was an Austrian girl who has been teaching English in Shanghai for the past 2 months. She is fluent in German, English, and Spanish and can speak a bit of Chinese. We made friends with with her the first evening, and she accompanied us today. This made ordering things from menus, getting around the city, and purchasing tickes much easier. In general, communication with the locals happend, which was amazing!!

Today we tried to do many of the tourist sights. We took in The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square (so BIG! and very sterile feeling), the Olympic Venues (Bird's Nest, Water Cube, which we could only see the venues from blocks away as there was so much construction. That was a little dissatisfying. We wanted to get up close and personal with the venues), an authentic Chinese lunch (the best dish was the bean curd, which accompanied many other unrecognizable meats and veggies which we ordered off of a picture menu with the help of our room mate from the hostel, an Austrian who speaks a bit of Chinese) and to finish off the evening we ate Beijing Duck.

The best sight of the day was by far the Forbidden City. We didn't expect the city to be so large, and we lucked out. We were not packed in like sardines, and we were able to be the only people in some of the large open spaces. This allowed us to explore the City without much distractions from the hundred's of Chinese tourists. It was quite the experience, and kind of crazy to think back to the time, hundreds of years ago, when the Emperor was there.

The second best experience of the day was dinner. We ventured across town to a 6 story Peking Duck restaurant. Quanjude was established in 1864 and it serves very tasty duck! The restaurant that we ate at was very swanky, with private rooms (which we didn't get to eat in, we had to share a largeish room with other patrions). The restaurant is similar to McDonald's, as the tell you how many millions of ducks they've served since its opening... Our duck's number was 115, 608, 066. And what a tasty duck it was!

Day 0: Beijing, China

So it's 5pm China time right now, that's 5am Ontario time and we are still wide awake. We left this morning at 8am and after 18 hours of flights, we made it! Melissa is telling me that we left yesterday which is true by the calendar but the sun never set so I'm not convinced.

When we arrived, we flew into the new terminal which was extremely clean and easy to get through. We managed to find a taxi to our hostel and handed him the Chinese directions to get here. He didn't speak any English but we managed to make it. After walking down a few narrow back alleys where there are no cars, we found the hostel. An old Chinese man came and showed us how to ring the doorbell to get in. We wanted to thank him but we didn't know how.

The hostel is really neat. It has a nice courtyard in the middle (see picture) with all the rooms around the courtyard.















They have tours to the wall which we intend on taking later on this week. We made our first purchase, a 600mL bottle of beer for 4 CNY, about $0.60. Big spenders! We are just chilling for about an hour at the hostel, then we are going to venture out and take a walk around the area.