Distance covered since last blog: 3,400km (mainly by plane)
First of all an explanation. My blog has been missing for a while because China, with their pesky internet block, don’t let me access the website. Then my previous post was deleted because I used ‘inappropriate language’. Then when I managed to negotiate around the internet block, my account was disabled because I was trying to access it from a weird location. Basically, it has been a bucket load of admin. But I’m back! My second explanation is that my camera is having a breakdown at the moment and is refusing to connect to computers, so there aren’t any photos in this blog. So get used to reading paragraphs of text. Right. Where was I? Pokhara in Nepal…
In the days following the failed trek, I relaxed in Pokhara and planned my next move. It was clear that getting to Tibet was going to be far too expensive, so I decided to fly from Kathmandu to Beijing instead, so I could meet up with Mouse. For those who don’t know, ‘Mouse’ is my mate who is teaching English at a school in China for a year. First of all I had to get to Kathmandu on a local bus. Like most of my long distance journeys, this was a nightmare from the start. I arrived at the bus terminal, only to find that my passport wasn’t in my pocket – cue a total panic, quick hailing of a taxi, a race back to the hotel, where it was still nowhere to be seen. Upon closer inspection I found it in the trousers I had been wearing the previous day. When I calmed down and got on the bus, I discovered to my horror I had the worst possible seat – on the back row, squeezed between an American girl and a French bloke, who were both really into yoga and insisted on discussing it at length. Seven hours later we arrived in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu is pretty similar to most of the big Asian cities that I have visited – vast, hectic and a little bit smelly. In all honesty I wasn’t massively won over by it. I had my final ‘dhal bhat’ with a girl who funnily enough lived in Surbiton, and went to bed quite early. Unfortunately I was awoken in the night with a worrying rumble in my stomach, and had to make a mad dash to the toilet. This was one of about 15 visits I had to make to the (communal) bathroom that evening, made worse by the fact that I had no toilet paper so had to resort to using pages torn from my Nepal Lonely Planet book – not recommended. I was in a pretty bad way at 7am the next morning when my taxi arrived to take me to the airport. My journey to Beijing was comical and deserves its own paragraph:
Negotiating Kathmandu International Airport was surprisingly easy, and I settled down in the departure lounge with ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and a packet of Ritz crackers. Soon enough a glance at the big screen informed me that my flight was delayed by two hours – this wouldn’t be a huge problem normally, but I had to make a connecting flight later in the day. When I got on the plane, I found myself in seat 1C. Business class! I put my concerns behind me and enjoyed my complimentary apple juice. For some odd reason the plane decided to land in Lhasa – the ‘capital’ city of Tibet. I was able to get off the plane and have a little wander around the airport. It was very strange. More like a military airbase than a civilian airport – there were fighter jets on the runway and most of the buildings were painted in camouflage paint. Pleasant as this this stop was, it was further delaying me. We left Lhasa promptly and continued on our way to Chengdu. We landed 50 minutes after my connecting flight to Beijing was scheduled to depart, so I had resigned myself to missing it. However, after collecting my bag I noticed that the CA1408 to Beijing hadn’t yet departed. I flew into action and legged it to the Air China information desk to see what they could do. I shamelessly barged my way to the front of the queue and began frantically waving my passport and flight details at the bemused woman. She tapped at her computer for a second, and printed me off a ticket, 6 minutes before the gate closed. I charged across the terminal to security, once again pushed to the front of the queue, and made it to gate C5 with seconds to spare. I was frankly disappointed to be sitting with the riff-raff in ‘Economy’ class, but at least I was on the plane. We then sat on the tarmac for two hours. We landed in Beijing at 01:45, and I found that my hostel was closed so I would need to find alternative accommodation for the night. I trekked it out to the airport hotel and parted company with 480Y for the night. I hadn’t got my head around the exchange rate at the time, so was unaware that I was spending £50 for a night in the brilliantly named ‘Beijing 100% Perfect Hotel’. I frankly didn’t care though, and 18 hours after leaving my hotel in Kathmandu, I was able to lie down.
The next day would be better though wouldn’t it? Surely! Of course it wasn’t. It took me three hours to find the hostel, using a combination of two taxis, two subway trains and an aimless wander through suburban Beijing. This all became too much for me, and eventually I had a childish strop in the street, threw my backpack to the pavement and sulked for a while. During my sulk I realised that I could quite easily call the hostel and ask them to explain to a taxi driver how to get me there. I did just that, and 3 minutes later was checking-in.
Beijing is a pretty cool city, and so vastly different to everywhere else I have been so far. It’s clean and has an easy to navigate subway system which makes getting from place to place incredibly simple. The language barrier I feared isn’t the problem I thought it was going to be, and lots of the signs are in English as well as Mandarin. My sight-seeing began in the famous Tiananmen Square which I got to at about 11am, which is prime time for huge groups of Chinese tourists being led about by women with megaphones. I didn’t find this too irritating though, and thoroughly enjoyed strolling around the largest city square in the world. I didn’t have long to sight-see before my train, and soon enough I was making my way to West Beijing Station for the T55 to Xi’an. The only tickets they had available were for ‘Hard Seater’ class, which turned out to be just as unpleasant as it sounds. Imagine being on the Leatherhead to London Waterloo train for 13 hours – then add hundreds of loud Chinese people. It was a nightmare. At the time I drew up a comparison chart with Indian trains. This is exactly what I wrote:
India: the doors are left open; about ten times cheaper; you have control over the light/fan
China: fractionally better onboard food; marginally more comfortable; less people staring at me; no beggars
I arrived into Xi’an at 7am, and was greeted by Mouse at the train station. Xi’an (pronounced ‘she-an’) is one of my favourite places of the entire tour so far. It is a small city by Chinese standards, and in the days we were there we explored it extensively on foot and by bike. It isn’t a particularly attractive city, but it has a charm that I found irresistible. This may well have something to do with the ladies…
Ok. Let’s just get this out in the open – I have fallen massively in love with Chinese girls. It’s difficult to explain exactly why, but I’ll give it a go: petite, friendly, cute, helpful and totally naive as to how attractive they are walking around town in tiny shorts. And it seemed that all the best looking ones were working in our hostel. Sophie, Daisy, Betty, Linda, Pi Pi, Joanna, Ivy, Joyce…the list is endless! We pulled out our best flirting (Mouse sung at the receptionist in his best Chinese), and before we knew it we were hostel celebrities. I really don’t think they could have liked us more. Three of them got us leaving presents!
Leaving gorgeous Chinese girls alone for a moment, we did a day trip to the Terracotta Army. For those not in the know, the Terracotta Army are an estimated 8,000 individually crafted life-size figures of warriors, built 2000 years ago to ‘protect’ the grave of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. We boarded our tour bus at the hostel, and what got on with us? A smoking hot Chinese tour guide named Zsa Zsa, who took a particular liking to us – although much to my annoyance she took more of a liking to Mouse. I was slightly underwhelmed by the Terracotta Army to be honest. The individual warriors and the story that accompanies them is fascinating, but it was nowhere near as big as I was expecting. But I must admit I was slightly distracted from the Army by battling with Mouse for Zsa Zsa’s attention.
Back at the hostel we were continuing to be immensely popular. The next evening (the day of the Royal Wedding as it happens) we attended the weekly ‘dumpling party’, where you cook and eat your own Chinese dumplings with fellow guests/dumpling enthusiasts. Afterwards we headed down to the hostel bar with our new American mates for a few shandies. At about 1am we decided to make a move to bed, and on our way came across a girl who had clearly had one too many. Upon closer inspection we noticed that she had been sick in a large bowl full of turtles which the hostel keeps as pets. Over our time there we had grown quite attached to these turtles, so were horrified to see what had happened. We mobilised immediately. I took the turtles out and put them in a sink full of clean water, while Mouse took the bowl to the shower. We rinsed out the bowl, cleaned all the rocks, then returned to turtles to their home. A small crowd had formed by this time (one guy filmed the entire thing) and we were applauded as heroes when the job was done. The girl was sent to bed in disgrace.
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