Cindy and Mike Do the World!: October 2013

I didn’t know much about Chengdu when we booked the flight here but we decided to stay 2 nights before catching the train to Tibet. I’m so glad we did. This place has given me a better impression than Beijing by far. There is quite a bit of smog here but the city still feels cleaner than Beijing, the people seem friendlier and it feels quite modern. Our hotel has also helped my impression – we got a mini-apartment here for the price of a Holiday Inn at home, complete with a washer/dryer. The bed feels like I’m lying on a cloud.

We ate hotpot the first night we arrived and the restaurant managed to find someone who spoke English so that we could order…she tried to convince us to eat pig brain (!) but we resisted. We did try a couple of other interesting delicacies though, in addition to the beef and vegetables. In hindsight, perhaps we should not have tried those things either. Thanks Hedy – for giving us the intro to hotpot before we left. It helped!

We also got to see pandas in Chengdu and took a Sichuan cooking class. They kept laughing at us during the class, hahaha!

We’re now getting ready to board the train for Lhasa, Tibet, a 44 hour journey on the highest train in the world. We have soft sleepers on the train but we do share the compartment with 2 other people. I am definitely not expecting the Orient Express! :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinghai%E2%80%93Tibet_Railway

We’re heading into high altitude so Diamox is on hand just in case. We think we’ll see some spectacular scenery. We also expect some backed up and overflowing toilets, if tripadvisor is to be believed! I’m not sure how easy it will be to access the internet in Tibet. Our permits for Tibet came through in time so that's good. Internet access in China has been okay so far but sites like fb and blogger are blocked…in order to post this we had to use a different proxy. We’re then continuing onwards from Lhasa (after acclimatizing for 3 nights) and doing the overland journey to Nepal. All aboard!

View from our hotel - all of the green cars are taxis

Look at that snout

Hotpot - spicy side and regular side

Stomach

They were giving away a car.

Just eating his breakfast

Babies

Grocery store

Cooking time

Working on our knife skills

Sweet and sour pork

Kung Pao chicken

Steamed eggplant...flakes like a fish!

We got into Beijing on October 23^rd and had our first small hiccup of the trip…by the time we got to our hotel (the Orange Hotel, where they certainly serve a lot of oranges!), it was 10pm. Mike had booked this hotel using google translate and even called to confirm a few days prior (and they found a translator for us on the phone, which was great) but unfortunately, we didn’t realize that they give your room away if you don’t get there by 3pm. They put us in a cab to another one of their hotels and the strangest thing happened…shortly after leaving, the cab driver stopped his cab, said something to us and then got out and started chasing someone on the street, yelling something! Then he went the opposite way. Mike and I looked at each other and weren’t sure what to do…he finally came back and onwards we went, picking up another person along the way (we think it was his friend) so that he could guide him to the hotel. Whew. I guess we’ll never know. We moved back to the original hotel the next day. The pictures on the web make the hotel look nicer than it is but it did just fine for 3 nights.

We lucked out with the weather in Beijing and missed its famous smog. It was warm and clear during the day and crisp but still clear at night.

We planned on taking taxis a lot in Beijing since they are inexpensive and our hotel was slightly out of the main area and we did. This proved to be a slightly frustrating experience though! Mike got a SIM card and we always had the Chinese address ready, all mapped out, with the route clearly shown, and even had the hotel staff tell the driver where we wanted to go if we were leaving from the hotel. Time after time, the drivers seemed confused about where to go, although we always got there in the end. It’s hard to know what they were saying to hotel staff or to us. Our other problem was trying to get a cab back when we were out – they are very busy and supposedly everyone takes them since they are so inexpensive. We took the subway once as well and that actually seemed faster. We still don’t know if taxi drivers really don’t know the city very well (this happened a lot) or just didn’t want to take us (and were pretending that they didn’t know where to go).

The highlight was definitely the Great Wall. We hired a driver to take us out to the Jinshanling section (about 2 ½ hours out of town but well worth the trip) since it’s a quieter section and the hike is purportedly better. I can’t speak for the other sections of the Great Wall but this part was great! Not too many people at all. We hiked as far as we could to the Simatai part (still being repaired but supposed to open soon). The driver was great too and we even managed to get him to stop at Subway on the way to get some lunch for the hike. Two local women walked with us for most of the hike (this is how they make their money) and they pointed out some highlights of the wall since they knew some English. We ended up buying a couple of souvenirs from them at the end…we got suckered in but we feel okay about it.

Another highlight was eating Beijing (aka Peking) Duck in Beijing. So yummy! We tried Da Dong restaurant and it was great…probably the nicest place that we’ve eaten in so far but my sketchers and jeans had to do.

Getting a ride to the airport from Orange Hotel was also an interesting experience…our taxi driver knew where to go this time but he kept putting the windows down and slapping himself, I guess to stay awake. We’ve heard that they can work very long hours.

I downloaded a book called ‘China Survival Guide’ and it’s been so helpful…it explains the squatter toilets (more rudimentary than the Japan ones), the constant horking and spitting we hear people doing, how to safely cross the street so that you don’t get run over (no easy feat, let me tell you!) and various other things.