I got off my 26 hour train ride to Beijing at 4:30am and then took a subway to my hostel. I had to wait outside in the cold amongst a hold of Chinese for the subway to open at 5:15am though.

I have to say I am getting pretty good at just picking up the public transport systems wherever I go now. Beijing’s system is like most big cities, but before this trip I’d barely ever, if ever, been on a subway. These are big steps for a kid from Pigeon.

I got to the hostel easily enough and then put my luggage in the luggage room because 6am is a little too early to check in I guess. Then I got my phone charging and used the WiFi. Caught up on somethings after a while without my phone on or internet. I figured out my Great Wall plan and left at 8am.

The plan was to not do a tour, because those cost more money and they are limiting and drag you to tourist traps and shops were you don’t want to buy anything. I took the subway to a bus station and caught an hour and half bus out to a town closer to the Wall. That cost $2. Then from there I was going to head to Jiankou. Jiankou is a more wild and unrestored portion of the wall. Here, I figured I would get a raw taste of the wall and I wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds. The ride from the town to the start of the Jiankou trail was about $9. I had to take a car by myself because it’s a pretty tough hike and this is low season so there weren’t any other tourists. Most people just take the tours.

The hike was pretty crazy. In the first picture you can see only a small portion of the hike to the Wall. It started in a small town with no signs or anything. The driver, who didn’t speak English, pointed me towards the trail and pointed me in the direction to hike. Then he took off and I was alone… After one and a half to two hours I got to the wall. I was expecting some grand entrance and all sorts of people around. Instead, I got the picture above. It only made me laugh. I asked for wild and that’s what I about to get!

There were a couple of Chinese people around, but for the most part seclusion. I was holding in a bathroom break for a while and I took the opportunity, once I was all alone, to relieve myself off the edge looking over the mountain side where Mongols attacked from centuries before. It’s the small things like that, that really get me going and make me feel alive!

Jiankou was wild though! There were over turned rocks and rubble everywhere with trees and other brush growing in the middle of the wall. Online it said it would be dangerous, but I figured it wouldn’t be there bad. However, since it’s built following the ridge of the mountains there are some seriously steep sections of the Wall! I was slipping down the rubble strewn 45° path! That is what I’m talking about!

Along the hike I stopped to appreciate all the amazing views! If you look at the second picture above that should give you an appreciation of the hike I made to even get to the wall. I started at the base way below out of the picture. The hike made me think how crazy Genghis Khan must been. He had the Chinese so scared they built thousands of miles of walls to stop them through terrain like this, and Genghis still conquered them. I can’t even imagine a horse taking on the terrain there so that really put the tactics and skill Mongol horsemanship in perspective.

Eventually, as I hiked I made it towards the more restored parts of the wall of Mutianyu. Here I started seeing way more people and eventually over the rolling mountains I saw the cable cars leading up to the Wall. While I appreciate the accessibility and the accommodations I really enjoy seeing sights from different perspectives. The wild portion to restored tourist portion was an awesome contrast.

At the tourist portion a middle aged lady from Taiwan was sitting on a step with a good view and I stopped there to enjoy the view as well. We started talking and she told me how she was afraid of heights and had struggled up the higher region I had just came from. She had to turn around and come back. Long story short, I coached her up the steep portion of the wall telling here, “The steps aren’t any different than in a building,” “One step at a time!” Eventually, after mild hyper ventilation, she made it up and I made a new friend. I talked with her and then some of her other friends as well.

I told them how I hiked from Jiankou to Mutianyu. Then they mentioned that they came in a 15 person van and they only had 14 people. I ended up with a free ride back! In total, besides the snacks and water in my bag, I only spent $11 to visit the great Wall from downtown Beijing! Not bad!

After the Great Wall I throughly enjoyed a increasingly rare night in a bed after a full day and some rough sleep on the train. That came in a 4am. The next morning I headed out at 10wm to do a quick scan of Tianamen Square. I walked around the square and saw Mao’s mausoleum and some other stuff. I didn’t spring on tickets to tour the Forbidden city since I was kind of on a time constraint and after spending so much time in Asia the temples and palaces are no longer that appealing. Probably should have gotten up earlier and done it, but I won’t regret it.

Then got myself to the train station just in time after buying some snacks for the journey. I took a train 6 hours from Beijing to a city closer to the Mongolian border. Now I am sitting at a train station waiting until 1am for my train to the border. I’ll save a little money taking local trains to the border and then getting acrossed the border independently from the trains. It will also save me some time since I would have had to wait another day for a true Transiberian railroad sleeper car from Beijing.

Next post I might be in Mongolia or already on to face the cold in Siberia! It will be nice to enjoy some really sleeper cars!

Due to the frustratingly and painfully slow internet in China it has taken me a couple extra days to get these photos uploaded. I spent Thursday and Friday (February 22 & 23) exploring the park. I think it’s just easiest to do this post as a gallery with each picture having captions explaining details.

Found some nice internet and some time to write! Just a note that my latest post and likely most following lost are being written, usually in haste, on a smartphone. So please have mercy before you criticize my spelling errors.

I thought I would talk a little bit about my initial perceptions of Chinese culture and China in general.

I enjoy reading in my spare time and I like to read about the places I’m traveling in, so in my book relating to China I learned it has 22% of the world’s population… That’s incredible. However, they only have 8% of the world’s arable land. Farming is a big concern of the government in China and as the population increases they are trying to make sure land is used as efficiently as possible. Connecting the dots, I reckon that’s why any small town smaller in land area than Pigeon (my hometown of about a thousand people) has several 60 story apartment buildings.

These little villages with massive apartment buildings would be in the middle of mountains with the tiered farming land scaling up and down the mountain sides. Then as my train zipped by I’d see another similar town appearing to be a mini city in the middle of no where. When we finally would stop at a station these cities that no one has ever heard of outside of China or maybe even outside of that region of China are pretty massive. I’m really starting to get why there population is so high.

Overall, the land was so mountainous. I was really surprised to learn that the majority of the country and surely most of my train rides were mountains. From Laos all the way to Beijing mountains. Almost everywhere with the occasional flat lands. That explains the lack of arable land.

Now, to the Chinese people. It’s been very interesting. There are a couple of things that have caught me off guard. The manners are a little different. The old lady taking care of my hostel, who spoke no English, constantly burped and farted without a second thought. Also Chinese love to spit.. Its weird, but apparently they have this philosophy that you need to get the bad stuff out of you. It’s just shocking to me to see them hacking it up on a train car right next you.

To me it’s all kind of gross, but hey it’s their country so I won’t judge them for their cultural norms. I like the idea of them not caring what anyone thinks and just farting when they want, but that’s not how Americans are typically raised. In a country of a billion people you probably can’t count on some privacy for these things so I guess you just go for it. However, there are some things that were really frustrating for me. I would really appreciate them covering there mouths when they couth or sneeze. I’ve seen a covered mouth for a sneeze, but rarely ever for a cough. On my 26 hour train ride to Beijing the lady acrossed from me coughed constantly right into my face. I didn’t not appreciate that…

Yup, that’s what’s up! Next post is my time in Beijing!

I flew into Laos and I had some plans to explore the town, which I still got to do, just not in the way I anticipated.

When I first landed I was stuck in line for 1-2ish hours getting my visa on arrival and stamp in. They were not that quick about it. It wasn’t to bad though, because there Canadians in front of me and Americans behind me to talk with.

I split a van with some of them into the main part of Luang Prabang where we flew into. Upon, flying in it felt as if we were dropping right into a secluded remote valley. In a way, as I would learn, that’s pretty much how Laos is.

In town I went first to a tourist agency to see it I could get a price for a bus ticket from Luang Prabang to Kunming, China. She told be there would be no buses for the next several days because of the Chinese New year. That totally freaked me out because if that’s the case I would miss all of the Chinese trains I had already booked.

Determined not to give up I took a tuktuk to the actual bus station where the girl working said there would be a bus tomorrow morning, which is what I had planned on. I still wasn’t confident in her reply, but still least I had some hope now. Then from the bus station I got back to the town center to look for a place to stay.

Needless to say, I learned a lesson in the cultural significances of Chinese New year in Laotian communities. Since a lot of Lao people have Chinese ties or we’re originally Chinese immigrants the entire family had come to visit and in turned booked all the hostels and hotels right up. So 3 older, probably mid 50s, Canadians and I searched for 4 hours walking up and down every street in order to find a place. I got quoted $90 for a place and they heard quotes for $200 plus! Let’s remember that a hostel in laos, much like Thailand should cost from $3-12. So those prices were absolutely absurd!

Continue reading “Laos into China” →