Beijing Fling

Girls at the Lama Temple
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Beijing round two.

When  the girls said they were planning to go to Beijing I decided that there was no way I was going to stay in Nanjing by myself for the weekend. Plus there was more to see and I could catch up with Eli and Bei Bei again.

Katja was lucky enough to have her man come visit so they went to Beijing separately. The rest of us girls decided to catch the overnight sleeper train. Firstly for the experience, and secondly, we’d left booking airline tickets too late to get cheap flights plus we would be saving on one nights’ accommodation by doing so.

Jess doing a starfish on the Great Wall
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So the train wasn’t too bad, after our train trip to Yangzhou we were slightly concerned about the state of the sleeper carriages. But we got onboard and found our little sleeper cabins had clean linen and were reasonably comfy. Jess, Pet and I shared a cabin with a Chinese man you could speak quite good English and let off a cracker of a fart at some point. I don’t think it was the best night sleep I’ve ever had, but it got us there safe and sound. We arrived on the last day of autumn and you could definitely tell that winter was on the way. In China the seasonal change is not a gradual one. The day before (thurs) it was 22°C in Beijing and it was predicted to have a high of 3°C that Sunday. Hence we packed all our clothes to layer up.

Naughty kitty at the Reggae Bar
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On the Friday, we separated into two groups. Jess, Pet and Laura went to Pearl markets and Temple of Heaven and Stella and I caught the subway and a scary tuk tuk ride to meet Eli at Beijing Zoo. Our primary aim was to see Pandas. The Zoo was average…the pandas weren’t very exciting as they were all hundled up sleeping or lazing about and a lot of the enclosures did not resemble anything close to a natural habitat. The nicest part of the zoo was the autumn leaves near the lake and the worst was the large white tigers and other large cats in 3m x 3m concrete cages. We then all met up at Wang Fu Jing which is a main shopping street in the CBD. Stella, Jess and I sampled some deep fried small scorpions and then Stella ate an even bigger, more disgusting stinky one later on (see pic).

The Great Wall
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The following day Jess, Laura, Stella and I were bound for our Great Wall adventure. We got picked up from our hostel at 6:10am set for Jinshanling. From there we had about 3-4hrs to complete about 8km of the wall and make it to Simatai by 2ish. At the beginning, we could either skip a couple of towers of the wall and take the cable car, or walk for 20-30min to get up there. So, keen as ever we walked up. We got the point where steep incline of stairs started… and at some point we were all silently thinking ‘holy sh*t!’, what have we got ourselves in for’. But once we were up and walking it was pretty cruisey minus a few steep, rugged inclines. We had a lovely French girl and Amercian guy in our group whom we walked with and stopped for lunch to eat snacks we’d brought with us. This part of the Wall was definitely more exciting than the previous one I did, partly because the air was much clearer for better viewing and because it was more a challenge and nice to be out of the city for the day. Once we got to Simatai we got this awesome flying fox across the river before getting on a short boat ride to meet our driver on the other side.

Sleepy Panda
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After a snooze on the mini bus, we mustered up the energy to meet Eli and Gloria for dinner at Hou Hai Park. We ate awesome peking duck, then headed to a Reggae bar where you could get 12 shots for 100RMB (about $20 aussie dollars!). We’d brought some light up devil horns to wear for Halloween ready to hit the town. Needless to say we had a good time and ended up at a club called Mix to sample the Beijing clubbing scene. A very funny night. Hats off to Stella and Laura’s podium antics!

The scorpian Stella ate.
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Sunday morning we woke up to snow! It was freezing but so beautiful. I separated from the girls while they did Tiananmen and Forbidden City and met Eli and Gloria at the 798, the art district. After that we went to a fabulous local market (right next to Fuchengmen station for those interested) and got a bargain on some leather handbags. We then met Bei Bei for dinner and had a feast of all things Beijing style, mmm mm.

Before we had to jump on a plane the next day, the girls and I went to the Lama Temple which was stunning in the sunshine and melting snow, then, I took them back the market I’d been, to fix any leftover shopping hankerings.

Halloween at MIX.
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Great girly weekend.