Life in Cambodia

Beijing!

After the horrendous flub that left us without tickets, the owner of the guesthouse pulled some strings and found a way to sneak us on the train to Beijing. The catch was that we would end up in a hard seat, which is the seating area directly below Purgatory. Admittedly though, for the first 25 hours, it wasn't so bad; we had our own relatively un-cramped seats and while we could have had better neighbors, the one’s we got weren’t too bad. The hardest part was just the physical sitting for hours without really moving too much. Getting up means losing your seat to the chair-less vultures who float in the aisles so there was little opportunity to walk around. The seats were cheap though and it worked it out nicely that we were on the train for two nights in a row (from 2.00am to 9.00am the following day) so we didn’t have to spend money on accommodation. The second night was tough though, old ladies and snotty kids trying to usurp our seats throughout the sleepless night and then we were running hours behind schedule, which definitely didn’t help our sanity as the ride dragged on for 3 additional hours. It was the longest and most uncomfortable train ride that we’ve ever had, and while it was nice to save a bit of money, we’ve decided that we are never going to do that again and will be taking sleepers from here on out on the longer rides. The bad train food left our bellies in a sorry state and the sleepless nights left us both in a dazy-funk, akin to jet lag and we were like zombies. We were picked up (thank god!) at the train station and taken right to our hotel: the Hutong Inn. Hutongs are narrow little alley-ways that run throughout the city, many of them are protected from bulldozing now and our place was nestled among some of them. However, many of the hutongs are being destroyed to make room for new apartment blocks or Olympic Venues while others are being so heavily renovated that they have lost their former glory. We arrived at our place around 10am or so, but wanted to take it easy and didn't get much further than a short walk around our hutong area, checking out possible grazing sites for the coming days. One little gem that we did find though was yogurt. All over our hutong area there were little stone jars for sale with straws sticking out of them and luckily we had to courage to peep into one of them and found even more courage to try a dairy product from a questionable source, but it was wonderful yogurt, and at about 10cents a jar it was definitely the right price. After a bit of that though, we settled down into our cold air-conditioned room (via the Kyrgyz Embassy) and found a bit of solace in CNN,BBC, and HBO; A month of Chinese TV long forgotten already. The next day found us sleeping in and eventually making our way to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We are only about 30 mins walk, so we strolled through Beihai Park and made it just in time for rush hour at the Forbidden City. I knew we wouldn't just stroll on in, but the place was packed and we had to wait about 20 mins in the ticket line. Personally, I was unimpressed with the Forbidden City, though Maggie may disagree. One of my main problems was the sheer number of visitors in the city; it was like being caught up in a mob and it made it difficult to really wander around and appreciate the little details. I understand why people are there (for the same reason that we were) but it made it hard to enjoy it as much as I would have liked. Also, there was a lot of construction and renovation, so many of the temples were covered in scaffolding and those that weren't covered were restricted to staff only. The magic was though that we were actually in the Forbidden City, walking in the footsteps of emperors and thousands of years of history and if one is able to block out everything else and see it like that then it is all worth it. We strolled around the surrounding parks and had a quick lunch before heading back over to the Kyrgyzstan Embassy to drop off our visa stuff, where we met, interestingly enough, a cool group of people to pass the time with while waiting in line: two Cameroonians!--'footballer agents' very cool, had a great catch up session about Yaounde, Omni-Sport area and their bewilderment at my choice to stay in the EN of their country; we also met a cool Canadian friend, Tang who we hope to see again in the far west and then in Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, we had wanted to do Krygyz & Uzbek visas while in Beijing, but that was not going to work out. We could get the Kyrgz visa next day for a cool $165, but we frugally opted for the 4 day, $55 visa instead. Waiting on that visa kept us in Beijing for the next few days though there were plenty of things to occupy our time. ..

Day Two was spent split up: Maggie on a shopping spree (Maggie would like to note, it was not a 'spree', ahem) and myself checking out some of the smaller, lesser known sites in town such as the Bell Tower, Nuijie Mosque, and the Ancient Observatory. I also rode around on the subway, just because I could (and it was easier than walking) I limped home around 3.30/4.oo, broken, tired, chafed, and blistered.

We were also able to meet up with Rohit (and his mom) who is one of Maggie's Peace Corps friends from her time in Cameroon. Rohit is traveling around for a few months, including a few weeks in Beijing studying Mandarin, so luckily we were able to meet with him and his mother, who had come out to visit him in China for a few weeks. We were only able to meet up quickly, over dinner, but it was a good time.

We also headed over to the Temple of Heaven, the self styled "most famous temple in the world." Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it was pretty cool. We had a little map and were supposed to have read up on things a bit more, but we took the opportunity to just wander around a bit as the area is very spacious and park-like. I may be completely off the mark, but I think walking through the park is supposed to represent the different levels as you pass through towards Heaven. Again, that may be completely off the mark. At any rate, we wandered around, but the most impressive thing was the actual Temple of Heaven itself (as seen in the pictures). Its just a shame that we couldn't climb up in it, though I guess everyone would have wanted to and that would have been mass chaos and not so good for restoration and the like...

On Maggie's Birthday, we headed out to the Summer Palace, which I believe was a summer retreat of the Emperor's. Its only about 15km outside of town, so it was fairly easy to get to, just a bus ride or so, but once getting there, the place opened up into a huge park. Its not much a palace as just a huge estate, filled with temples, lakes, and ringed by stout hills. The place was packed, but it was easy to wander about and get lost. Although, in the Temple of Harmonious Thoughts, which was very beautiful, there was a loud karaoke sing-off which well, made it difficult to have harmonious thoughts. However, the whole place was beautiful and could be peaceful enough to wander around the myriad of trails through the hills and rocks...

For Maggie's Birthday dinner, we went out to have Peking Duck. Neither of us had ever had it, and what better place to have it than in Beijing itself? We located a suitably fancy place, and though there was a wait to get in, they thoughtfully provided free wine while you waited. Neither of us were too good to turn our noses up at free wine, even if it did come from a box. The place was pretty hoppin' with tourists and well-to-do-Beijingers and had a wonderful menu--we ordered a bunch of little nibbles in addition to the "half-duck" (notice the quotation marks...). The chef brought out the cooked duck for our viewing pleasure and we ommed and awwed over it suitability before it was taken away to be cut up. I'm not entirely sure what they did with the half-duck that we ordered, but they sure didn't give it to us. For $10 we got a little pile of duck skin and enough duck meat to fill a thimble or two. Granted, it was tasty, but then we waited and waited, asked after our duck and were rebuffed with the fact that we had already received our "half-duck." I'm not sure if that is the normal portion of Peking Duck or what, but what ever it is, at least we can say we've had Peking Duck in Peking!

We also decided that since we are in China, we might as well check out this Great Wall. The place where we are staying runs a few tours out to some of the sections, but for a bit of a price so we opted for our own route through public transport. We woke up early and long story short, made it to the Jinshanling (sp?) section of the wall by 10am or so. This is one of the further sections away from Beijing (110km out) and it is the starting point for a Great Wall day hike to the Samatai section, 4hrs away. It was nice because since this section of the Wall is considerably far out of Beijing, there were very few tourists and for most of the hike, we actually had the Great Wall all to ourselves (see the photos!) The hike was tough and the sun was beating down, especially since there is no shade along the Wall except for the guard towers. It was amazing though to walk along the Wall; not only to walk along, but to hike a 10km section of the Wall nearly alone.

We slept in the next day...I didn't get up until 9am, though Maggie did a lot better than me. We kinda took it easy, running a few mindless errands on my side and Maggie heading over to the 798/Dashanzi contemporary art area (see: http://www.798space.com/index_en.asp and http://www.artbook.com/9889726238.html). Maggie here: I will highly recommend this 'off the beaten path' gem of an area. over 500+(or more??) galleries, artist residences, studios, music spaces and cool little cafes and bookshops are nestled into a maze of about 1.5km x 2km (give or take) which used to be military warehouses. It was fascinating to take the entire day to just wander through this area and see the movement of contemporary art in Beijing, China and West/East collaborations--everything from paintings to resin sculptures of Chinese miners and young women looking in the mirror...and then 100s of miniature replicas of the Terracotta Warriors painted with the solar system, KFC logos and other influential (?) pieces of Chinese life and fast-paced modernization (this is just how I saw it)...around another corner, slipping into a different gallery seeing photo exhibits of the hutongs in huge wall sized panoramas and so much more. It was a wondrous treasure to find such an outlet after having been a bit of a slave to the tourist attractions--I quickly passed 5 hours without realizing it and had only covered 4 blocks!

Our last night in town we decided to check out Tim's Texas Roadhouse...how could we pass up a place like that? Especially after their little flyer mentions free buffett with the purchase of any drink from the bar. So we buddied up with a Canadian guy we met in line at the Kyrgyz Embassy and headed out there. It was down a shady little alley way of sorts and when we finally located it, we were the only folks in there. They hadn't even put out any food, I guess they figured no one would show up anyway. We didn't have high hopes for the buffet, but it was actually pretty good: stuffed peppers, chips and salsa, potato skins and the like. Free pool and darts on top of it all. They were even playing good Texas-esque music, I heard some Robert Earl Keen and Johnny Cash in there. Despite the empty warehouse-like space, the walls were decorated with Texas and US-paraphernalia. Although I will say (Maggie here again) that it did seem a bit odd that there were fliers all over the women's bathroom advertising 'free drinks for any woman who donates her bra to the walls of restaurant as they are still looking a bit bare'...hmmm, wasn't about to give up mine. The food was greasy and good, the beer was flowing and it was cheap--we had good company and since we were the only ones in the place, full attention of the staff and lots of buffet on the cheap.

With the close of the night at Tim's we said goodbye to our Canadian friend and headed off to pack our bags and head out of Beijing--was a good break in the city and good to catch up with old friends (in person, on the phone and high speed internet!) , make new ones and discover some truly amazing things we expected and others we didn't...we jumped on a train to Taiyuan to take care of our Chinese visa renewal. More soon! Check out the pictures!

posted by Life in Cambodia @ 4:05 PM