Thursday leave
for
Beijing
We got to Beijing
with no hotel reservation, I think that as we visited more and more cities we
became more relaxed about planning ahead, luckily it all worked out quite
nicely. In the airport, as it had become a habit we looked for some sort of
tour agency, and found one right next to the baggage claim area the sign said
that they would get you really good deals on hotels. We gave them the
opportunity to assist us but all they did was search this website (which I’m
sure was the company that hired them) and show us the results. They were all
pretty crappy and we were pretty sure that we could get way better deals on the
websites that we used, also their English was pretty bad so they couldn’t
really tell us why one hotel was better than the others, also the website was
in Chinese only. After a while I just asked the lady to let me look at the
computer she was using so I could look at the options myself, she did and then
went to help someone else. Perfect! I had a laptop and internet so I went on
kayak.com and found us a nice hotel for a really good price. The lady was
pretty confused when I gave her back the laptop thanked her and walked away but
oh well. Oh right, the reason we didn’t do that in the first place was because
there was no free accessible wifi network. As soon as we left the baggage claim
area (in most countries that is a restricted area, i.e. when you leave you
can’t go back in) we found a city tour place and asked for a tour to the great
wall. They told us that all the tours leave around 730 in the morning so that
was not an option they did tell us that we could hire a driver/car for the day
and they would take us to the wall and then to our hotel for 1300 yuan. There
was a guy also asking about a our to the wall, as it turned out he was on an 8
hour layover to LA so he figured he might as well go see the great wall. We
invited him to join us if he paid for 25% of the cost of the tour and he was
all up for it. Unfortunately when the driver got there he said he wouldn’t take
5 people (+Maria) we would not fit comfortably in the car so he couldn’t’ go
with us.
I took an awesome
nap in the car I think it was like a 90 minutes drive, and then there we were
the great wall. There were a lot of people there, we parked in the parking area
and started walking through this shopping area towards the entrance through
which you get on the wall. There was a guy selling magic tricks, my dad and I
are really into that stuff and figuring out how it works and he showed us 4
rings and how he got them to go into each other and then a chain and ring trick
in which he let go of the ring and it tied itself to the chain. My dad and I
decided that we would go see the wall and probably buy them on the way back to
the car, so we walked away…for like 5 seconds and then my dad decided he
couldn’t wait so we went back and bought them so we could know how they worked.
They were actually a lot of fun to show to our relatives back in Colombia. We
saw a spaghetti place and ate there (my family decided after a while that we
would, as long as it was reasonably possible, avoid local food since it was
spicy and their stomachs had already taken a lot) and then onto the wall.
It was awesome,
literally, worthy of awe. The first thing you do when you get up there is try
to see how far it goes…you start looking own at your feet and then your head
goes up, to the left to the right, then the wall gets lost behind some mountain
then it shows up again up another mountain and back down…as far as your eye can
see, it is unreal, it never stops. Then you turn around and go again, halfway
hoping that you will see the beginning of you couldn’t see then end, nope
endless on this side too, how can something like that exist? The walking area
on top of the wall is about as wide as one and a half car lanes and people are
just constantly going up and down, it doesn’t get any less crowded as you get
far from the entrance. It is fair to say though that although there were
definitely a lot of people there, it didn’t feel all that crowded most of the
time, every 100 meters or so there were “stations” there were areas the size of
a living room that were covered and had windows, it did get crowded around
those, people were looking to get away from the sun I guess since it was pretty
hot. We walked to the first station and
it became an uphill walk from there so my mom decided she would stay behind and
wait for us. My dad and I decided it would be fun to go through 3 more stations
the 3rd one was at the top of a hill and we thought the view would
be worth it. Maria Jose got tired really quickly, and so my dad started
carrying her and then it was my turn. It was easy at first but it got harder as
we got more tired and the Chinese summer sun kept hitting us hard. After a while,
we reached an area where the wall became really steep, I would say it was about
a 45 degree slope and so three were some hand rails to help people on their way
up since it was just a flat path and there were no stair-like steps. When we
got really close to the third station, our final destination, the hill became
so steep that we had to go up really tall steps. The view was amazing. You can
check out the pictures.
The way back was
a lot of fun, Maria and I ran most of the way down while singing and it went by
really quickly even though we were both really tired when we got back. We went
back to the car and I napped on the way back to the city.
We finally got
back to our hotel and went to go check in when they told us that they didn’t
have our reservations, I checked my email and saw that Kayak had sent me an
email saying that for some reason the reservation did not go through so I
needed to try again. It turned out that the rates given at the hotel were
cheaper than the ones we found online, so we told them that we were very upset
but we would take the normal rates and talk with our agency later :p.
We relaxed for a
while and my mom, somehow with her broken English found us a “tour” to go see
an acrobat show. I had seen a similar one that was here at OSU and it had been
awesome so I was excited about it. It was the same idea except it was more in
every way, the stage was cooler the acts were harder and more impressive and it
was really fun and exciting. They had some hat routines, jumping through hoops,
contortionists, a guy with a mask that changed faces, and the final acts which
was a spherical iron cage in which 2 bikes started driving, then they added
another one, 3 bikes riding inside this tiny iron cage it was crazy. But THEN
they added another one, with 4 bikes they did a lot of cool patterns in which
the paths intersected each other constantly, one tiny mistake and they would
all die, instantly, it was really intense. AND THEN they added a 5th
one, I don’t know how they did it, it was chaotic, crazy, scary, awesome. We
all really enjoyed it and of course Maria thought it was the coolest thing
ever.
We saw a KFC on
the way to the show and asked our driver to take us there to get some food so
we could eat at the hotel. it turns KFC has a completely different profile
abroad from what it is in the US, although that’s kind of true for all fast
food places, in Colombia eating at McDonalds is like a “cool” thing to do. But
in the US, it’s what you do if you want something to go in your stomach, just
something, it doesn’t have to be good. Apparently our driver misunderstood us
because when we came back out and looked for him he was gone, nowhere to be
seen. Hmmm ok well we’ll walk around and then get a taxi, show them the address
of the hotel and we’ll be ok. So we did that, it was actually a pretty cool and
active area, there were a lot of people selling cheap little cool toys, one was
a slingshot that shot a little plastic sheet that would spin like a helicopter
and light up on the way down. Another guy was flying and selling an unusual
type of kite, except it was a lot of little kites lined up hanging from the
string with no big kite at the end, it looked really cool and he had like 50
little kites flying. My dad thought it would be cool to have and so he bought
it. When he looked at it like 5 seconds after buying it he saw that it had like
8 kites, not 50 and of course when we asked the guy he said “well of course
this one is like 10 times more expensive but sure I can sell you one”. Really?
I was still a little hurt by the guy who took our money in Shanghai, and so I
decided I would not have it this time, so I was pretty direct with the guy and
told him look you either give us the big one for the price or give us our money
back, he said no and so I said I’d call the cops. Since I already knew that was
a threat that actually meant something there (it wouldn’t in Colombia, the cops
would probably laugh at you if you called them for something like that) I asked
the next person who walked by us where I could find a cop and he told me. So I
told the guy again “will you give me my money back or am I going to go get a
cop” he didn’t and so I told my parents to stay with them and I started walking
that way, my parents told me to just drop it again, but dang it I just wanted
to win once! :P. After walking like 30 meters, a kid came and tapped me in the
shoulder and said something like “hey friend it’s ok he said he’ll give you
another one of the small ones for free, just don’t call the police”. I decided
that would be good enough and my dad said ok, so we left. After walking for a
while we tried to get a cab which ended being a lot harder than we thought,
there were a lot of bicycle taxis but they were asking for 80 yuan, and we
would need to take 2. So we kept looking for a normal taxi, eventually a
motorcycle-taxi showed up and told us he would take all 4 of us for 40. I don’t
know how that bike made it or how we fit in that tiny cabin, but we did. When
we got to the hotel we started asking about our options for the next day and
they told us that since we had to be in the airport at 1 we needed to leave
really early because of traffic, plus it was kind of far. So we said ok and
didn’t get to see a few places that we wanted to just visit and would only have
taken 1.5-2 hours.
Friday
Our car didn’t
pick us up until an hour after it was supposed to, and we went straight to the
airport, the ride was supposed to take 1.5 hours plus however long traffic
delayed us…it took us 30 minutes. So there we were at the airport with plenty
of time, and not having seen the things we wanted to see. Oh well.
From Beijing, we
flew to Shanghai, where we would get on a plane to New Delhi, well that got
delayed so we got to hang out there for a really long time, maria was having
fun, and we read some more of her book. They gave us cookies (a lot) and cans
of milk tea which was actually pretty good, though not really satisfactory for
a 3 hour delay. Maria drank a lot of tea because she really liked it and had an
accident on the plane while she was sleeping.
That was it for China, next up India.
