Day 1-2 – The Forbidden City and The Great Wall of China…

or how Ryan and I almost left China without actually eating any Chinese food…

In response to Ryans constant nagging (yes he nags) to update the blog – as apparently it’s the only communications his parent will get from him, and he says I don’t really want to upset his mum. Far be it for me to upset Ryans mom so here we go:

The flight to China was uneventful to say the least, the only bit of excitement coming from when the pilot decided to veer towards Shanghai, at one point almost back peddling on northerly progress we had made. This action got Ryan and I gibbering away like crazed monkeys, as we tried to figure out what was going on. Our conspiracy theories swung from somehow we might have gotten on the wrong plane, to my favourite – that the pilot had had one too many drinks and had totally lost all sense of direction. Our fears were unfounded as partway through our 20^th theory the pilot did a swift 90 degree turn to the right and a made a bee line towards Beijing again. We finally settled on one of Ryans theories that we were avoiding Korean airspace. Fair enough I said..

As the plane came in to land, I was quite taken aback by the smog, I had heard it was bad, but one cannot really quantify how bad it is until one actually sees it. Visibility was almost non existent, and I didn’t envy the pilot trying to land in the pea soup we had just entered.

After landing and making it through immigration with no more mishaps like “Sepulchre Saturday” or as I now call it “the wine incident”, we were keen on not getting scammed while making our egress from the airport. So we settled on taking a taxi. Though, mostly it was the fact that we weren’t brave enough to deal with the public transport in a new country. Luckily the cost of the 45 min trip on the highway ended up only costing us 80 Yuan, or about $20. Heck I pay that to travel 6 kms from home to work in Auckland! So with our bloated egos and already feeling like seasoned travellers, we crystallised our plan of attack.

Then we were off! Like grey hounds at a race track, the Forbidden City in our sights (on the map anyway and which appeared to be around the corner from us), that’s where my infallible directional skills came into play – As we immediately found ourselves well and truly lost. Amazingly, my trusty companion Ryan, patient as always nodded reassuringly as yet again I assured him I knew we were and that the forbidden place was surely just around the corner. Admittedly I have a sneaking suspicion he was way more terrified than me, and was just glad that I had taken the lead, and therefore I couldn’t blame him for our predicament. Not to worry, I blamed him anyway, as I have on countless occasions over the years I have known him – against all logic and like the finale of many an episode of Laurel and Hardy.

Lets just say we finally found the Forbidden Palace, in the scorching 25+ degrees it must have been, and boy was it packed – It was like every Chinaman was at the Palace that afternoon. The compound was none the less amazing, and just when you thought “wow that’s the the biggest palace building so far”, you walked into the next compound to behold an even bigger one! All things must come to an end, and before we knew it we were at the end of the palace compound and in the historically significant Tiananmen Square. After this we decided to call it quits and head back to the hostel after getting some authentic lunch.

Ok the beer was cheap, the equivalent of $1.50 for a 600 ml bottle of beer. However methinks standing out like a gyrating Barry White in a KKK meeting, meant that we got the locals “Special” rates. On the way to the hostel, we walked into a local restaurant, asked for a menu and got a menu in English, only to find the costs of everything at exorbitant rates. Having just picked up a bottle of coke for 5 Yuan from one of the many hawkers in the Forbidden City, suddenly being asked for 25 Yuan for a bottle of Sprite at a local back alley restaurant was one trick we weren’t falling for. We promptly left the restaurant, and decided to play it safe and eat at the hostels restaurant.

But it was not meant to be, as we were soon to find out, the restaurant stopped lunch at bang on 2 p.m, not a second later, dejected, we stocked up on all the chips packets we could get our hands on from the lobby counter. Our bad luck with Chinese food continued onto the evening when after returning from a Chinese acrobatic show in the evening we were turned out by the same hostel restaurant and told that Chinese dinner closed at 9, however western dinner closed at 12 and we were welcome to that. Hungry, tired, and cranky we made our way to the nearest atm down the road (low on cash after the acrobatic show) and decided that we should just give in and eat at KFC which was situated right next to the atm. As we wolfed down our first proper meal since breakfast, we made a vow that no one would hear of this and by no one, I mean my mom, who would have strangled me if she found out I was eating western food in China. Things really were looking like we would never get to eat any Chinese food, but our luck was about to change… mainly due to a seasoned Austrian who would come to our rescue the next day.

Early the next morning we were to have our first proper introduction to Herbert the plucky Austrian; who was shortly about to become my hero. As we scrambled onto the bus to the great wall of china, Herbert had somehow wangled a McDonalds breakfast meal, hand delivered to him by the tour guide. As the sprightly and chirpy lass handed over vital life giving sustenance to Herbert, it took all my remaining energy not stare wide eyed at the bag full of food, and slowly wiped away the torrent of saliva running down my quivering chin. Now, either Herbert took pity on this crazy eyed salivating monkey, or he really didn’t like egg mcmuffins (I don’t either, but was too hungry to care), but for whatever reason, he passed me the marvellous mcmuffin meal. Thereby saving me from a fate worse than death itself. At this point I would have given him my first born, that’s how ecstatically delirious with happiness I was as I bulldozed the mcmuffin down my gullet.

This was enough to seal the deal, and Herbert had just become my new best friend. So there we were at the Great Wall of China as it snaked its way into the distance. Trudging along quiet happily when out of nowhere two talkative old ladies popped up, and decided that they would join us for the walk. Too excited to really think about what was going on we let them tag along. As time wore on and Ryan gibbered away to the little old ladies, I suddenly noticed that these two ladies were carrying two big bags, immediately it dawned on me, that they were out to fleece us and demand we buy their wares. I quickly whispered out of the side of my mouth that we needed to double time it and get out of dodge. Taking a deep breath, we both put the pedal to the metal, attempted to scamper away from our new companions only to notice out of the corner of my eye that they were more than able to keep up with us. These old ladies put us young chaps to shame as they hopped from one crumbling ledge to another like goats on speed barely out of breath, while Ryan and I wheezed like asthmatics in a dust storm.

Luckily we were able to lose them after about 30 minutes of vigorous scrambling, but their calls of “come back and buy some souvenirs on your way back” flung at us as we flew over the next stony ridge in the wall. Having successful shaken our tails, AND having made sure we were reasonably far away from any other tourists, I promptly threw up over the wall, while Ryan attempted to stifle his laugher. The belly full of water and smell of urine wafting through the hot arid breeze had proven too much for my finely tuned body to handle, and I immediately evacuated my stomach of any excess baggage.

Having successfully returned to the bus and not evacuated any more excess baggage, one of our party was missing. After waiting for over half an hour past our deadline, we had to leave minus one. Several kilometres down the road the hapless passenger who dared to overstay her welcome decided incorrectly that the best course of action was to call the tour group guide. Lets just say the smaller and more smiley they are the more vicious they can be when provoked. As everyone in the bus cowered in fear, a torrent of Chinese verbal abuse shot from her mouth and down the receiver. You could have heard a pin drop in the bus in between paragraphs of abuse, as she took a quick breath only to dive right back into another torrent. All the while a Chinese American lady gave us a running commentary of what was being said. From now on, the words “Get Out” will always hold a very dear and fond and terrifying part in all three of our hearts.

Still being indebted to Herbert for rescuing me from a food fate worse than death, we convinced him to have dinner with us as long as it was Chinese. He knew of a good place down the road, and our little party we took off with him leading us to what we hoped would be a culinary experience to make up for all the junk we had eaten in the past couple of days. We were not to be disappointed as we ate donkey (which was amazing to be honest), and all sorts of things I can even name. Ryan was foolishly brave enough to order something that “looked” nice without knowing what it was… It turned up, and I couldn’t pick what it was, let alone what animal it was from! My only guess was that it was intestine at best guess, worst case I don’t even want to know. Not that it stopped Herbert as he finished Ryans dish off with a big smile on his face.

So that’s how we spent our last night in China, with an Austrian showing us the most amazing place to eat proper Chinese food, thereby saving myself for the severe beating my mother would have inflicted on me for not having done so.

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