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Finished in Beijing!
On our last couple of days we did a few things but a much more relaxed pace!
The Great wall, what everyone wants to see, and it was worth it! You can see the wall for miles and miles around and its huge, about 5 metres across and really high, unfortunatley as it was the Chinese Golden week, they all had the same idea and it was a push and a shove to see who could get to the top the first. We really wanted to walk it but as it was the busiest week and about a good couple of miles plus the fact that we only had 2 hours we decided to take the "sliding Car" half way up. The only way I can describe it is a toboggan on a rollercoaster track. They shove you in pull the harness over your head (and if you arent quick enough I'd imagine you'd have a nice bump!) then it goes up really really steeply for about 5 mins. Coming down they just chain a load of the carts together then apply the brakes all the way down! The only thing we didn't like there were the bears, at the entrance to the sliding car there are signs saying "Man and beast can live together" and then theres lots of random enclosures with bears in them, the Chinese were throwing what we think were Huge Gerkins at them at the bears were begging for the food, it was not nice. Then the tour took us to the Ming Tombs which were fun, more temples and a big burial mound. Although we did get to see somethings excavated from another Ming tomb, and on the way out the Chinese think you have to cleanse yourself of the bad spirits from the world of the dead (by the burial mound) so you have to stamp your feet and wipe them off, then step through this gate shouting something in Chinese really loudly, bizzare! They also took us to two goverment run shops one jade factory (some of the peices there were amazing!) and to a Chinese traditional medicine factory, where we got seen by a doctor. he feels your pulse with 3 fingers and tells you if you are healthy. Si was all good apart from a sore throat but unfortunatley I have too much Yang and not enough Yin and in order to make this better I needed to hand over 500 yuan for some tablets to balance this out. This imbalance was as a result of my pill apparently, I'm storing too much blood or something, needless to say we passed although we did buy some tea which is nice. We also tried street food for the first time, we have been to the restuarants and fast food places but we had something that was a croosd between a nan bread and a popadom - it was lovely so we're getting better at this travelling thing!
The following day we went to Coal Hill, and as you can see from the pics it would have been an amazing view if it wasn't for all of the smog! On the same day we went to the drum tower and the Bell Tower, these were used to tell people the time before . The drum tower was huge, and had loads of big drums inside including one of the origional ones that had been partly?destroyed in the cultural revolution. We saw them beat the drums in the traditional style and they didnt half make some noise! We saw the bell tower from the outside and it was lovely but decided againt going inside to see the same things but with huge bells!
On our last day we went to the Lama Temple which is by far the best temple we have seen, theres a million and one Buddha's inside all representing different things like wisdom or wealth. the chinese were everywhere praying for everying?from having babies to passing their exams, etc, the smell of incense made your eyes water, the icing on the cake though was the big Buddha right at the end. made from a single trunk of a sandal wood tree he stood 18 metrers above ground and 8 metres below the?ground,?he was humongous! You have to see him to believe it, but we couldn't take pictures so you'll just have to trust us!
Then it was time to say good bye to Beijing. After a somewhat whiteknuckle taxi ride to the train station the fun really began! We thought Beijing West train station was a hotel it was massive! After having our bags x-rayed we fought our way through the masses of Chinese returning home after the holidays (again we pick the busiest day to do something) we made it to our platform, luckily we were only at number 8 but they were shouting for platforms 34 and 35! Then the pushing and shoving started to get through to the train (the Chinese have no concept of queueing so its every man, or woman for themselves). The train was about 30 carriages long and you couldn't see from one end to the other, with each carriage having capacity for at least 60 people. Lucky us to get a?cabin?with children in it! But they were nice enough and the 2 women who were in there shared their pumpkin seed with us,?Bec ate a whole one before they showed us how to shell them which broke the ice.
But we are now in Xi'an safe and sound, and have settled in quite nicely to the smelliest hotel room ever! But it has a nice view of the city?wall which compensates a bit.
Hope all is well, will update soon to tell you all about Xi'an
Bec and Si xx
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