Intrepid Tour of China

Days 1-3 Beijing

After 2 days of travelling from Joberg through Singapore to Shanghai with one night there before heading on to Beijing, and 17 hours of flights, we FINALLY arrived at our starting hotel!! China is FREEZING (-2/-3) compared to what is been like in South Africa so for the first day we frooze to death and walked around like penguins huddled together!! We were pleasently suprised (indeed!) to find ourselves staying in a very very very posh hotel (courtesy of Intrepid!) which even had real western toilets (a luxury in China!) instead of the usual squat toilets!! The first day in Beijing was a free day with a group meeting in the evening for our orientation (which we used to sleep and eat!! Mucho jet lag!). At 6pm we met everyone that we will be travelling with for 3 weeks; 2 Canadians, 7 Aussies and 5 other English people. We headed out for our first proper chinese meal which was very good indeed, def up to Daves standards (and you all know what he's like with food!)!

The second day (Thursday 13th) began with one of the organised trips; a visit to the Forbidden City, and so at 8 o'clock we headed off with our guide on the subway (almost as mental as London!) to Tiananmen Square. The square is huge! It can hold half a million people and is also home to Chairman Mao who you can go see in his Mausoleum in the centre of the square! We were so cold though we didn't stay here for too long and so passed under the Gate of Heavenly Peace and into the Forbidden City. This is where the Emperors of China lived and was off limits to commoners for 500 years (hence the name!). The buildings inside were really colourful and so big! Our guide told us quite a bit about the history and about the buildings: the colours on the buildings and animals all represent different things; yellow means the earth, blue is for the Emperor, dragons mean power and elephants represent peace. There was also one one female Emperor who ruled for 43 years! After a very cold few hours in the Forbidden City we headed to our last stop of the day, Jingshan Gongyuan, the gardens behond the city. From here we could climb up to one of the Temples and see a view of the whole city (the Forbidden City and a lot of modern Beijing). Slowly begining to look more and more like ice sculptures, we decided we had to buy coats! We spent the last part of the day coat hunting so we didn't freeze for the rest of the trip, and even managed to get ourselves some eskimo-style coats for a very respectable ten pounds! After returning to the hotel we went straight out to watch a Kung-Fu show, which was a cross between Ballet and Kung Fu and involved the actors walking on nails and balancing on spears!

Day 3 (Friday 14th) started with an early morning walk to the Temple of Heaven, and as with all the places in China this was huge! In the gardens there were loads of people playing cards, dancing, doing tai chi, playing badminton and walking backwards (quite strange!) - the place was packed! The Temple itself was very ornate and colourful. We then set off to try and find a bus to get us to the Summer Palace! This was a challenge as everyone we asked sent us in a different direction but eventually after a lot of arm actions and very bad chinese, the 14 of us jumped on the number 808 bus. The Summer palace was very stunning with loads of buildings (and a lot of steps to climb!) and a frozen lake at the bottom. We looked around for a few hours before heading back to try out one of the markets to test our bartering skills!! Being some of only a handful of westeners in Beijing (or so it seems!) we attract a lot of attention and so going into markets makes us feel something of celebrity's! The market was crazy! Six floors high with everything you could possibly want (and a lot you wouldn't want!) and if you pretend to walk off the market workers will pretty much let you name your price! So far our best bargains include getting a Kimono for 6 quid (down from 40!) and some artwork for 3 pounds (down from 20!). After buying too many souveneirs we met everyone back at the hotel to go for dinner before an early night as we had to be up at 6am the next day to head to our next destination - The Great Wall of China!