The day after the last post on my website the vodkatrain program finally started. At 5 pm on July the 28th we would meet our honcho and our fellow travelmates. Before that me and Jamie went to see the forbidden city and square of heavenly peace. Originally we wanted to go see Mao's body as well but when we arrived there the mausoleum was closed for public due to restauration. bummer. Instead we went to the Congress building of the Chinese government, not suprisingly called 'the great hall of the people'. Lonely Planet warned it would be rather boring, but stubborn as we are we decided to go for it anyway... and dull it was... After that we went to the forbidden city which was loaded with tourists, mainly chinese tourgroups, but I enjoyed it anyway. Although Beijing doesn't strike me as the greatest city on earth, this bit is definately worth a visit. Like I said we met our group that day at five. The group consists of 4 Aussies, 3 Brittish, 1 Swiss and two Dutch (guess who, us!). That night we went out for a communial dinner with our honcho called mark. Mark is a story on it self, actually, since only after three days nobody really trusted him anymore. It sort of started at dinner, where we all were starting to know each other and me and Jamie told that we booked tickets for an acrobat and kungfu show for the following night. Mark then asked us where we booked it and started moaning about how bad it was and how we got ripped off. Ok, fine, matter a fact, I would know a bad acrobat or kungfu show if I saw one, and I was sure we paid a reasonable price for it, because in the end the acrobat show that mark suggested was even more pricy. Nobody was really impressed with his behaviour towards us but we dropped the matter and just went on with our dinner. We ate Peking Duck which is food everyone should have eaten once visited Beijing. It's good but a bit fatty. That evening we didn't do much, just hung out a bit and went off to sleep.
The next day Jamie and I visited the summer palace with Steve and Tasha, two of our travel mates. We set off around nine and after a half hour taxi drive we reached our goal. Again; completely packed with tourists. I've showed my dislike about touristy place before on this website I guess and ofcourse this was a setback but the summer palace is none the less well worth visiting. It's one of those places where you understand why it's so packed, much as like the forbidden city. I probably liked the summer palace even better. After that we took the cab back, first to a camera store where Jamie and I dropped off our cameras to get them fixed after our little desert expedition. We handed them in the previous night and thankfully they were fully operational again. After that we headed back to the hotel where we ate pizza at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards we met up with the others. We wanted to go to a local market but at the end Jamie and I ended up in a shopping area due to lack of time. I bought a new phone (my old one didn't survive my brave effort of teaching it how to swim back in Hong Kong) and did some souvenir shopping and headed for the theatre where our shows but be. Not really expecting something great, we sat down at 5.30 for the first our of two shows; the acrobat one ...and I can say it was really something that was better than my expectations. I was sort of expecting something sickish, you know crazy stunts where people do crazy stuff with there bodies, but it was really something classy and impressive. The show lasted for an hour and we had a one hour brake before the kungfu show would start. As I expected this show was even better, with a story about a guy (called Kong Kong) who became obsessed with kungfu and had to conquer difficulties to become a true master... really Chinese I suppose. The whole bit was really enjoyable to watch and I wasn't bored one moment. Mark could say whatever he wants, but that was definately worth the money. We were supposed to meet back at the hotel at 9.30 that evening but due to the very anoying subway system of Beijing we were about half an hour late and heard from the guys that Mark actually couldn't get tickets for the so called better acrobat show and they had to settle with a crappy one. On top of that he didn't manage to book as a minivan to the great wall as he promised because of bad weather forecast. We none the less wanted to do it and ended up booking one through the hotel which was more expensive. Nobody of the group was very fond of him anymore after that...
The next day we got up at 6 am to get to the great wall. We didn't go to the part next to Beijing that was completely restaured. Instead we went to a bit which was a four hour drive out of Beijing and wasn't restaured, only the first bit. I would be a 10 k walk on the wall, and I can tell it was much harder than probably any of us thought. Since Beijing is probably the most poluted city in the world (in the last 3 weeks, the city had 2 hours of sunshine in total according to locals) this part was still very misty and damp, and it was hard to walk in these humid conditions. Soon everybody was sweating like mad, also because the wall is not built on flat ground, but on endless amount of hills; very steep climbs were followed by very steep descents. I was great though, the view was more than once spectacular and it we didn't have rain at all. It started raining after we had lunch (which was included) and set off for Beijing again that evening around 5.30 pm. Arriving back at Beijing at around 8.30 that evening we were all quite hungry and went for pizza again. After that we didn't do much more, just played a bit of cards... call it preparation for the upcoming traintrip to Ulaanbatar.
The next day a van was waiting to bring us to the train station. We had to be there at 6.20 am! The train departed at 7.45 am and took a mere 31 hours to reach Ulaanbatar where I am posting from now. The traintrip was rather smooth and time flew. The dorms are comfy, but only slighty better than the hard sleeper we are 'used to'. We basically were just killing time with talking about previous trips, playing cards, reading and listening to music (since John brought portable speakers, mine died ages ago). Ulaanbatar is an ugly city, but people are nice and know English pretty well. Tomorrow we're gonna set off for a Ger camp on the countryside where we will spend 2 nights. Then we will go off to Russia, to lake Baikal. Right now I'm off for dinner.
thank you, bye bye!
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