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For the first week in China, life on tour was pretty comfortable. Landing in Beijing after a pleasant overnight flight with much-maligned Aeroflot, we were driven to our hotel where a surprisingly big room with ensuite bathroom and TV/PC combo awaited us. Much of the rest of the day was spent sleeping or loitering in the lobby tryjng to identify who we'd be lumbered with on our organised tour for the next 2 weeks.
The next morning our guide, Betty Boo, was waiting for us downstairs, surrounded by 20-odd people nervously glancing around trying to suss each other out. The obligatory meet-and-greet ("hello, im Grant from London, blah de blah blah") was mercifully short and, as usual, the only name I could remember afterwards was my own! And then we began our 2-day whistle-stop tour of Beijing...
From the packed Tian'namen square (where fascinated locals bizarrely asked us to pose with them for photos!) to the vast enclosures of the Forbidden City; from climbing The Great Wall in breathless humidity to strolling through The Summer Palace; from hard-nosed haggling at the Silk Market to nervy rickshaw rides through the heritaged Hutong neighbourhoods. An acrobat show (featuring EIGHT motorbikes in the Globe of Death), a Kung-Fu show (sadly disappointing, too much story not enough action!) and enough rice, noodles and Peking duck to feed China for a week, completed an action-packed few days.
Beijing well and truly done, we all jumped on an overnight train to Xi-an, home of The Terracotta Warriors. Our sleeper tickets meant we were 4 to a room, with comfortable bunks, but we had little intention of getting much sleep. Instead we had ourselves a little train party, cramming into one tiny room with a couple of iPod speakers and as much beer as we could carry. We might have kept a few passengers awake but we certainly kept the drinks attendant busy. So busy in fact, he eventually decided to camp outside our room, knocking every half an hour to offer refills! I'm pretty sure by the time we finally retired for a few hours sleep we'd drunk the train dry!
After checking into our new hotel the next morning we headed to the Terracotta Warrior museum and then to the Warriors themselves. While the story behind the collection is fascinating and the figurines themselves are worth seeing, I found the whole experience a bit disappointing...so ill stop there!
That night we had some free time so a bunch of us went out for a final dinner (the main was splitting into smaller groups due to varied itineraries). Venturing out into torrential rain we ducked into the nearest place we could find and were quickly ushered into a semi-private room. As the waitress hovered over us (something that seems to be the norm in this country) it soon became apparent that ordering would be tricky. While the menu did have some pictures, none of it was in english and not one of the staff spoke a single word of english! It took about half an hour (and seemingly the help of the entire restaurant staff!) to place our order but luckily they seemed to find our struggles amusing. In a similar way to brits abroad, the chinese seem to think repeating the same thing louder and slower to someone who doesn't know their language, somehow makes it easier to understand! Throughout the course of the meal (which was actually very nice) staff and other diners would slowly walk by to gawk at us or take a photo - such was the interest in westerners appearing in their restaurant - but it was all good natured. The waitress even came running after us as we left to return the tip, such was our apparent comedy value!
The next day we were up early to visit the panda sanctuary in nearby Chengdu. Seeing them wasn't guaranteed but our local guide for the day, Tom, seemed to think he could serenade them into making an appearance. Bizarrely, a couple verses of "you are my sunshine" seemed to do the trick and 3 or 4 pandas (including one brown one) came out at various intervals to pose for photos, roll around or lick their bits before turning tail and going back into hiding.
After a couple of hours there we went for lunch and then headed back to the hotel where we split into 4 groups and went our separate ways. From 22 our group was now just 3 - quite a change in dynamic for the second week of the tour!
- comments
Dave Sounds fun. Davina and I are very jealous!
Grant Come and join us...we'll be in Japan in a few days!