17th - 19th June 2012
So we arrived in Beijing, China on Sunday 17th June tired and hungry after being up all Saturday night travelling and waiting on connecting flights. Nonetheless our excitement for China wasn't dampened by the numerous hoops we had to jump through to get into the country - screening for drugs, some weird body temperature screenings, getting photos taken then use of facial recognition software to match it to our passports (wonder if they think that all westerns look like alike??) and finally a full body search so intimate it made me blush. Talk about a violation!!
When we got to the baggage collection our bags were taking ages to come out and Ronan was getting antsy. I was just saying 'Shure if they are lost themselves what about it, there is nothing valuable in them cos everything worth money is in our hand luggage' so anyways eventually Ronan's bag showed itself but mine was still nowhere to be seen, so slowly I had to start eating my words and thinking about replacing every stitch of clothing I had along with hair dryer, straighteners, malaria tablets etc anyways as the last item trundled out of the baggage collection turned out it was my rucksack so big phew all around!
After having a snooze that afternoon we headed out to Silk Street which is a massive counterfeit items shopping centre! I was expecting things to be so cheap considering we are in China and they are made here but no, the prices were crazy! The Chinese try to rip tourists off at every turn so it's hard work trying to buy anything off them. I bought 4 pashminas and I swear the negotiating skills I gained will help us when we decide to buy a house!! So the notion of China not being all I thought it was has taken root. Things are very stressful and hard work so far. Even when we went for dinner and were handed a menu it was hard work with 3 waiting staff standing over us as we browsed the menu. We wanted to tell them that the way it works at home is you look through the whole menu then pick your favourite thing, as they didn't really understand why we looked through the whole menu from start to finish. Unfortunately we were reduced to communicating through pointing as they didn't understand a word of English. We were starving at this stage so things took a turn for the worst when we were handed chopsticks (no cutlery whatsoever), so picture two starving Irish who have never held chopsticks before never mind eaten a full meal with them, trying to eat half a duck and a heap of rice as gracefully as possible (which was not very graceful or dignified I will admit). No wonder 5 members of staff we're standing around watching us eat, felt a bit like being in a zoo and not in a good way....
The next day we went to the Forbidden City. It was ok. Too hot, too much walking and China had broken my spirit. The queues and amount of people were crazy and they just pushed and shoved with no concept of queueing. The Forbidden City was just not interesting enough to make up for all the bad points! Afterwards we tried to head out to another sight of interest, the Summer Palace but once again China was not playing ball so we ended up finding a park with a lake, renting a boat and having a lovely time in the peace and quiet of the middle of a lake away from all the chaos!
When faced with the prospect of either being in a goldfish bowl and being watched with every mouthful we ate or eating from street vendors again, the street vendors won out and we ate in a different market but again yummy! Quite funny walking along and having a guy enticing us to his stall by shouting 'sheep penis' and 'sheep balls' yum yum!!
So the next morning the time had come to depart Beijing, we weren't too sorry to see the back of it with the hopes that a smaller city might be easier to deal with. We were flying out of Beijing as when we tried to book trains they were all booked out for days in advance. Again the word stressful comes into play - I know the boy who cried wolf may be coming to your mind but I genuinely cannot overuse the word 'stressful' when describing our China experiences!! We arrived in the airport in what we thought was great time not have taken the chinese aversion to queues and lack of english into account. Our plans for a leisurely breakfast gone to pot, we elbowed and shoved our way through the queues with the best of them and just made it to the gate in time to fly out of Beijing st 7.30am!
So we arrived in Beijing, China on Sunday 17th June tired and hungry after being up all Saturday night travelling and waiting on connecting flights. Nonetheless our excitement for China wasn't dampened by the numerous hoops we had to jump through to get into the country - screening for drugs, some weird body temperature screenings, getting photos taken then use of facial recognition software to match it to our passports (wonder if they think that all westerns look like alike??) and finally a full body search so intimate it made me blush. Talk about a violation!!
When we got to the baggage collection our bags were taking ages to come out and Ronan was getting antsy. I was just saying 'Shure if they are lost themselves what about it, there is nothing valuable in them cos everything worth money is in our hand luggage' so anyways eventually Ronan's bag showed itself but mine was still nowhere to be seen, so slowly I had to start eating my words and thinking about replacing every stitch of clothing I had along with hair dryer, straighteners, malaria tablets etc anyways as the last item trundled out of the baggage collection turned out it was my rucksack so big phew all around!
After having a snooze that afternoon we headed out to Silk Street which is a massive counterfeit items shopping centre! I was expecting things to be so cheap considering we are in China and they are made here but no, the prices were crazy! The Chinese try to rip tourists off at every turn so it's hard work trying to buy anything off them. I bought 4 pashminas and I swear the negotiating skills I gained will help us when we decide to buy a house!! So the notion of China not being all I thought it was has taken root. Things are very stressful and hard work so far. Even when we went for dinner and were handed a menu it was hard work with 3 waiting staff standing over us as we browsed the menu. We wanted to tell them that the way it works at home is you look through the whole menu then pick your favourite thing, as they didn't really understand why we looked through the whole menu from start to finish. Unfortunately we were reduced to communicating through pointing as they didn't understand a word of English. We were starving at this stage so things took a turn for the worst when we were handed chopsticks (no cutlery whatsoever), so picture two starving Irish who have never held chopsticks before never mind eaten a full meal with them, trying to eat half a duck and a heap of rice as gracefully as possible (which was not very graceful or dignified I will admit). No wonder 5 members of staff we're standing around watching us eat, felt a bit like being in a zoo and not in a good way....
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| Gettin' to grips with the sticks!
So finally on Monday 18th June we did what no visit to China is complete without - a visit to the Great Wall (our third wonder). We looked at getting a tour out but it was too expensive so we looked it up online and decided how hard could it be to get public transport out?! Very, was the answer considering no one speaks English and all signs are in chinese (no letters just little pictures)!!! So after another stressful chinese experience we got to the Great Wall at Mutinyau (not the most touristy part) where we got a cable car and came down on a toboggan slide which was really good fun! The wall itself was grand, to be honest I was a little underwhelmed, having visited another wonder of the world earlier in the trip and found it amazing and so different in real life (Taj obviously!), I thought the great wall was exactly like you see on telly and didn't get any amazing feeling from actually being there!! Ronan loved it and had the same level of 'whelmedness' that he had with the Taj, not as good as the Pyramids. Par for the course with everything in China so far even buying a banana out there was rip off central and eventually after negotiating we paid a quarter of the original price but again just unnecessarily hard and stressful!
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| Going off track to the real wall |
That evening we decided to wander around a food mall which was a collection of street vendors cooking food in stalls. It looked really clean and yummy so we decided to eat dinner there, absolutely delicious and no one watching us was the best part. I had things like vegetable wrap, lamb kebab, corn on the cob. Ronan went for skewers of meat and lamb kebab but stayed away from all the veg in case he got food poisoning! He finished off by choosing which wriggling set of scorpions he would like and the chef obliged and cooked them up for him! He ate all 3 so apart from being a little crunchy he seemed to enjoy! The food here was one of the only things in Beijing that was fixed price and not overly inflated for tourists so this was definitely part of the attraction!
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| Yummy... |
The next day we went to the Forbidden City. It was ok. Too hot, too much walking and China had broken my spirit. The queues and amount of people were crazy and they just pushed and shoved with no concept of queueing. The Forbidden City was just not interesting enough to make up for all the bad points! Afterwards we tried to head out to another sight of interest, the Summer Palace but once again China was not playing ball so we ended up finding a park with a lake, renting a boat and having a lovely time in the peace and quiet of the middle of a lake away from all the chaos!
When faced with the prospect of either being in a goldfish bowl and being watched with every mouthful we ate or eating from street vendors again, the street vendors won out and we ate in a different market but again yummy! Quite funny walking along and having a guy enticing us to his stall by shouting 'sheep penis' and 'sheep balls' yum yum!!
So the next morning the time had come to depart Beijing, we weren't too sorry to see the back of it with the hopes that a smaller city might be easier to deal with. We were flying out of Beijing as when we tried to book trains they were all booked out for days in advance. Again the word stressful comes into play - I know the boy who cried wolf may be coming to your mind but I genuinely cannot overuse the word 'stressful' when describing our China experiences!! We arrived in the airport in what we thought was great time not have taken the chinese aversion to queues and lack of english into account. Our plans for a leisurely breakfast gone to pot, we elbowed and shoved our way through the queues with the best of them and just made it to the gate in time to fly out of Beijing st 7.30am!
I felt the same in Beijing! Ill never go back!!!!! Hope the rest of the trip is better :P hehe!
ReplyDeleteHaha have heard the same from few people! You were staying with a Chinese friend weren't you?! And you still didn't like it? No one understood English which made it really hard too!! Glad we did it cos I would always be wondering but glad to be in HK now!
ReplyDelete