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We began our journey from huang Shan to Beijing by following mr ho's advice. In doing so we boarded a 4h bus to the capital of the province (heife). On arriving in heife we used a pocket translator to ask a guy at the bus station how to get to the train station. He proceeded to drive us there for a couple of dollars which was worth it given that the train station was at least 4km away.
We arrived at a smog covered station with every counter 40 people deep. Seeing an English sign we proceeded upstairs finding a sole counter open but an equally long line. We queued up for more than 40 minutes and on reaching the front of the line, our request for a sleeper cabin on the next train to beijing was met with laughter. We proceeded down the ranks of classes and managed to get 3 tickets on hard seats (lowest class) for an 11pm train, giving us more than 7 hours to kill in a far from exciting city.
After dropping our bags into storage we found a place for lunch and cards before a bit of aimless wandering we came upon a few shopping malls that appeared to be grouped by goods. The first containing hundreds of shops selling lingerie and the second containing nothing but pillows, blankets and curtains.
Unappealed by our hard seats for the upcoming 13h train, we decided that pillows would soften the blow. As such, we each bought a kiddie looking square pillow and a large neck style pillow. With our massive pillow bags, Morgan and I decided to get our hair cut at one of the numerous small hairdressers near the station.
The hairdressing experience was slightly delayed by the hairdresser continually stopping to pose and take photos with us. The same occurred for 30 minutes after, which was quite cute.
Leaving there we paid around 20c to use the Internet for about an hour in a gaming centre, then unsucessfully tried to see if there were better or earlier tickets.
Resigned to the fact that we still had a few hours to wait, we killed more time shopping for food and drinks for the train including a bottle of cheap whiskey and a bottle of what can best be described as red death (50%).
We also paid for massages for which we wondered if the masseuses had ever had any training as the massage amounted to an hour of bashing our legs (thus explaining the kankles we experienced by the time we got of train 16 hours later.
The train ride was hell with me sitting opposite Jp and morgan and next to a relatively unfriendly old farmer. We knocked off the first few hours playing s*** head, which then became a drinking game til the whiskey and half of the red death had been consumed in the hope that it would help us sleep in our confined space.
Our pillows were handy but I still failed to sting together more than about 10 minutes of continuous sleep. At around 9am we resumed playing cards before we lost one seat leading us to rotate a standing position.
Finally at around 12:30 we pulled into the station completely wrecked. After spending 20 minutes trying to get our bearings we realized that we were in Beijing west station instead of Beijing central station we we took what turned out to be a very cheap taxi ride.
We checked into Leo hostel and doing a load of washing using the scrubba wash bag I grabbed some food and did some exploring before crashing out for a few hours. We then headed out for dinner and stealing a welsh couples (Darren and ) idea and looked for some Peking duck.
Finding an awesome restaurant down an alley we proceeded to order a whole duck, some side dishes and a bottle of something that was 15 years old (turned out to be strong but nice rice wine) for jps birthday, which Jp took into the kitchen to share with the cook.
After 30 minutes a chef came out with our duck and cut it up in front of us, followed by a lesson by one of the waitresses in how to make wraps and the proper way to eat crackling.
At the end of the meal, the waitresses brought out a bowl of long noodles with 3 poached eggs (chinese equivalent of a birthday cake) and sang happy birthday to Jp in Chinese and English.
We finished dinner ticking along nicely and made it half way down the alley way when 3 drunk locals made some comments in Chinese and laughed, to which I gave the thumbs up. We walked 20 meters more then decided to join them for a drink.
They offered us some of their food and despite us declining and trying to signal that we had already eaten, they ordered 3 more dishes for us. Politely we tried all the dishes despite being completely full.
Not being able to communicate effectively, most actions were greeted by "gumbie" meaning cheers. A further highlight was the arm wrestling that then took place. After an hour we were well drunk and the restaurant closing. Our Chinese hosts then got up and left waving off any attempt for us to pay.
We returned to the hostel and met up with the welsh couple for more drinks before we jumped into a taxi with two Dutch girls and two english guys an headed to a club, which was ok but nothing special.
I returned back to the hostel after Jp and Morgan (around 5am) to find that they had locked the door. Banging for a few minutes I was unable to get them to stir, forcing me to go to the front desk and wake the night staff. The night staff then told me that there were no spare keys. I resumed banging on the door but it was to no avail. I then had the idea to sleep on the day bed in the common room but found it already occupied. As my last resort, I lay on a short padded bench, my legs hanging over the arm rest.
After 60-90 minutes of poor sleep I heard footstep approach me, stop and leave. A few minutes later the footsteps returned and my shoulder tapped. The night staff had found a set of cleaners keys and to my relief let me into our room. Jp copped a bit of abuse.
Unfortunately Morgans night was worse than mine as her purse was stolen from her bag while in the club. The purse containing her 5 day old replacement credit card.
The next day we slept in until about midday, had some food and went to tianamen square but lacking enough money to enter the forbidden city, we found it to be aptly named. Returning to the hostel we met an Asian girl (Sarah) from los vegas who joined us for the afternoon.
We booked tickets to an acrobat show which was pretty amazing and tickets for a great wall tour for the next morning.
After more beers at the hostel, we slept til about 7am and boarded the tour bus at 7:45. On the 3 h bus ride I sat next to a German girl from schwartzwald (Vanessa) who reminded me of mel Gasparin.
The section of wall we were taken to was impressive weaving along the ridges of a range of hills. However the most impressive thing was that there were no other tourists, allowing us to take awesome photos of the wall itself.
I ended up leading the way to the 6th tower (the highest point of the section of wall) with a swedish guy (victor). For the first time I wished for the presence of touts as I hadn't packed water and was parched after a hard hours trek along the wall.
Nevertheless victor and I quickly made out way back down for water, oj and beers.
After a fairly average lunch we boarded the bus and returned to the hostel. We then took the welsh couple and Vanessa to our Peking duck restaurant before the welsh couple caught their train to another part of china. We also presented our square pillows to them as they were taking hard seats. The hope is that the pillows will be passed on to other travelers with emails sent to me where the pillows go.
We returned to the hostel and I did some research (fueled by beer) for my meeting with jun he law firm the following morning.
The next morning Jp and I woke early and took a taxi to the china resources building about 4km away. Despite leaving 45 minutes before meeting we only made it with minutes to spare (bad traffic). The meeting went well and was attended by a partner jun dong, associate marissa Wong and a patent
Attorney. Handing cards over was interesting as chinese custom dictates that it should be done by passing the card in correct orientation with both hands.
After the meeting and still dressed in a suit, I walked about 2km then wandered around a neighborhood for about 45 minutes trying to find the Beijing business center. That was despite having directions and a gps map on my iPhone. Eventually a Chinese woman walked me to the office building and took me to the right floor and right office. From their it was luckily straight forward and I was given the tickets for our train to Mongolia.
That afternoon was spent buying a few souvenirs and posting them home. As a storm rolled in, we resigned ourselves to a local dinner and quiet drinks at the hostel.
The next morning I woke at 6:15 and spent the next 45 minutes giving jp the hurryup. After catching an overpriced taxi and running around the train station (literally) we boarded the train 5 minutes before the 7:47 departure time.
Our cabin is impressive with a bunk bed for 2, a small table and a further chair.
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