The most exciting part of this journey was the border crossing. Apparently the size of China's railway is different to that of Russia and Mongolia so rather than make us get off and change trains, the Chinese have decided it's more efficient to change the wheels on the train! This involved separating each carriage, jacking them up, changing the wheels, and then lowering and reconnecting them. The whole process took about an hour with massive hammer knocks throwing you back and forth in the carriage if you're not prepared for it! I was caught unawares by one and nearly fell off my top bunk! Somehow Andy slept all the way through it...
We arrived in Beijing happy with the knowledge that we did not have to spend any more time on a train (at least not too soon!). Being the enlightened cultured group of travellers that we are, we obviously headed straight to one of the many mcdonalds' that were right outside the train station!
After a lovely hot shower and some rest we all tried to meet up for dinner at Tiananmen Square. I say 'tried' because as soon as we got there at the designated time, something seemed to be happening there and outside the Forbidden City (we couldn't see what) and there were massive crowds everywhere! Once that was over, soldiers started ordering people off the square very quickly and we figured we didn't really want to mess with them! Thankfully we ran into one of our group who led us to the rest and we went for a lovely dinner of Peking duck. This night became known as 'The Night We Ate All The Ducks in Beijing' - between 9 of us we polished off 7 ducks and 21 beers! The waiters thought we were hilarious!
The next day we decided to explore some of Beijing including the Forbidden City and a lovely park behind it. The Forbidden City was absolutely huge and stunning all the way around. You could definitely imagine an emperor living there! The park behind it had a small temple at the top of a hill which had fantastic views of the whole of Beijing. It was interesting to see the majesty of the Forbidden City against the backdrop of modern Beijing with its skyscrapers.
The following day was set aside for a visit to the Great Wall. We decided to go to Jinshaling which is further away than the normal tourist area but also much quieter as not as well restored. We thought we would try and do it independently instead of an expensive tour group so we caught a bus to a town that happened to be about halfway there and had been told we could get a minibus from there to the wall. We were expecting to be dropped off at a big bus depot like the one we had left and that the next part would be fairly obvious - what actually happened is we were dropped off at a station at the side of a busy road and a load of drivers started offering us their 'best price' to drive us to the wall! The first guy thought an acceptable price would be the equivalent of £64 and his friend openly said to us that we were English so would have lots of money! Needless to say we were not excited by that 'offer' but were also a bit stuck on what an alternative could be. Thankfully a nice man eventually let us know that the bus stop we were looking for was round the corner with a bus to a similar area to where we were going. As we were walking towards it, we were accosted by a female driver who wanted to offer her 'best price' - £13 one way or £35 return! As I pointed out to her that did not make financial sense! However, knowing that this was going to be our only realistic option of getting to where we wanted to go (and more importantly getting back!), I tried out my haggling skills that I had been honing slowly in Beijing and got the return price down to £27!
The name 'Great Wall of China' does not do the wall justice. It was absolutely spectacular. You got onto the wall at the top of the mountains and could see it for miles around snaking up and down the mountain peaks. As we were in the less touristy part, there were times when we could have an uninterrupted view for ages. Parts of the wall had been restored but other parts were pretty much as they had been originally. There was one bit that was in the process of being restored, so we had to detour around the side of the mountain! There is no way health and safety approved that!
All in all Beijing was a great experience and a nice introduction to the next 2 months we'll be spending in Asia! I think we would definitely go back there to any bits that we missed and explore more of China too.
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