We woke up at 6am and packed our bags and headed to the airport. We’re glad we gave ourselves plenty of time because it took us nearly 2 hours to get from our hostel to the airport. I know the airport is a little bit outside of Tokyo, but its crazy to me that it could take 2 hours to get there. We checked in and got some breakfast and tried to use up our Japanese coins by buying bottles of water. We transferred all our of paper Japanese money into Chinese and were finished just in time to board the plane. We sat in the middle row, I was in the middle. Despite the face that I was exhausted I managed to stay awake the whole time. I watched “When Harry Met Sally’ which is and older movie that I somehow have never seen. I did my reading on China to get myself up-to-date on the customs and traditions here. When it came time to fill out our customs forms we realized that we didn’t have the address of the guy that we were planning on staying with (found him on couch surfing), only his phone number. Luckily I had written down some hostel addresses just in case so we used that. We got to the airport and got our luggage then called Kevin (the guy who’s house we were surfing) no answer. We entered the country code then tried again, this time we got recording. We had a lady who spoke both English and Chinese listen, and she gave us a new country code to enter, this time we got an answer but the person responded with “no, no, no.” We took this as a sign. Not knowing what to do and desperately wanting a shower and our own space to spread out we decided that maybe a hostel might be best. Thank god for Jess’s phone, having constant internet access has been a lifesaver! We logged onto Hostelworld.com and found a place with a great location and grabbed a cab. We quickly saw the difference in price between Japan and China when we got in the taxi. Our nearly hour taxi ride cost $14 USD, we were thrilled. Luckily the hostel had vacancy so we booked it. The hostel has a great location, its literally a stones throw from the back of the Forbidden City. We are staying in a room with 4 bunk beds, so the rooms holds 8 people. Everyone is really nice. Two of the people are Americans both living abroad (one in southern China teaching English and the other is working as a bioengineer in New Zealand). I cant believe how many people that were running into who are Americans and living abroad. Two of the other people are from Spain, Jess got to practice more Spanish and chat about her time there with them. Carlos, our Spanish friend, is en route to Hong Kong to meet up with his brother who is living there- we’re going to hopefully be seeing him again soon in a few days. Carlos was super friendly and helped us a lot by giving us good tips, and even called his brother for us to get some information about where we can go for cheap massages! Since it was still pretty early at this point -3:30pm we decided to walk around and get the lay of the land. We walked through the Forbidden City, then to Mao’s Mausoleum, then to Tiananmen Square.
I was shocked how much cleaner everything looked than the last time I was there. I could tell China really did a lot to change and fix up the major tourist attractions for the Olympics. There are also huge TV screens around the edge and in the middle of Tiananmen Square playing national pride videos of China which seemed a bit unnecessary to me. They have seem to have cut down on the number of hawkers and venders that are allowed in Tiananmen Square which is a nice change. We were being tourists and taking tons of pictures in Tiananmen Square when we were approached by two woman. They were very friendly and wanted to practice their English, they were both English Teachers in Northern China. We walked with them for about an hour seeing the sites. They brought us to another road which was created for tourist who visited during the Olympics (it had tons of huge designers shops and chains like Starbucks). The road appeared very old looking but all of the buildings were actually new, and there was even a cute cable car to bringing people from one end to the other. We had fun with the two women and they actually had a lot of good advice about what we should do and what was safe for us to eat. They would have stayed by our sides for the next 3 days, but we finally lied and told them that we needed to leave. We decided to grab some food and search and searched for something recognizable. I had forgotten how dirty of a country China is. My lungs feel like they are filled with pollution. On practically every block there are public bathrooms and the smells that come out of there can literally knock you over. In the windows of the restaurants there are lots of dead hanging animals. Jess and I were a little overwhelmed with Chinese food; Japanese was tough enough not recognizing what we were eating, but in China we not only can’t recognize what were eating, but also it could be ANY kind of animal here. We ended up walking pass a restaurant called “Grandma’s Kitchen” which was one of the places that was recommended that we try. Its run by a real life American grandma. They had all of the typical unhealthy American favorites, we were both excited! We split chicken fingers as an appetizer and I had a burger. We left feeling stuffed, each leaving more than half of our meals untouched, for everything it was less than $20USD! Still wanting to see more of the area around us we decided to walk some more we went to this late night food market and saw all sorts of stuff that made us very happy that we had gone to Grandma’s Kitchen. The venders were selling everything on a stick that you could imagine, scorpion, star fish, seahorse, snake, etc.
We were getting kind of cold and tired and were in despite need of a shower so we headed back to the hostel where we spend about 2 hours chatting with our new roommates and sharing travel stories and tips. It was a great way to end the night, its so nice that everyone we’re meeting has the same love of travel that we do. It was a little cold in the room and there are no hair dryers in our room so we decided to rough it and shower in the morning. I bundled up and even used my sleeping back under the comforter that the hostel provided.
In the morning we slept in until 9:30am and showered and took our time getting ready. It was nice not to rush too much. I was half asleep when I decided to climb down off of the top bunk in my socks. The latter that connects the two beds is a slippery wood. Of course I was setting myself up for trouble with that combination. My left foot slipped right through the rung in the latter and I went crashing down. The bunk bed are very tall, at least 10 feet. I caught myself with a lot of weight pressing down on the left quad and then a lot of weight on the right ankle. I think I might have slightly twisted my ankle as it has been very tender and sore to walk on all day. I already have a huge booze forming on my left leg. So I was off to a great start! We finally headed to the Summer Palace which was further away than we expected. We needed to change trains 3 times so it took us nearly an hour to get there. It was about 11:30am at this point and I hadn’t eating so I grabbed a sleeve of Ritz crackers and had those for breakfast and lunch. We did a lot of hiking and stair climbing in the Summer Palace and were there for almost 3 hours.
We then headed to the Temple of Heaven but by the time we arrive we were both famished and decided to have some lunch before we entered, it was around 4pm a this point. After walking around for almost an hour we finally found a place that had recognizable food. It was a buffet with both Chinese and American food. We tried a bit of everything, I mostly stuck to what I knew- pizza and fruit. It was delicious though Jess and I were so hungry we both felt so much better after eating. Around 5pm we attempted to enter the Temple of Heaven but they were closing for the day. Conveniently, right across the street happened to be this huge 8 floor Pearl market that sells everything from pearls to pashminas. Jess and I killed nearly 2 hours doing a bunch of shopping. We heard that Shanghai has even better prices so we tried to hold off. We each bought some OPI nail polish and I bought a pair of black Uggs for $14USD! What a steal! Be expecting a big package in the near future Mom! From here we had to hassle and head to the Acrobatic show that we had booked earlier in the day. Even though we had bought the cheapest tickets available $25USD we were in the VIP section- 3rd row dead center. It was great! It was quite a good show, I couldn’t believe some of the strength and flexibility these people have. After the show we were still quite full so we decided to walk around the night market a few blocks from our hostel. We saw more crazy foods (I couldn’t believe that they eat scorpion on a stick, and some of the scorpions were still moving!).There was also lots of Chinese knick-naks, but nothing that really interested us. We stopped in a little grocery store and each bought a piece of fruit then of course it started to downpour so we hopped in a rickshaw and got a ride back to our hostel. I showered and attempted to upload pictures on facebook and post a blog but quickly found out that the Chinese government has blocked those two sites. I guess it will be a while before anyone hears about my life! Well off to bed, we’re hiking the Great Wall tomorrow!
Love,
Katie.
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