Mr & Mrs! China adventure - Trip report

[munitalP]

 

[munitalP]

Dec 30th

Up early, bags packed, down for another awesome breakfast, paid the hotel bill, taxi to the Shanghai main train station, found our way to the “waiting room” for our train, stood around for an hour, joined the rush to the platform and climbed aboard the last car (1st class) of a bullet train (subsonic bullet) to Beijing. Typical 10 hour train ride. I will update my thoughts on the train ride and the countryside another time.

We arrived in Beijing to a chilly minus 5 or so and got a cab to the Beijing Crown Plaza – 2 blocks away from the square or the forbidden city. Checked in, dinner and a drink then bed...

 

[Hvr]

Awesome report, I'll be there soon (Beijing [22 Jan] and Harbin [25 Jan]) so please keep writing and I will start my own TR when I leave Australia on 16 Jan.

 

[coolumbla]

i have that exact same picture of teh radio tower but with my 3 delinquents and mrs c in front of it taken yesterday
A bit more smog about than in your pic
Currently in teh lounge with all the delinquents heading for heathrow

You would hae needed those boots in beijing
It was - 10 when we were at the summer palce last week

C

 

[samh004]

Loving your TR so far, it looks like you're having a wonderful adventure!

 

[munitalP]

Snow is bucketing down in Beijing today - slight damper on plans...

here's the next installment

Beijing...

What a cough sleep! Our room was so darn hot I might have well been sleeping in a kiln... I have played with the thermostat and have now set it to the lowest possible setting to try and cool the room down, hopefully tonight will be better.

Day starts with a pot of coffee and a pot of tea delivered to the room and a debate as to where we are going and what we are going to see and do. The decision is made to take in the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and see how the day progresses from there.

We wandered down to a decent breakfast – nowhere near as impressive as the hotel in Shanghai, however decent all the same then went and had a chat to my friendly concierge from last night (whom happened to get tipped 100RMB) and sponged all the information we needed to get our day underway. A quick stop to the hotels booking agent to get our train tickets to Harbin organised and we were off.

I couldn’t help myself. We walked past a shop selling Mongolian fur hats – the ones with the fold down flaps that cover your ears and cheeks – I bought one – LOL – it is so caveman! I started wearing it as we walked the 2 blocks to the Forbidden City, but after seeing a traffic director nearly have an internal haemorrhage from laughter at my hat, I decided for public safety to revert back to my Kathmandu woolly hat.

Kim wearing the "HAT"

On arrival at the perimeter wall to the FC, a helpful young man with great English came and offered us some advice to where we were and about the FC. We picked him immediately for a hawker and I was about to give him the brush off then thought a guide would be good – I suggested that even though he was a student in art (yeah right), his English was very good and if I gave him 200 RMB (AUD$32), would he like to be our guide of the FC? His eyes near popped out and off he went – he couldn’t help himself as he went passed his “art shop” to try his sell, but after me explaining to him that we didn’t have time for this, I was paying him for guide us around the FC, get on with it, he relented and off we went...

The Forbidden City – allow 5 hours for a good look and take good shoes with good grip for walking up and down stone stairs, it could be treacherous if wet or icy...

I'm aiming for pic of the year with this one - taken using 300mm Zoom from approx 100M

Also, get a guide – the FC has so much history and cultural significance that it can easily be lost if you try and get around yourself and try taking it in.

We spent a long time there and took hundreds of photos, (you can see a heap of pics at the website below!) the highlight for me was the gardens at the end. After bidding farewells to our guide – who incidentally seemed to have a great time, who really did become our friend at least for a day (he was in Sydney for the Olympics and intends to return someday soon for another holiday so who knows), trading email addresses, I had to literally force payment upon him, and he accepted it very humbly, part of an act, I don’t think so...

Out the back gates and immediately accosted by street sellers, beggars and rickshaw drivers – leave us alone PLEASE! We circumnavigated the FC and found our way back to the starting point of our tour, and decided the feet needed a rest!

We wandered back to the hotel with only a quick diversion through a camera store to pick up a Flash memory –USB reader for my Canon EOS – I left the USB cord at home.

After the cough sleep last night, a brief siesta was in order and after waking and showering, we headed out in search of dinner as well as in the general direction of T Square for NYE celebrations. Kim and I are notorious for missing the 12am celebrations – I don’t know why, maybe I am getting old, maybe I just don’t care, I don’t know, but this year was no different... 12am passed and I was snoring....

However, we did have a great dinner at a restaurant in the lower level of a shopping mall 1 block from T Square, some great food, cough beer but all the same, a nice dinner, the outside air temperature was showing minus 4, the wind chill was at a guess minus 10 (weather predictions were minus 14), so not standing around in T Square freezing my butt off seemed a good choice!

All in all a great day, some great memories and some even better pics – than you Mr. Cannon for building such good SLR cameras and Mr. Fuji for making such good point and shoot pocket cameras

 

[thewinchester]

I bow to your TR 'leetness. Great report to date, sitting on the edge of my seat for the rest as they come to hand.

 

[Hvr]

I couldn’t help myself. We walked past a shop selling Mongolian fur hats – the ones with the fold down flaps that cover your ears and cheeks – I bought one – LOL – it is so caveman! I started wearing it as we walked the 2 blocks to the Forbidden City, but after seeing a traffic director nearly have an internal haemorrhage from laughter at my hat, I decided for public safety to revert back to my Kathmandu woolly hat.

Am hanging out for the photos of this. I so want to get one now.

 

[munitalP]

Jan 01

My cold weather boots got their first trial today...

The day started early again, and again we had a terrible sleep due to the excessive heat in our room. In fact, before going down to breakfast, I had our door open to allow some cool air from the passage way to enter our room – it was that bad. On top of this, our quilt wouldn’t have been out of place in Antarctica – it was nice, but thick and heavy therefore hot.

We went down for breakfast, I got mine then while Kim was cooking toast, a man who looked like an extra from Lawrence of Arabia complete with the moustache, stood waiting for his eggs to be cooked coughing his lungs out all over the servery food – it turned my stomach, he didn’t even try and look away or cover his mouth – I made sure Kim avoided the area. What got up my nose the most, was this MF didn’t care that he was contaminating everyone in that restaurant with his obnoxious virus he was obviously carrying, and the hotel staff who were watching him as well did NOTHING!

We ended up finishing our breakfast (Kims being somewhat less than mine at this point) sitting in the lobby bar area to get away from this man, no I correct myself, this PIG of a man.

We went up to the travel agent and got our tickets to Harbin – First Class high speed train – I hope the speed is a little better than Shanghai to Beijing!
Our itinerary for the day is to see the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and a quick stop at a market to find some ordered items friends want such as a dual sim card imitation iPhone...

We dressed for the cold and headed out into the freezing! Taxi from the hotel to the Summer Palace where we were dropped at the gate, forked over our necessary RMB to get through the gate and off we went.

Summer Palace – you need a whole day to see it all, so if time is limited, you need to make some tough decisions as to what you intend to see.
We walked across the frozen lake – hehe, very cool (no pun intended), finding frozen goldfish, slipping and sliding – it was great.

We climbed the 2.8765 million stairs (ok, maybe a little exaggeration) to the Buddha of the Smoking Incense – this is a must do – the stairs are steep and literally take your breath away, but the view at the top is fantastic and you can “feel” the history- a word of warning, the easy path would be far from easier than the stairs – we came down the easy path and both agreed the pain of the stairs would be far better than the continuous gradual incline that the easy path offered...

I am believing that we could spend 2 weeks in Beijing exploring the culture and the sights and still leave with more questions than answers – Beijing has popped up on my must visit again list now after visiting a part of the summer palace...

We then caught a taxi to the Temple of Heaven – I couldn’t get my head around why this place of sacrifice and torture of probably millions of animals by less than abattoir means would be a national monument. Ok, there is some cultural significance, but I didn’t enjoy being there, perhaps the ghosts of these animals were haunting my animal loving soul too much, anyway, we cut our stay there short and I felt a huge relief leaving the grounds – I kid you not... IMHO, this place should be bulldozed and a beautiful garden built to remember the innocents that have died for human’s religious beliefs, both animals and people...

Across the road from the ToH entrance is a Pearl market as well as a general market. We headed in and an hour or so later left with our friends shopping lists ticked off as well as a thermos flask for my coffee (pre-planning) I intended to drink steaming hot coffee while sucking up the sights from the Great Wall...

We got back to the hotel, worn out after a long day, had a couple of drinks at the bar, cleaned ourselves up then had a buffet dinner at the hotel. This was our last night at the Beijing Crown Plaza and I was not looking forward to another broken sleep in our room due to it being too hot. We have chatted with other Euro guests at the hotel and everyone complains of the same thing – the rooms are too hot and the hotel does nothing about it...

Crown Plaza Beijing...

Highlights

• Walking distance to great shopping, designer brands and mall type
• Close to T Square and the Forbidden City
• Hans the concierge

Lowlights

• Cost – everything in this hotel is very expensive from drinks to meals to internet
• Heating
• Lack of response by staff
• Far from 5 Star
• Hygiene issues at food servery
• Hotel layout

Pics soon!

 

[munitalP]

Jan 02

Up and packed nice and early – we had an organised tour of The Ming Tombs’ and the Great Wall today – yeah! Breakfast – my Arab friend wasn’t there so I was happy – well out of sight at least, I didn’t have eggs though - Rung room service for 2 pots of coffee for my shiny new thermos, (1 arrived – I topped up at the breakfast counter), paid the ransom for hotel charges, parked our luggage with the concierge and outside into the SNOW!

Yes, Beijing was covered in a couple of centimetres of fresh white fluffy snow!

The tour bus arrived a little late, didn’t worry me as I found lots of new photo opportunities in the fresh snow, and soon we were off on our way to the Ming Tomb’s.

I enjoyed the tour of the tomb’s however, it was hurried and I didn’t have the opportunity to just absorb the sights that I would have had if we had found our own way there. In hindsight, a taxi would have been a better option to the tomb’s and even to the wall...

I got some great photos however, we were shortly on the bus heading for the Wall – oops, umm no we weren’t, we were now heading for a Jade factory and lunch – but wait, it’s only 11am, how long can a tour of a Jade factory take – simple, about 3 minutes, the rest is a scam to get you to buy Jade at fixed prices – my anger levels were starting to increase, especially when SWMBO found a Jade bangle that was “perfect for you lady” and just happened to have medicinal properties that would help in any number of ailments effecting SWMBO – out came the MasterCard....

After this torture, we were ushered into a larger restaurant filled with more tour busloads of unsuspecting tourists eating lunch - each in their own limbo world wondering WTF has just happened to them – Ok, find a positive here – Kim’s going to live forever with her new Jade bangle – arguable point, lunch looks Ok, Tsingtao 500ml bottles 5RMB each – less than AUD$1 – oh, if only it tasted like Heineken I would swear I had died and gone to heaven...

Lunch over, we were ushered back to our bus and Hi Ho, Hi Ho it’s off to the wall we go...

YES – The Great Wall of China – what a place! We took a cable car to the top of a peak then had a few K’s of wall at our access – but wait, the tour operator gave us 2 hours to be back at the bus – why? We are at the wall buddy! By the time I walk all the way to the bottom of the valley then back again, it will be at least a 4 hour walk, what’s this 2 hours you talk about Genghis – we have plenty of time to spare till dark!

The wall was great – ok, that was a pun, but really, it was awesome. We walked between a couple of buttresses and the snow covered hills, icy steps all led to an unbelievable ambience...

Back into the bus with the rest of our group, we all had our own stories, most of the group went up to the highest point available, we had gone down the wall a long way – we all got something different from the experience.

The tour guide now named Genghis must have known something, before we had cleared the area, cough weather had come in and the temperature dropped by a few more degrees (now about minus 10) – we were kind of glad to be in the bus heading back to the hotel – huh – Genghis is on the mic again talking about what – Silk?

For cough* Sake!

Now we are on our way to a silk factory – no way – I didn’t pay for this (I guess I did after all), after the calming affect the Wall had, the well needed cardio workout, this tour is taking us to a silk factory?

Yep – another tour operator scam – I think the operator got the message when 14 or so likeminded people walked outside and stood by the bus after the hard sell came on... Ok, torture over, on our way back to the hotel, Genghis is on the mic again – he must be saying days over... bla bla bla doctor, bla bla bla Chinese medicine, bla bla bla Ginseng – ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH another scam coming up!

OK Kim, we are doing a runner, when the bus stops, wait till last to get off and we’ll wave down a cab and get out of this horror tour – a quick check of iPhone maps and that’s exactly what we done.

coughk the tour operator – I hope he’s still out in the snow looking for his missing tourists...

Back to the hotel, where we picked up our bags and got a cab to the Marriott where we are booked in for a couple of nights. A little confusion at the front desk, but we were quickly on our way to the room and a nice room at that. On top of that, the rooms cool! Oh yes, luxury, aircon that works...

We had a bottle of Chardy we had purchased in Shanghai, so we rang down to the desk for 2 wine glasses, some ice and a corkscrew... LOL, I am sure I don’t have to tell you how many calls and deliveries it took to get right, but WTF, we are on holiday – enjoy it!

The Marriott is adjoined to a shopping centre, so we went for a quick look at the restaurants available, but decided finally to go back to the Marriott and eat there. A nice but expensive meal of Singapore noodles, green chicken curry and curry pork chop with a couple of beers for me and some wine for her – we were up to the room and prepping for bed by 1030

pics coming - really!

 

[munitalP]

As some of you may have seen, Beijing ground to a halt today (that's no news version of events anyway) due to a massive snow storm - it didn't really, it caused problems at the airport, and the subway was more crowded, but Beijing is still up and running - trust me, I'm here!

This put pay to finalising our touristy visits in Beijing, however we did go to the Silk Market - a great public market that sells everything and spent way too much again...

We are on a train to Harbin tomorrow, a good chance to finalise the Beijing portion of this TR.

G & K

 

[anat0l]

Great TR Mr! - and the camera continues to enjoy Mrs! as I'm sure both of you are enjoying your trip and soaking up the culture.

....including how the Chinese conduct a "tour"! We got the same thing in 1999 when Dad and I went to HKG. It was a half-day tour, but we only stayed for about 1/3 of it! We only saw one good attraction - the rest was basically shops. We did get a nice souvenir/gift for Mum, but apart from that, once we got to the natural medicines shop, we bailed.

 

[Ric]

Mr!,

During winter time, you will find most hotels in China will turn off the aircon and have the heating on. No amount of fiddling the themostat will work. Just turn the damn thing off!! Open up the curtains to sleep and hope the cold air outside will cool the room!

Same practice at the Sofitel Arc De Triomphe, Paris when I stayed there 4 days ago!! It's really annoying!!

 

[anat0l]

Mr!,

During winter time, you will find most hotels in China will turn off the aircon and have the heating on. No amount of fiddling the themostat will work. Just turn the damn thing off!! Open up the curtains to sleep and hope the cold air outside will cool the room!

Same practice at the Sofitel Arc De Triomphe, Paris when I stayed there 4 days ago!! It's really annoying!!

+1 the same pretty much all across Europe, as found out whilst travelling in November.

Not such a big deal, except:

• It's sometimes not that cooling is desired, but rather fresh air needs cycling and heating isn't the best way to do it
• Some parts of southern Europe were rather warmish (think Brisbane winter). After a long day out in the sun, I think it isn't unreasonable to set the aircon on!

I first mentioned the fact that the aircon doesn't work at a hotel in Frankfurt. The hotel manager gave me a funny look as to why I want aircon in winter. (The aircon unit is in the room, but they have turned them all off). His answer, of course, has been mentioned and usually is the only recourse, which is open the windows.

 

[munitalP]

Jan 03

Woke up this morning after a great night sleep to 100mm of fresh snow across Beijing and still snowing. That changed our plans on the spot and we didn’t find any reason to get out of bed in a hurry.

After finally deciding that Tiananmen Square ws out of the question in this weather, we decided a trek to the Silk Road markets was on the cards for a look and take it from there as to what we would do after.

Talking with the concierge, he convinced us to use the subway and again, like in Shanghai, the market was part of the subway. The subway system was a little less user friendly than Shanghai, and due to the weather was very crowded, but with what is rapidly becoming norm, the trains run frequently, on time, are clean and modern and very cheap to use. I thoroughly recommend the train systems in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore as the way to travel the city!

Once inside the market, and having missed breaky at the hotel, we went in search of coffee and food – coffee being the principle. We stumbled across an Italian joint and decided that seeing it was 1130, it was bucketing down snow and what the heck, we’re on holiday, lets have a pizza! That we did, a spicy peperoni half ham and pineapple with extra cheese, a bottle of Perrier and 2 scolding hot cappuccinos. 160RMB (yawn) that’s so cheap!

It has become such a common saying between Kim and I now, it has lost its meaning and we are reverting to “hey, that’s a bit more expensive than <insert place here>”.

The market – 6 or 7 floors – everything from clothing to suitcases on sale.
We needed a new case – I bought a Titan X2 4 wheeler cabin size (hard case) for about $30. Knock off? I don’t know nor care. My $300+ Titan X2 (next size up) from Australia – seam for seam, rib for rib, TSA lock for TSA lock is the same. If it lasts 6 months or even 6 weeks I will be happy with my $30 investment. FWIW, the original starting price by the seller was AUD$110 or there about – lol, bargaining for price is so much fun!

We got dragged into a “special room” in one shop, it was walking into designer heaven (knock off) and I couldn’t believe the number of items for sale – watches, pens, hand bags, wallets, shoes – you name it. We made a small pile of goods, a few bags, wallets, belts, and I made the seller such a stupidly low offer he let us go without further ado – the easy way to get away from these buggers! Anyway, we left the market a couple of items extra than what we arrived with, but far greater in our experience.

Subway back to the hotel- it was late afternoon and nearly dark when we emerged from underground, and it was snowing heavier than when we left. A quick trot across a small square, and we entered the shopping centre adjoining our hotel and worked our way back to the room. After getting cleaned up, we went back into the shopping centre and looked for some moisturiser for our faces – we couldn’t find anything that didn’t have a designer brand on it (with the price tag) so we gave up on the idea and started to leave then noticed a sign to a supermarket on a lower ground floor.

With huge interest, we wandered the supermarket, buying “treats” such as noodles, bakery goods, coffee and other items for our train trip the next day, as well as looking through the supermarket. A huge range of goods, most very foreign to us, however was interesting all the same. The hygiene aspect of some bulk food supply left a lot to be desired, I personally wouldn’t touch some of the goods, the meat prep area was one of them, but all in all, very interesting. My heart strings were pulled though when walking past the live fish tanks and came across a tank of turtles – I convinced myself that this aqua-culture product was no different than live prawns or crayfish and moved on – but still, turtles? Is there any need for that?

We got a few drinks at the supermarket as well, I got a six pack of Budweiser 500ml cans for AUD$9 and we got an assortment of Bacardi Breezers at AUD$0.85 each...

KFC for dinner (yep) and bed ready for a freaking early start to catch a 0715AM train

 

[Keith009]

Excellent report mate! Glad to hear the 2 of you are having a marvellous time in China.

(*will try not to bite bait...* )

 

[munitalP]

Excellent report mate! Glad to hear the 2 of you are having a marvellous time in China.

(*will try not to bite bait...* )

We are and thanks!

I will tell you over a Verve one day about my Hugo Loss experience at LHR -

See you soon


G & K (AKA Mr & Mrs!)

 

[docjames]

Awesome TR. Sounds like the -30deg is going ok. How are the china-purchased clothes (jackets) holding up? (iirc you bought the boots in Aus in the end).

 

[munitalP]

Awesome TR. Sounds like the -30deg is going ok. How are the china-purchased clothes (jackets) holding up? (iirc you bought the boots in Aus in the end).

G'Day Doc, well, thats a good question about the jackets. Mine is so good that in -25/-30 I was a polyprop and tee underneath, today being about -10/-15 I went a short sleeve polo shirt (!) underneath with only polyprop legs and still started sweating - I think the -40 rating of the jacket is true. (it is the black jacket with the brown fur neck in the pics)...

All the zips, stitching etc are in one piece and working fine, nothing on the jacket "feels" cheap in any respect.

My boots have been disappointing grip wise on sheet ice, however, I don't think too many boots are designed for that condition - they are warm though and very nice to wear...

Mrs munitalP's jacket and pants - what a hit, she feels the cold more than most and her only complaint are her feet being a bit cold, that was down to socks we think though - she wore a 90% wool blend of mine today, albeit to large, she felt much warmer.

We picked up the woolen face warmers - like a wool hat without the top that pulls up over your mouth, ears and cheeks for 20RMB from a street vendor - great buy and wouldn't survive the cold without them.

We have just returned from some night shots at the Ice park close to our hotel having spent the day at the official Ice & Snow venue about 20 mins from the hotel - report and pics soon, suffice to say, this was possibly the most incredible thing I have ever seen and I am cursing that we have a 930 overnight train to Beijing tonight

Cheers

 

[munitalP]

Jan 04

Up early and boy had it snowed. I stood outside trying to hail a taxi in 200mm of fresh snow – taxi’s are remarkably hard to find at this time of the morning I found out! After a taxi driver bribed us into a 100RMB fare (work this out, I pay $16 to get to the train station or stand out in the cold and wait for the 40RMB ($6.50) fare – hehe, go figure)

So once at the rail station, and I had fought off the “official” porters again, we found our way to the waiting room for our train to Harbin and ordered a couple of hot drinks before leaving. Unfortunately during the rush out the door, my coffee’s being carried in a plastic bag got squashed and we never got to sample the wonderful (I am sure) delights of the Beijing North railway station coffee.

The train was a CRN bullet train – again CRN are using subsonic rounds because this train moved far slower than a bullet! We had the last car of the 1st class section. A word of advice – try and get a car that is either the front of your class or the rear, this stops through traffic PAX who may have “light handed” tendencies.

Being prepared for the ride, we had hot water in my “great wall” thermos, coffee sachets, nibbles and noodles at our disposal.
Not long out of Beijing, the skies had cleared somewhat and the sun tried it’s hardest to shine through on the beautiful white landscape. The readout on the car front panel let us know we were shooting through the countryside at 200+km per hour and the outside temperature slowly ticked down the further north we got.