Thailand - Day 1 - Flights

I decided not to sleep on Friday night because I had to leave at five in the morning for my flight. I actually was less tired than expected, and didn't fall asleep in the taxi on the way to the airport. My flight left from the spectacular new Terminal 3 at Beijing Airport. It is the biggest terminal in the building and it really shows, with huge ceilings and open space everywhere. I was a bit afraid that my award ticket didn't assign to business class, but my fears were unfounded. I checked in smoothly at the Thia Airways counter. Shortly after checking in, I realized I left my contact lens solution in my carry-on! Realizing how stupid I was, I had to get it put into a box and check it in by itself. After that fiasco, I headed off to the departure area. Before even going through security I went on a train ride to the 'E' section of the airport. There, I went through security. I was extremely irritated at the Chinese immigration officer who stamped my passport on a blank page. This means I only have four pages left in which to get any future visas! I will have to go through the hassle of getting a passport before this one expires if I go to many more visa-issuing countries. Once past security, I went to the lounge, which was located on the upper level of the terminal. It was the biggest lounge I've ever seen. The breakfast was not open when I arrived at around 6:15, so I had to wait a few minutes for the food to come out. The breakfast was rather mediocre though, which is surprising considering how comfortable the rest of the lounge was. The only edible thing in the breakfast was the zhou, which left me hungry. I had a tea while I waited for my flight to begin boarding at 8:00. I was saddened to board the plane and discover that it was ancient. The business class seats were barely more comfortable than most economy seats. However, I did get an amenity kit, which delighted me as I need a new toilet bag , and it is quite nice. I was also served a glass of champagne, which to my chagrin, ended up spilling. For breakfast, I was served a fruit plate to begin, which was lovely, and then chose the noodles for a second course, which were so-so. Service was quite good though, with attentive stewards offering drinks every so often. Despite my lack of sleep, I only managed to nap for a little over an hour, and was sore when I woke up, due to the uncomfortable seats.

I arrived a bangkok and progressed quickly through immigration, although I was annoyed at being stuck in a slow lineup. I had to check in for my flight to Chiang Mai because I bought that ticket, and did not use points as I should have. I had a four hour layover in the airport in Bangkok. I discovered on arrival that I had left my book on the plane, so I decide to buy one from a book store to ensure I would not be bored to tears. I wanted Thia food for lunch, so I went to an overpriced restaurant at the airport and had a rather mediocre meal. Still it only cost the equivalent of five dollars. After my lunch I headed off to my gate. For some reason, every gate had its own security, which meant I could not bring any water with me on the plane! This was because there no shops selling anything past security. The plane was a much newer 777 which was more comfortable than the ancient A300 I flew on earlier in the day. My flight was delayed by around half an hour, and I got into Chinag Mai at around 6:45.

I arrived at my guest house, The Green Tulip, at 7:15 and checked in without problems. I asked the lady about trekking and she informed me that there was one spot in a two-day trek leaving the next day (Sunday), and that she would give me a discount if I signed up. I did, even though I had wanted an opportunity to look around the city first. I was also annoyed to discover that the internet was broken a the guesthouse. No checking any messages or informing people of my safe arrival. I went to bed quite early as a result of my tiredness and slept very well.

Wutaishan - Day 1

I took advantage of a reading week before finals to take a trip to Wutaishan, China’s most sacred Buddhist mountain. Although it is geographically close to Beijing, the geography is not conducive to transportation, and so getting there required me to either go through Datong or Taiyuan. I decided to go through Taiyuan, as it had more frequent busses to Wutaishan, and I was able to take an overnight train. I bought a soft sleeper even though I don’t think they are much more comfortable than hard sleepers (they are actually the same hardness – hard). But, I like the privacy they offer as you can close and lock your door as well as turn of the lights, which you can do in hard sleeper. I was in a compartment with three Chinese businesspeople that were quite considerate of me. When I went to bed but they wanted to keep talking, they turned out the lights, which was nice. Overall, I slept quite well and arrived in Taiyuan feeling reasonable. When I arrived, I immediately went to the ticket office and purchased a ticket for the return journey. My line-up moved really slowly, and I had to switch. To my horror, they had run out of sleepers on the train leaving two days later, and so I ended up buying a hard seat for the night! This would not be a pleasant journey. After buying my ticket, I caught a cab to the bus station, where I just managed to get the 8:40 bus to Wutaishan.

According to my guide book, the bus ride was supposed to take 3-4 hours. Of course, I knew my guidebook was not reliable in terms of time when the 5 hour bus ride from Taiyuan to Beijing to eight hours. This bus ride was no different. In addition to sitting in the train station parking lot for an hour after it left the bus station, many of the roads were under construction, and we had to divert onto dirt roads which were horribly muddy due to the rain. On the bus, a man moved back to talk to me. He was rather difficult to understand due to his accent, and our conversation didn’t get very far. It took six hours to get there. Once we got out of the valley and started moving into the mountains, the scenery became quite beautiful and the pollution decreased. At the top of a particularly windy stretch of road that included many switchbacks we reached the entrance to the Wutaishan scenic area. The bus driver told everyone to get out, because we had to pay an entrance fee before going further. There was another foreigner on the bus who didn’t speak any Chinese, so I told him what to do. I managed to guess that he was from Austria due to his accent. He was quite impressed. The windy descent continued pas a few temples until we finally reached Taihuai village, which is at the foot of a valley, and contains mostly hotels.

At the bus station I spoke to the Austrian and suggested we stay together, which he agreed to. After getting off the bus we were accosted by some people wanting to have us stay in their hotel. Since the Austrian was quite cheap, I decided to go cheap myself after they said the room would cost approximately 100 kuai for the two of us. I’m actually glad we went with them, because they had a car that drove us into the center of the village. Their hotel was a few rooms next to a restaurant. While not great as a hotel, and having hot water only in the evening, it was cheap, and clean, and had a somewhat decent bathroom. Often in Chinese hotels, the room will look great until you open the door to the bathroom, and see the horrors that lurk within. We bargained them down a bit and took the room for two nights. It was already three in the afternoon, but many temples awaited us.

The hotel was located right next to a hill with a temple at the top. I like climbing hills so, ignoring the people who wanted us to ride their horses up the hill, walked up. At the top there was tacky sort of temple next to the cable-car station, the preferred route of most of the Chinese tourists to get to the top. Further up was a bigger temple, called the Dailuoding Temple. There were lots of people there, but the temple was nothing too exciting. From the top of the hill there was a lovely view of the town, in particular, the Great White Pagoda that towers over the town. Afterwards, we went down the hill and headed across the river towards the pagoda. Before getting to the temple with the pagoda, we first saw two other temples. A large temple, called the Xiantong temple was the more impressive one. It had a huge Ming Dynasty Hall called the Beamless Hall which was made of bricks. This is the first time I have seen a temple building built entirely of bricks, usually mostly wood is used. In addition, behind the Beamless hall was a large copper pagoda, which had a nice design, but looked a bit tacky due to the golden paint. Following this temple, we finally went in to the temple featuring the giant pagoda. There were lots of prayer wheels in the temple, and we even saw a service taking place, in which many yellow robed monks were chanting. Inside this temple there a special courtyard dedicated to Mao’s visit to Wutaishan in 1948. I find it quite ironic that they are celebrating Mao here when he was responsible for the destruction of many of the temples in the area! I quickly stopped by one final temple before going to dinner with the Austrian. We ate vegetarian, because the Austrian didn’t eat meat, but even so it was quite a satisfying especially since I hadn’t really eaten all day. As we were both tired we went to bed a little early at around 9:30.

Unusual Food

I have been enjoying some strange food in China. I particularly enjoy trying strange types of meat. Dog is one such meat that many people know is eaten by the Chinese and Koreans. I had the pleasure of trying Dog a couple of months ago and it was quite good. I had dog ribs. The bones are actually extremely soft, so you can eat them. The dogs apparently weigh ten kilograms.

There is a famous Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing called 'Chuan Ju De'. While more famous for its duck, they also had Deer Penis soup on the menu. We ordered this because some others also wanted to try it. It was overall quite tasty. The penis was cut into very thin pieces.

On Sunday I tried frog at a Hunanese restaurant. It was extremely good, although a bit boney. It was sort of like a mix between fish and meat. You could tell by looking at the meat that it was different, as there were large veins visible. I'm also very keen to try cat, but I hear that is only available in the south.

Taiyuan

On our final day of travel, we got up very early and were out the door by seven in the morning. Because there were no train tickets available, and no bus to Beijing leaves from Pingyao, we had to go to regional transportation hub, Taiyuan, to get back to Beijing. We managed to get a bus quite easily from the bus station, but the trip to Taiyuan took longer than expected due to very bad traffic in the city. Upon arrival in Taiyuan, we tried to get bus tickets to Beijing were told that we had to switch to a different bus station. At the next bus station we bought our Beijing tickets for 1:30 so that we would have enough time to go to the museum, which martin was very keen to see. Overall, Taiyuan is a reasonably pleasant city (as far a Chinese cities go), but was very smoggy. On our way to the museum, we passed the coal mining museum of China. The Shanxi Provincial museum is brand new, and unlike the other two provincial museums we went to (Henan and Shaanxi) there was no massive lineup. We got our free ticket and went right in. The museum was very well presented and is the best museum I have seen in China. Unfortunately the best exhibit, about architecture, did not have any English captions. We had a quick lunch after the museum, and hopped on the bus. For a snack, I bought some delightful spicy baozi. For the entire eight-hour bus ride they showed dreadful movies full of murder and torture. We got into Beijing at nine in the evening.

Qiao Family Compound and Pingyao - Day 3

This was our extra day in Pingyao, so we went at a rather leisurely pace. I slept in until nearly eight (we had been getting up at seven most mornings), and everyone was up by nine. After everyone was ready we headed to the bus station to catch a bus to the Qiao family courtyard, about forty minutes away. The Qiao family courtyard is where the film 'Raise the Red Lantern' was filmed, and it apparently it has some quite stunning architecture. The bus we caught was full, and so we were given fold up seats and sat in the aisle. This is standard practice in China, despite the obvious safety violations. We had to take a bus bound for Taiyuan and get the driver to drop us off at the courtyard. It was pretty obvious when we had arrived, as there was a giant parking lot and lots of red lanterns. The walk to the courtyard itself was swarming with tourist vendors and tourist restaurants. The courtyard is apparently very popular with Chinese tourists. Despite it being nearly noon, we decided to have lunch on the way out and get a snack. We bought some more of those peanut butter things that they had been selling in Pingyao. They are flattened by strong men hammering them into shape. It was interesting to watch. The courtyard itself was actually very small, and was absolutely packed with tourists. At some points it was difficult to even move. It was quite a beautiful structure though, with a total of six courtyards and a large garden. We finished looking through it in just over an hour, and as we came out it started to rain. We sought refuge in a tourist restaurant. Unfortunately, the food was dreadful . We ordered some soup, and it was very sour. After bad experiences with bones and chicken it was normal practice for us to ask if a dish had bones in it prior to ordering. We decided to take a gamble here and order something called 红烧鸡块。 The name is ingrained in my mind due to the horror of the dish. When it came we were unpleasantly surprised to discover the chicken foot on top and a near total absence of meat. It was simply disgusting. We were so unsatisfied with lunch, that we had to get an ice cream afterwards to satiate our hunger. We then went to the roadside and hailed a bus bus back to Pingyao. It was almost completely empty, so we had a reasonably comfortable trip back.

Pingyao - Day 2

Had a pleasant breakfast at the hostel and then headed out to the government building. We had tried to go the day before, but we felt there were to many Chinese tourists groups with blaring megaphones for us. On our way there, we decided to go the newspaper museum, which was on the way. It wasn't particularly interesting. The government building was already swarming even at this point early in the morning. We got inside the complex shortly before ten and saw that they had a performance at ten. The performance was very lame and all in Chinese, so we decided to look at the rest of the complex. The complex contained what is apparently the only surviving prison from the Qing era. It was in use until the 1960s.

Pingyao - Day 1

The area around the train station did not impress me too much, as it looked like any other Chinese city, with ghastly bathroom tile buildings everywhere. Where was the best preserved city in China? It turned out to be quite close to the train station. The first site of the city wall was impressive, and inside the wall it felt like we had stepped back in time! Pingyao is what China is supposed to be like, filled with traditional buildings that have not been 'restored'. There is an air of shabbiness that pervades the areas not directly used by tourists. I predict that within a few years Pingyao will be like a theme park and lose much of its scruffy charm after all its buildings have been restored and the locals kicked out to make way for businesses catering to tourists.

Our hotel is located in one of the old Qing-era buildings on one of the main streets. In some ways it feels magical to stay in a building from the 19th century in China, as there are so few that remain. We had breakfast while waiting for our room to be prepared. I had a coffee that made me feel much better and woke me up. Our room contains a triple bed that was apparently used by couples to 'play' during Qing times. After briefly settling into our room, we began to walk through the town. It truly is remarkable how well preserved it is. I bought some old money at one of the faux antique shops lining the street, although I think I paid too much. On our way up the street we went into one of the few non-Qing buildings in town, what looked like a building built during the 50s. Inside they had an auction preview of Chinese antiques. Of particular note was a scroll that they expected would sell for 10 to 20 million kuai. There is only one ticket for all the attractions in Pingyao, so we had to go to the place selling these tickets before going into any of the nineteen sights that line the streets. After buying the tickets, we went into a buildig which turned out to formerly be a bank. During the 19th century, Pingyao was the banking center of China. The bank was very interesting and contained many features that I have never seen in a bank, such as a kitchen for the servants, and an inn for guests. Our second attraction was a house owned by a martial arts master. Unfortunately, nothing ws translated into English, so it wasn't as interesting as it could have been. I did like the taijitiu symbols inlaid in the floor.

At this point we were hungry so we decided to have lunch. We went into one of the many restaurants lining the streets. The restaurant we chose actually turned out to be quite good, although we were appalled when we found out the tea cost 30 kuai! We got Pingyao dumplings, although we all agreed that they were too doughy. But, the traditional Shanxi pork dish we ordered was excellent. Because we were so tired, we returned to the hostel for a nap, which took a couple of hours. I also showered at this time, and it felt good to feel clean after that long train ride. After waking up, we went some more of the many attractions in Pingyao. Near our hotel, we went to the former residence of Liu Lutai, an owner of one of the banks. Many of the rooms had giant heated beds for the winter, including the servant's rooms. Nearby Liu Leitai's residence the map indicated that there was a temple, called the temple of Guanyu. We looked around in vain for a while until we found it inside an elementary school. Apparently at some point the temple was converted into a school. The main temple hall is still there, but looks like it is about to collapse. Next we went to the Town God temple, a Daoist temple. It had a number of interesting things, including a room displaying the kind of tortures that go on in hell. On the other side of the temple was shrine for fertility that had lots of bady statues. Apparently the head of the temple had a special hall at the back for his concubines. Seems a bit odd to me. At the temple, I noticed Martin had been in the same spot for a while. It turns out he had gotten a poem created from his name by someone. You gave him your name and he created a quick poem out of it on the fly. It was only ten kuai as well! We all decided to get one. Across the street from the Town God temple was the Confucian temple, the last stop for the day. A fairly standard temple, the only thing of interest there was a teacher who approached us and asked for help on how to pronounce certain things in a textbook. She taught twelve year-olds at school. Her English was not spectacular, but it was nice that she was making an effort to improve her own English. After dinner, we went to have a foot massage to sooth our aching feet after our ascent of Huashan the day before. It was quite pleasant, although the women thought our legs were very strange due to the hair on them.