So we jumped on the train early in the morning to head off out of Ulaanbaatar. The train was actually really nice and we had a cabin to stay in all to ourselves. We kicked our feet up and started smashing down the junk food we brought for the trip.
After arriving in Beijing after the 35 hour train trip we had only a small amount of time to get out a fat wad of cash, choke down some lunch and then hit another train off to Shanghai (7 hours). All this training was getting to us and to make it worse the last train was a seated one with little room to stretch out and sleep.
Nevertheless Shanghai popped into view and it was off to learn yet another subway route. We are starting to get the hang of navigation through Asian subways so no issues were faced.
The first thing that hit us about China was the sheer number of people. Clones, all the same height pushing and bustling through the streets like worker ants. Our size is the only thing that lets us breathe in the crowds of the big city of Shanghai but we found as soon as we got out of the subway, the paths opened up wide to accommodate the masses of people.
We settled into our Blue Mountain Hostel and hit the streets right away for a Shanghai night time experience. After finding a small side road market filled with headless animals, writhing fish and endless shouting from store keepers we made our way around the city onto the Bund to catch the full orange moon over the skyline of Shanghai.
The Bund (waterfront) consisted of old western style wall street buildings lit up making for some really nice night shots. These awesome structures lead us around to the top end of Nanjing rd. Nanjing rd is the central shopping street in Shanghai and is ALWAYS crowded. High roller shops and department stores litter either side and traffic is forbidden to make way for the river of Chinese.
Ben bought himself some nice sandalwood chopsticks and we made our way further down. A nice girl approached Nick on the street and asked him where he was from, and shortly after, her wing(wo)man approached Ben. Now having been warned about Chinese (especially Shanghai) girls, red flags popped up and we kept walking, they seemed friendly and asked us to coffee. The first thing out of our mouths was that we had NO money and could only afford one cup of tea so nothing expensive. They agreed so we went up 8 floors to a nice coffee shop to share some tea with our new friends.
We asked for the ¥50 tea when the waitress approached and the girls made their order in Mandarin. After a few minutes of annoying small talk about life in New Zealand our order came out. Only it wasn't one pot of tea. It was a platter spread of exotic fruits, two pots of some chinese flower tea, a wasabi pea dish, salted peanuts and 8 glasses of whiskey. Ben's eyes popped out of his head and we reminded them that we had no money to pay for any of this and that we could only have the tea.
They assured us that it was all fine so we enjoyed the rest of our night. After we started to wrap the night up the waitress came out with a bill for ¥3,200 or $600. This time Nick's eyes popped out of his head and we assured her that there must be a mistake. No mistakes were made and the girls informed us that Chinese girls never pay the bills and the men always do.
We informed them for the third and last time that we actually didn't have any money. Nick pulled out ¥150 or $30 and Ben pulled out a whopping ¥4 (75c) after the girls realised we weren't kidding an awkward vibe hit the room and the quietly asked us to put it on our credit cards. As we lied through our teeth that we didn't have credit cards on us, Ben was made to leave the restaurant and go get his while Nick stayed behind held hostage.
Ben left to clear his head and start cooking up an escape plan while Nick held the fort and cooked up his own. After an excruciating 10 minutes Ben came back upstairs and streamlined straight for the waitress sneakily avoiding the table with Nick and our charming new 'friends.' He informed the waitress that he had no money on the card and that they were lured in by the girls. Dropping buzz words to her like "bad business" and "scam" he managed to silver tongue his way out of the bill.
The waitress sent for Nick to be collected from the booth and as soon as he got out, we booked it down the elevator and into the crowds of 19 million Shanghainese. Laughing (and often skipping) our way back to the hostel to tell Scott of the tales of the night, we witnessed a man ripping his wife out of the car on the highway and more scams of people trying to get money out of us. Our first night was, to say the least, eventful…
JIAXING
The next day we took a train out to Jiaxing to meet up with Ben's friend Jake Zhang that he met on his last trip to China some 13 years ago. The train ride was short and sweet and we were picked up and driven around by our new/old friend Jake. He took us to his father's factory where he runs the exports in, also where thousands of spanners (wrenches) are produced weekly. People earning $130NZD a week seemed pretty content with their jobs as we passed through on our little mini tour.
After a slice of the Chinese workman's life we jumped back into Jake's car and headed off to the East and West lake for a beautiful walk out on to the secluded island with cold winter views of some of Jiaxing's country side. Our mini tour was joined by Jake's bushiness partners and continued with views up on the mountains of the lake and towns as well as a visit to an ancient Daoist walled temple. We smashed some mandarins bought from the street vendors near the lake.
That night we dropped our bags off in a high roller hotel and went out for a King's dinner… Our own private room with a lazy susan and unlimited food sounded like the kinda ticket we had been waiting for since Mum's home cooked meal back home.
Each of us had an element built into the table in front of us and a pot of soup was placed down on the element. We then continued to throw in meats, veggies and even skewered prawns that were still alive and wriggling.
The food was filling, fresh and free; the exact kind of thing we needed. We retired to the hotel after a wander around the town square and slept as soon as our heads hit the pillows.
HANZHAO
The next day we jumped in a van and headed to Hanzhao. This was a small city (8 million) and was pretty polluted. After we checked in it was straight out on another mini tour with Jake (no rest on his watch). We wandered to the water front to see old people singing horribly in public and playing cards or Majong. We got through that to make our way to a temple on the hill overlooking the city.
The wooden carvings inside told a story of a snake that turned into a woman and then married some guy and then some monk didn't condone it because she was a snake and so they killed him. Exciting, but the views were to die for and the carvings were some of the best and most detailed we had ever seen. After conquering that temple we moved onto the broken bridge.
This bridge was actually part of the snake lady love story and was not in fact broken. It was hidden in the mists on the water at the end of the day which really made the whole thing seem pretty mystical.
We headed back to the hotel after a huge day of walking but had to hit an all you can eat buffet first and then onto the markets. All in all another full day of travel.
We were finally on a train back to Shanghai and and back to our schedule to relax for a few days before heading off to Wuhan.
WUDANG SHAN
Wuhan lead us to Wudang Shan, a sacred (if not the most sacred) Daoist and martial arts mountain in China. We woke early to hit the 1612m high mountain in the mists and couldn't see shit. The mist was so intense - maybe 100m was the limit.
A cable car at the entrance let tourists get straight to the top of the mountain for a small fee but that just wasn't our style. So off into the misty ice covered paths we went. Slow and steady as the path was unforgiving. The climb took us around 4 hours but the steep staired hike was worth it.
The golden summit gave us views that were breathtaking. Some that rivaled Mt. Fuji some weeks before. The monastery was literally in the clouds and we could see the clouds rolling off the peaks of the surrounding mountains. It was truly a sight to behold. The temple was built around the 1400's so some of the stairs were oddly shaped making the climb more interesting but as we were soaking in the view, the skies began to clear in front of us to give us an even better view.
The trip down was easier as we opted for the pansy option (cable car) making the trip warmer and more pleasant. We exited with time to window shop in the stores before taking a bus back down to the hotel to get some more time on that pillow, preparing for our bus ride to Shiyen…
SICHUAN PROVANCE
We exited the bus in the middle of the night on to the side of the road and checked ourselves into a hotel. After a much needed sleep we hauled ass to the train station to catch our train to Chengdu.
The hostel we stayed at was awesome. Small outdoor gardens and little bridges led to our room complete with a complimentary dog shit on the front step.
In the morning we needed to get to the bus station to catch our long bus all the way up to Jiuzhaigou National park. We plugged in the head phones and took a 6 hour bus ride to the face.
We finally got there and wandered around the town which seemed like a zombie apocalypse had passed through and found a hotel that suited our budget. Although the shower spurted out sand from a hose rather than a shower head and the meat sticks out the front made Scott deathly ill, it was a tolerable place to stay.
We woke up the next morning and headed out to the national park. This place blew us away. Although the scenery was not as lush as it would be in the summer, the aqua lakes and white mountain tops made for an incredible experience. Never had we seen water the colour it was here and never will we.
We spent the whole day here going from aqua green lake to frozen waterfall to river side walks. A truly amazing spot in China that has seemed to slip under the radar for the most part.
After the day of hiking around, we returned back to have a sand shower and watch some movies before nodding off.
We smashed out another 6 hour bus ride back to Chengdu this time suffering yet another small Chinese bus with leg room not enough for Peter bloody Dinklage let alone us. After a crippling bus ride we managed to wander back to Chengdu and our now dog shitless room to crash out.
A good night's sleep was in need after our bus ride as well as the second best shower on the trip. An early start led us to the Leshan buddha. The massive buddha statue carved into the side of the cliff was breathtaking. The ears alone were 7 metres long to get an idea of the size.
We took a bus from the bottom of the mountain range to near the top which took a good 90 minutes. The place was COVERED in snow.
Everything was white and the steps up to the walking path were covered, creating more of a slippery ramp than a set of stairs. The walking sticks/monkey bashers were handy for walking but not for the group of peaceful monkeys we encountered munching on some snacks left by the messy Chinese tourists.
We reached the cable car and figured with time short that we should crank it up there with another easy ride. The cable car failed to reach the top so a short hike further on led us to the amazing summit. Emei Shan with all it's white out frozen peak turned out to be the favourite mountain for all of us.
We wandered around the summit which we had all to ourselves for far too long because as we got back we just missed the last cable car down. People started disappearing and so did the light of day. We had to figure out how to get back and figured the only way was to hike it.
Scott was moving faster than we had ever seen. Climbing down the mountain was difficult as we were losing light but also needed to take the icy steps slow so we didn't need to be carried down. As we were reaching the cable car hut after an hour, night had come and we concluded that all the buses had stopped traveling. This set another panic amongst us as we had a plane to catch in 12 hours. We would have to scale the mountain ourselves which meant a hike in the pitch black down a trail that took our bus 90 minutes to drive in the freezing cold. It was possible and we geared up for the worst hike of our lives.
However it was not to be, our luck came through once again with the last car on the mountain parked by the cable car hut. We negotiated a ¥400 trip to the bottom of the mountain which made for an infinitely better ride than it did a story. Upon reaching the bottom our luck pulled through again because the bus to the train station pulled up next to us as we got out of our life saving car. ¥1 to the train station and we were onto booking our tickets back to which the lady at the ticket booth assured the next train was at 3:00am. Our luck wasn't finished yet as a call on the ladies radio sent us sprinting for a train that had just pulled in. Coming to carriage 18 we were told to go to carriage 4. Another 300m sprint to make it just in time would complete our mission to get back to Chengdu. We opted for the nice clean staff carriage, sat down and acted like we owned the place.
BEIJING
Our flight to Beijing was short and sweet but much needed as we were wearing thin of trains. Beijing was a breath of fresh coal… Nevertheless Beijing was much more civil compared to the rest of China. A little cleaner but still surrounded by litter and spit. The food in Beijing was nice and we found a number of good locations for grazing. After getting ourselves into Beijing we headed out into the night to experience Chinese New Year in Beijing.
People were lighting fireworks in the streets, cars swerving to avoid exploding fireballs of cheap Chinese gunpowder. The grown men seemed to be enjoying the explosions much more than anyone else which baffled us. We found our way to Tianmen Square where we figured we would see the celebrations.
We found no crowds but saw the Forbidden City across the road exploding with fireworks. We had a real nice view of the fireworks all around even though they were often hidden behind walls as they were exploding very low. The place sounded like a war zone with flashes on the horizons and explosions going off consistently all night.
We made our way back to the room and attempted a sleep. The next morning we decided to switch hostels as our room smelled like mold and wet dog. We checked into The Dragon King hostel which had awesome internet and comfortable beds. We were happy and Scott began his usual torrent sweep, sapping the bandwidth dry. We put on a wash and organised our Great Wall trip for the next day.
The Great Wall was an incredible walk. We started out with a bus ride to the cable car and made our way up to the wall. The wall is around 6000 kms long and runs the span of the north of China. We went to a section that is maintained for tourists like us but was rebuilt 700 years ago. The walk was much harder than we thought taking only 3 hours but with an excessive amount of steps.
Our imagination led us to pity the poor soldiers having to walk the wall in a full set of armour. The wall itself isn't very tall but the views showed the wall running the whole length of the mountain range giving us a peek into how long the wall actually was. So much work involved and over 1 million people dead at the cost of building it. The people naturally were buried in the wall as they died making the wall a giant tomb.
We made our way back and to our delight got to ride a toboggan down the hill instead of another boring cable car. We loaded up but unfortunately had a lame family in front of us stopping on the tracks because they were 'scared'. We stopped our toboggans and let the Brady Bunch crawl their way down ahead so we could get enough distance between them and us to go full throttle despite the signs advising to slow down. Obviously the signs were made for the crippled and elderly because full speed down the track was perfectly fun- fine. Despite waiting for the people ahead of us we still caught up but finished the ride soon after.
Great Wall, done back to the city for a feed and a nap, all in all a good day...
PART 2 COMING SOON...
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