Decided to give another try and go and see the famous Forbidden City. It was closed to the public for 500 years while 2 dynasties of emperors (Ming & Qing) lived in there. It is a huge and best preserved complex of ancient buildings and gardens. They advise you to take a full day to explore it, but we don't have the patience for that :) So we spent there about 3 hours or so, probably looked through close to 60-70% of it and that was plenty for us. Weather was really really warm that day so we used all the chances to go through the inside exhibitions where they had air conditioning. Of course the whole thing was magnificent again, it was nicely renovated and well preserved with all its pretty colors and unbelievable level of details.
There are couple of things that i should mention about the Chinese culture and traditions. It absolutely gives us creeps of how they snort and spit everywhere - on the streets in the restaurants in the stores, soo discusting. We were wondering if we will perhaps get used to that by the end of the trip, but i doubt that, it is soo gross. Another strange thing is that whenever they take photos, they stand there with both of their arms open to the sides and making V with their fingers, so strange. What is the deal with that?
In the afternoon we headed over to eat close to the stadium. I must say that the foods we choose get worse and worse as the time goes by :) This time we ordered chicken dish with vegetables. Well, the chicken was there but there was no chicken meat. It almost seemed that we got everything else that was left from the chicken after the meat was removed. Best of all were chicken toes that we found in there, like the actual toes, just sitting there in our food. Not very appertising :( Riina actually even ate a bit of the toes :) Then there was also some spice there, apparently it was cut in half and it was about the size of a plum, but at first sight i could have sworn that this was a bug :) I hope it really was a spice.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
future plans after day 3
We will be heading to Qingdao on Thursday evening at 17:05 by train from Beijing. Train ticket cost us 300CNY with delivery to the hotel (275 was the ticket price for one person). Tickets were arranged by a friendly person at the front desk in our hotel. We got a hotel booked through ctrip.com about an hour ago already as well, so all seems to be set now :)
Today we visited the Forbidden City and Olympic Stadium and tomorrow we will be heading over to see the beach volleyball event in the morning and then train to Qingdao.
I'm a bit lagging with entries, but will try to fix that shortly ;)
Today we visited the Forbidden City and Olympic Stadium and tomorrow we will be heading over to see the beach volleyball event in the morning and then train to Qingdao.
I'm a bit lagging with entries, but will try to fix that shortly ;)
day 3 - evening activities - 19.08.08
Finding the stadium was not an easy task. This city is really really huge and one block on the map can be kilometers in real life with many many small blocks inside it. Found a local eating place on the road to have dinner. Luckily again they had pictures in the menu (seems to be a standard here), got some sort of pork dish with vegetables and some tea for drinking. Well, I have to say, all the people around us kept staring at us the whole time when were eating - must have been our poor usage of chopsticks? They even giggled sometimes :( We felt like clowns on the stage trying to get this slippery stuff in our mouth :) Also the pork was not the leanest unfortunately. Seems that there is never any nice fillet meet in the stir-fries here, it is always some non-chewable stuff :( Must find out if there is a way around it, perhaps we are missing the keyword here when placing the order :)
About our luck with getting the stadium tickets that evening - impossible. There were many people selling tickets, but the prices started from 2000CNY whereas original price for the same ticket was 800CNY. Bargaining would help a bit, but the prices stayed above 1000CNY no matter what :( We even tried to bargain later on when the show had been on for an hour already but even that did not help. So no go for us. Besides we already have tickets for tomorrow, so we will see the stadium anyways. We ended up sitting around without any TV access :( - till 22:45 or so when the event ended. All the Estonians met up in "the meeting place" as they do after every evening apparently. As we had some communication problems and also logistics problems with triathlon crowd we ended up spotting Estonian fanclub T-shirts on the street and they gladly showed us the meeting location as they were heading the same way. Stayed there for about an hour or so but did not feel like communicating too much with all the rest. Headed back to the hotel at about half past midnight which meant that we missed Kanter's arrival and had no chance to shake his hand and give our congrats to him, but oh well, can't have everything one wants right?
That is a bit sad that we totally missed his whole competition as we did not have access to a TV at all. Later we thought that we should have just jumped on public transport as most of those have live TV playing, at the time we did not come to that though. Oh well, we'll get through it :D
About our luck with getting the stadium tickets that evening - impossible. There were many people selling tickets, but the prices started from 2000CNY whereas original price for the same ticket was 800CNY. Bargaining would help a bit, but the prices stayed above 1000CNY no matter what :( We even tried to bargain later on when the show had been on for an hour already but even that did not help. So no go for us. Besides we already have tickets for tomorrow, so we will see the stadium anyways. We ended up sitting around without any TV access :( - till 22:45 or so when the event ended. All the Estonians met up in "the meeting place" as they do after every evening apparently. As we had some communication problems and also logistics problems with triathlon crowd we ended up spotting Estonian fanclub T-shirts on the street and they gladly showed us the meeting location as they were heading the same way. Stayed there for about an hour or so but did not feel like communicating too much with all the rest. Headed back to the hotel at about half past midnight which meant that we missed Kanter's arrival and had no chance to shake his hand and give our congrats to him, but oh well, can't have everything one wants right?
That is a bit sad that we totally missed his whole competition as we did not have access to a TV at all. Later we thought that we should have just jumped on public transport as most of those have live TV playing, at the time we did not come to that though. Oh well, we'll get through it :D
day 3 - the great wall of china - 19.08.08
Coming from triathlon event we happened to talk with one Irish guy in the bus line back to town (Changping) about the race and where we are from and so on. Moving up in the line we figured that we could go to the Great Wall all together. As always - we got couple of sets of instructions and started our journey. After getting off the first bus and starting to get instructions of the second bus departure location we were joined also by one German couple. After some time the guy offered us a deal that he would take us there for 10CNY each - sounds like a good deal, so we agree to it. Now there we are - 5 adults plus the driver trying to fit into this tiny car (tiny like Mazda-323-tiny), we all squeezed in of course and were stuck there for about 30 minute drive :) But we all got there in one piece - only i lost the feeling in my left leg after first 5 minutes or so :)
Great Wall of China is preserved in many sections and they are all over the place. We ended up going to the one closest to town called Juyongguan. The day was warm of course, even sitting in the shade is too much, it was some 28C in the shade apparently. So there we were going up the steep stairs for ever and ever - was all worth it. I got flashbacks from my Peru trip and the stears climbing up in the mountains. Riina on the other hand had totally new experience in that regard :) We both went all the way up there though! YAY US! :)
Coming down we decided to take the road less traveled and take a detour, which meant that we had to go almost all the way down to the bridge and then half way up again and then slooowly and gradually down on the opposite side of the hill/mountain. Whenever we stopped on the way our legs would shake :) We also met a tiny snake on the way down - the poor thing was doing its best to escape from us downwards, it also tried to hide by the stairs but we still kept coming towards it. And of course we tried to get away from it as well, so we ran downwards past it as quickly as possible :) Yeah, we ran for a while :D
Once we arrived at the bridge Riina promised that she will definitely die if she had to climb any more stairs :) Decision made, we took a shortcut by letting ourselves through some random gate and struggled through some maze of trailers and fences. Those were there from the Olympic cycling event that took place on the very same road that passed by the Great Wall. Local workers were busy taking down the cyclists temporary village and bleachers, but nobody complained about us randomly wondering around there :) At last we ended up on the road, after a bit of walking we passed by the entrance and that was already closed and it was all dead in and around there. At least we knew the bus number that should take us back to town. As we did not see any bus stops around while walking then once the bus came we just tried to wave and hoped that they also pick people up from the side of the road - but no luck the first time :( It already passed our mind that we might have a long walk coming up if they really don't stop for us without the bus stop :D Second bus that passed decided to stop though. Dunno, maybe it was because of the police officer that we happened to be chatting with :D Anyhoo - we got on the bus and then found out that it is going straight to Beijing :) yay.
For evening activities we had agreed with Marko and his dad that we will try to get to the stadium - perhaps we can buy tickets on the last minute or something (as Kanter was competing we really wished we could get to the stadium). So we needed to get off the bus somewhere close to the stadium. My question started a very active discussion between the driver, some passengers and the ticket lady :) I just kept looking left and right to figure out what was going on and if i can maybe read something out of their facial expressions. As much as I could understand the stadium was somewhere close, but the bus did not have an official stop here. At some point the bus driver started to show something with his hands and stopped the bus, we just hurried off at this point :)
Great Wall of China is preserved in many sections and they are all over the place. We ended up going to the one closest to town called Juyongguan. The day was warm of course, even sitting in the shade is too much, it was some 28C in the shade apparently. So there we were going up the steep stairs for ever and ever - was all worth it. I got flashbacks from my Peru trip and the stears climbing up in the mountains. Riina on the other hand had totally new experience in that regard :) We both went all the way up there though! YAY US! :)
Coming down we decided to take the road less traveled and take a detour, which meant that we had to go almost all the way down to the bridge and then half way up again and then slooowly and gradually down on the opposite side of the hill/mountain. Whenever we stopped on the way our legs would shake :) We also met a tiny snake on the way down - the poor thing was doing its best to escape from us downwards, it also tried to hide by the stairs but we still kept coming towards it. And of course we tried to get away from it as well, so we ran downwards past it as quickly as possible :) Yeah, we ran for a while :D
Once we arrived at the bridge Riina promised that she will definitely die if she had to climb any more stairs :) Decision made, we took a shortcut by letting ourselves through some random gate and struggled through some maze of trailers and fences. Those were there from the Olympic cycling event that took place on the very same road that passed by the Great Wall. Local workers were busy taking down the cyclists temporary village and bleachers, but nobody complained about us randomly wondering around there :) At last we ended up on the road, after a bit of walking we passed by the entrance and that was already closed and it was all dead in and around there. At least we knew the bus number that should take us back to town. As we did not see any bus stops around while walking then once the bus came we just tried to wave and hoped that they also pick people up from the side of the road - but no luck the first time :( It already passed our mind that we might have a long walk coming up if they really don't stop for us without the bus stop :D Second bus that passed decided to stop though. Dunno, maybe it was because of the police officer that we happened to be chatting with :D Anyhoo - we got on the bus and then found out that it is going straight to Beijing :) yay.
For evening activities we had agreed with Marko and his dad that we will try to get to the stadium - perhaps we can buy tickets on the last minute or something (as Kanter was competing we really wished we could get to the stadium). So we needed to get off the bus somewhere close to the stadium. My question started a very active discussion between the driver, some passengers and the ticket lady :) I just kept looking left and right to figure out what was going on and if i can maybe read something out of their facial expressions. As much as I could understand the stadium was somewhere close, but the bus did not have an official stop here. At some point the bus driver started to show something with his hands and stopped the bus, we just hurried off at this point :)
day 3 - triathlon event - 19.08.08
Tuesday we had tickets to the triathlon event. Taxi with English speaking driver was waiting for us in the lobby at 7:45 as agreed the day before. Taxi drive was about 1h, once at the Ming Tomb Reservoir there were many many formalities that had to be followed - security check was quite extensive. Location of the venue was amazing, very beautiful environment wise. Once Marko showed his face in the arena, all the Estonians started cheering so we found the crowd quite easily ;) Start was at 10 and the competition was awesome. We had seats at the bleachers, as we learned the track was built so that there was no point in going to the track at all. We saw all we needed and even more :) All in all it was wonderful! Whatta experience :) Saw the Olympic triathlon race :) My first Olympic race in live.
Since the triathlon event was north from Beijing and quite close to the Great Wall of China then we decided to head there after the race.
We have noticed some weird thing with the toddlers (kids who have just learned to walk) pants/shorts here - namely they don't have any seat area cover :) their pants are covering only their legs and when they squat down then their but is all open :) We can't figure it out if it made this way so that they can just squat and pee or it isbecause of the heat or something entirely else. I haven't found a suitable time to take a picture of this strange things, but I will try to do so in the future :-P
Since the triathlon event was north from Beijing and quite close to the Great Wall of China then we decided to head there after the race.
We have noticed some weird thing with the toddlers (kids who have just learned to walk) pants/shorts here - namely they don't have any seat area cover :) their pants are covering only their legs and when they squat down then their but is all open :) We can't figure it out if it made this way so that they can just squat and pee or it isbecause of the heat or something entirely else. I haven't found a suitable time to take a picture of this strange things, but I will try to do so in the future :-P
day 2 - getting to know Beijing - 18.08.08
Once at the airport, we had to get to the hotel somehow. Well should not be that hard right? We turned to the first hotel and travel information center we found and happily showed the hotel name. Well, apparently this was not where most of the tourists they have served have stayed at as first the lady told us that there is no such hotel :( oh uh. Finally she ended up calling somebody and then wrote down the hotel name and street name in Chinese for us. Before handing the paper to us she tried to sell us a car service for 450CNY (about 700EEK) saying that all the taxis are taken and the line is very long. My common sense did not want to accept that so we just walked away. Also it seemed suspicious go me of how she suddenly and magically just "found" the hotel, so i turned to the info center by the main lobby. Well they were certain that there is no such hotel :) they guided us to the next hotel service across the hall. Well ok, new try. Again the first thing they say is that this hotel does not exist, again some calls and again magically they happen to find it. And again they tried to sell the car service, their price was 400CNY, of course we did not take it :). I compared the two writings and they matched, hmm, must be fine then? We follow the signs to the taxi line and guess what :) there are 3 full lines of empty taxis of course.
Allright so we get to the cab and show the paper with the address, he looks at it for a loooong time then scratches his head and then looks at it again.. says something in Chinese and starts driving. Hmm :D we drive and we dive and he thinks we found the street. Well the name looks similar yes, we get to the right building number, but it is not a hotel. He gets out of the car to ask around, so that maybe the hotel is in the courtyard of something, but nope, no hotel there. The taxi driver drives around a bit and nope, nothing. uh oh - again :) finally he calls to the number shown at our reservation. Some Chinese talking follows - blablabla - and he starts driving again. Taxi meter shows 133CNY and it won't move. We guessed he has stopped it because he drove us to the wrong location? We drive some more and finally we get to a nice green hotel building that has a correct name on it :) yeah, seems that this was his mistake. Allright! We made it! And the hotel room is quite nice and also very clean - yay!
As it is only noon, we figured to shower and head over to get some sightseeing in today. At the front desk we get directions on how to find the famous Forbidden City. We get the bus numbers and stops written down in Chinese and in English and head out. We also got some information on the shops where we could find an adapter. Started to look for the store, can't find it. Were also thinking about getting a local sim.. could be useful... first we try to text with our phones just to see if it works - if it does, then we don't even need the local sim. We won't be using it much anyways. Finally we decide to head for the bus and deal with the rest later. First bus we get on should take us just for one stop, then we need to switch. Well once at the transition location, we ended up walking up and down the road for ever and ever and we could not find the other bus number on any of the stops :( We ask and they all talk to us in Chinese and show to the direction we have been to for many times already. Ugh. Finally it turned out that we needed to go down the street and then turn right at the end and then go on forever again. Ok so we get to the other bus as well. That one should take us 10 stops as the ticket lady so nicely instructed us. The distances between stops are very big, so it took quite a bit to pass those 10 stops. Finally we get out and we cross the road to enter the forbidden city... grrmm.. the gates closed 1h ago :( grrr. But oh well - nothing we can do about it anymore. Figured that we could start walking back and then try to find a place to eat. Not an easy task as we found out some time later. After some, perhaps 40m of walking we get back to the bus to head home. At the transition location we found a market - got some fruits for breakfast (very expensive mango's and not so expensive bananas). Being still hungry though, while looking for an eating place we passed by some places that served boiled chicken legs and heads - not very appertising :). On the next corner there was a nice eating place, looked quite new. The menu did not have one word in English, but it got nice colorful pictures. Our dinner ended up costing us both total of 54EEK (29CNY), it was good and tasty and big. This eating place was also close to our hotel - must remember the correct corner now :)
After eating it was straight to the hotel, got taxi ordered from the front desk for the next morning to take us to the triathlon event, quick internet visit, quick shower and then straight to bed.
Allright so we get to the cab and show the paper with the address, he looks at it for a loooong time then scratches his head and then looks at it again.. says something in Chinese and starts driving. Hmm :D we drive and we dive and he thinks we found the street. Well the name looks similar yes, we get to the right building number, but it is not a hotel. He gets out of the car to ask around, so that maybe the hotel is in the courtyard of something, but nope, no hotel there. The taxi driver drives around a bit and nope, nothing. uh oh - again :) finally he calls to the number shown at our reservation. Some Chinese talking follows - blablabla - and he starts driving again. Taxi meter shows 133CNY and it won't move. We guessed he has stopped it because he drove us to the wrong location? We drive some more and finally we get to a nice green hotel building that has a correct name on it :) yeah, seems that this was his mistake. Allright! We made it! And the hotel room is quite nice and also very clean - yay!
As it is only noon, we figured to shower and head over to get some sightseeing in today. At the front desk we get directions on how to find the famous Forbidden City. We get the bus numbers and stops written down in Chinese and in English and head out. We also got some information on the shops where we could find an adapter. Started to look for the store, can't find it. Were also thinking about getting a local sim.. could be useful... first we try to text with our phones just to see if it works - if it does, then we don't even need the local sim. We won't be using it much anyways. Finally we decide to head for the bus and deal with the rest later. First bus we get on should take us just for one stop, then we need to switch. Well once at the transition location, we ended up walking up and down the road for ever and ever and we could not find the other bus number on any of the stops :( We ask and they all talk to us in Chinese and show to the direction we have been to for many times already. Ugh. Finally it turned out that we needed to go down the street and then turn right at the end and then go on forever again. Ok so we get to the other bus as well. That one should take us 10 stops as the ticket lady so nicely instructed us. The distances between stops are very big, so it took quite a bit to pass those 10 stops. Finally we get out and we cross the road to enter the forbidden city... grrmm.. the gates closed 1h ago :( grrr. But oh well - nothing we can do about it anymore. Figured that we could start walking back and then try to find a place to eat. Not an easy task as we found out some time later. After some, perhaps 40m of walking we get back to the bus to head home. At the transition location we found a market - got some fruits for breakfast (very expensive mango's and not so expensive bananas). Being still hungry though, while looking for an eating place we passed by some places that served boiled chicken legs and heads - not very appertising :). On the next corner there was a nice eating place, looked quite new. The menu did not have one word in English, but it got nice colorful pictures. Our dinner ended up costing us both total of 54EEK (29CNY), it was good and tasty and big. This eating place was also close to our hotel - must remember the correct corner now :)
After eating it was straight to the hotel, got taxi ordered from the front desk for the next morning to take us to the triathlon event, quick internet visit, quick shower and then straight to bed.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
day 1 & 2 - arrival to beijing - 17 & 18.08
I'll start from the beginning this time, kinda ignoring the last post :). We almost missed our first flight's boarding as we were sent to the wrong gate in the new modern international airport of Tallinn. Boarding was to end at 15:00 and as i did not see any movement at the gate i started to check the flight numbers, time was 14:59 :D and of course we were at the other end of the airport and our flight left from a totally different gate. luckily our plane was a bit late so we made it in time still. we were like headless blondes already at the first departure - that trip will be fun! flight to Finland was like usual, first going up for 15 minutes and then coming straight down again :)
Flight to shanghai was a bit more interesting ;) flight time 9h20m :( the seats were so narrow and the guy next to me decided to take all the space that he possibly can, which was also half of my shoulders and leg space - oh it was bad. also the movies they showed were horrible or ones i've already seen for more than 5 times. only good thing was that there was no turbulence throughout the whole flight.
So we made it to Shanghai on Monday morning. There we needed to do the whole customs thing with carrying our bags from the arriving flight to the departing one. Now.. i've never seen that much empty space in a building before.. i mean this airport was humongous.. just huuuge.. and there were no people there. It almost seemed that our plane was the only one where they let the people out from :) and then we needed to get to a domestic flight, so we happily followed the signs to the terminal that was shown on our ticket. After walking for at least 15 minutes with good pace we started to double check the TV's with departures information in order to find out if our flight was in schedule. Well, our flight was in time, but there was a red comment saying that it arrives in a different terminal :( so we turned ourselves around and marched back from where we came from :) luckily we still had time. And of course, since the airport was huge there were huuuge lines and check-in areas. I've never in my life seen anything of that sort, and i travel quite a bit. Ok, so we seemed to figure out which line we need and we luckily added ourselves to the queue. Only to find out about 10 minutes later that this indeed was for the correct airline, but it was for international flights and we needed domestic flight... uh oh.. friendly guy who was in charge of ordering the queues guided us the the correct check-in area. So finally we got our check-in done successfully.
Flight from Shanghai to Beijing was about 2hrs i guess :) The minute we got in the plane and sat down i closed my eyes and that was it. I was so tired that i could have even fallen asleep standing up. At some point they served food, i opened my eyes and drank the orange juice, then slept on. Once the plane landed i could not keep my eyes open... it was hopeless. Riina was sleeping as well most of the flight. But in any case we stumbled into the airport and went and got our bags.
(it is 2am and i'm dead tired of a busy and long.. will try to fix it all soon.. and somebody is demandin pictures so i better get the upload started huh?)
Flight to shanghai was a bit more interesting ;) flight time 9h20m :( the seats were so narrow and the guy next to me decided to take all the space that he possibly can, which was also half of my shoulders and leg space - oh it was bad. also the movies they showed were horrible or ones i've already seen for more than 5 times. only good thing was that there was no turbulence throughout the whole flight.
So we made it to Shanghai on Monday morning. There we needed to do the whole customs thing with carrying our bags from the arriving flight to the departing one. Now.. i've never seen that much empty space in a building before.. i mean this airport was humongous.. just huuuge.. and there were no people there. It almost seemed that our plane was the only one where they let the people out from :) and then we needed to get to a domestic flight, so we happily followed the signs to the terminal that was shown on our ticket. After walking for at least 15 minutes with good pace we started to double check the TV's with departures information in order to find out if our flight was in schedule. Well, our flight was in time, but there was a red comment saying that it arrives in a different terminal :( so we turned ourselves around and marched back from where we came from :) luckily we still had time. And of course, since the airport was huge there were huuuge lines and check-in areas. I've never in my life seen anything of that sort, and i travel quite a bit. Ok, so we seemed to figure out which line we need and we luckily added ourselves to the queue. Only to find out about 10 minutes later that this indeed was for the correct airline, but it was for international flights and we needed domestic flight... uh oh.. friendly guy who was in charge of ordering the queues guided us the the correct check-in area. So finally we got our check-in done successfully.
Flight from Shanghai to Beijing was about 2hrs i guess :) The minute we got in the plane and sat down i closed my eyes and that was it. I was so tired that i could have even fallen asleep standing up. At some point they served food, i opened my eyes and drank the orange juice, then slept on. Once the plane landed i could not keep my eyes open... it was hopeless. Riina was sleeping as well most of the flight. But in any case we stumbled into the airport and went and got our bags.
(it is 2am and i'm dead tired of a busy and long.. will try to fix it all soon.. and somebody is demandin pictures so i better get the upload started huh?)
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