In transit

We've left it a while again since our last update, mainly because we've not really been doing all that much since then! The sightseeing apathy has struck hard, but we've managed to keep ourselves occupied with some more good stuff...

Last time around we were thinking of going swimming in the Olympic pool, but what a goose chase that turned out to be. If anyone is thinking of coming to China, dont buy the Rough Guide, it was written in about 1850 and has led us down more blind alleys than we care to remember... its suggestion of heading down there for a swim seemed so straight forwards on paper but the reality turned out to be far from simple.

We'd picked a stinker of a day for it; the humidity was so high that we were soaked long before we even found the building the pool was in. The visibility was shocking, so we could only just see the birds nest stadium looming out of the gloom which was a shame. We negotiated an army of Chinese tourists, ticket touts and all sorts of unhelpful officials before arriving around the back of the "Water Cube" building. Finally someone helpful turned up, but then this is seriously what we'd had to do to go swimming :

1. Pay 5 quid to enter the building
2. Take a swimming test (another 2 quid) - swimming 50 metres without drowning
3. Present a passport photo (another few pounds as strangely we'd not planned for this in advance...) in order to get our swimming license
4. Pay another 5 quid for a lovely swimming hat

As we are now officially pikey travellers, the thought of paying half our daily budget to go for a swim was a bit mad, so we turned tail and sweated our way back home. Seriously, its this stuff you buy the guide book to avoid!

Next on our list of things to see in Beijing was the 798 Art District. This is a large area of converted factories that the government have quite successfully given over to modern art in its many and quite bizarre forms. Its a bit like having the Tate Modern spread out around Shoreditch, and it works really well.



I have to admit modern art is more Alex's cup of tea than mine, but after a little bit of moaning I did really enjoy it. Its all a bit hit or miss, but the hits were really quite memorable. (Although I have to pull up the Rough Guide here again; out of all the amazing sites this country has to offer, they reckon this little art district is second only to Mount Everest in terms of things to see. Bonkers.)

That night we headed back to our hostel (the second of the three we ended up staying in around Beijing) - we'd been trying to find somewhere nice nearby to eat but that night we really hit the jackpot.



I'm not sure how well that picture will scale, but its a page from the menu. We were quite used to guessing picture menus, or getting our heads around baffling Chinglish translations, but this one took things to a whole new level of "I'm not really that hungry anymore..." In case you can't see it, here are some of the highlights on offer :

• Sliced Tender Beef (from spine)
• Ox Penis
• Thinly Sliced Fatty Beef
• Cow's Spinal Cord
• Pig Brains
• Fresh Duck Intestines
• Fresh Goose Intestines
• Sliced Pig's Kidney
• Fresh Cow's Third Stomach
• Cow's Stomach
• Pig's Trachea
• Chicken Gizzards
• Duck Blood Tofu

I think in the couple of days were tried to find somewhere nice to eat, I had 4 sweet and sour porks (although you could barely call it pork) in the space of 2 days. And one of them was for breakfast. I felt bad not trying a bit more of the local food, after all we'd done really well in India - but it was just too much of a minefield. All in all Chinese food has been shocking, a real let down. After doing a bit of research online Alex found quite a few websites dedicated to tracking down places that actually served reasonably priced edible food... it was quite a short list.

With an epic fail on the eating front under our belts, we turned to an activity that rarely leaves us stumped... drinking. Beijing Timeout was a really good read, and tipped us of to the oh-so-touristy Houhai area. Set around three big man made lakes, this area was lined with cheesy lounge bars, complete with shouty touts and hordes of local tourists.



Most of the bars had some sort of live music, but there were so many bars that quite a few were completely empty, leaving plenty of sorry looking Chinese two pieces singing ballads to themselves. We found a crazy reggae place with a Spanish gypsy/flamenco band and settled into the mojitos until the budget forced us back home again!

The walk back was about 40 minutes but we'd harded a little more to it by then, we were probably walking 5 miles a day at this point. It was nice though, we came across lots of nice areas, like this one called Ghost Street quite close to our hostel :



The road is lined with (mostly nasty) restaurants, but they've all got lanterns outside which make the place look very picturesque at night.

After a break from the serious sightseeing, we were back on it the next day, and headed to the Summer Palace in the north-western outskirts of the city. This place was another amazing day out, in a similar vein to the forbidden city but spread out all around a huge lake. The walk around took pretty much all day, but the sights were worth it, ornate bridges, temples etc and massive lily ponds all around :



Obviously with such a big lake involved we couldn't resist a bit of pedalo action. Alex has been lamenting the lack of gym opportunities on the trip so I spent a fair proportion of the time with my feet up to let her rectify this... how considerate of me =)



We just about made it around in one piece, although on the way back we did have a run in with one of these chaps :



There were about 6 of them crossing the lake and didn't really pay too much attention to the tiny pedalos around them...

Our attentions then turned back to food, and with in the spirit of "if you can't beat them, join them" we headed down to the night markets in the centre of the city. This place is famous for bringing together all of the regional snack dishes and serving them out to the tourists during the night, but I dont think we were quite ready for quite how wacky it was going to be...



We'd convinced ourselves to try something, and Alex set upon the fried scorpions as "it just had to be done." It was either that or chickens feet or bug larvae, so we grabbed a stick for £1.50 and psyched ourselves up. At this point several other tourists walked by and asked if we were mad, but we went for it anyway.

As they say on the internet, pics or it didn't happen...





They were surprisingly palatable, but didn't really taste of much. Definitely worth a try if you get the chance!

The next trip out was back to Houhai in the day, we liked the look of the lakes and so we hired a tandem bike to explore them in more detail.



It didn't take us too long to get the hang of it, but we did have a lot of locals running scared going through the narrow lanes of the hutongs surrounding the lakes. We stayed around in the evening and decided it was time to blow the budget and have a feast day... it was time to duck it up, Beijing style :



Its pretty similar to the crispy shredded duck pancakes you get back home, except the focus is on the crispy skin and the fat rather than the shredded meat. We splashed on some wine as well, and had a really nice night.

So thats about it for Beijing, and ultimately for China. Due to the sightseeing apathy we never made it to a couple of the other places we thought about visiting in China, spending maybe 10 nights in Beijing in total. We managed to make a mess of the second hostel booking and got kicked out the night before we were due to leave, but fortunately found another place just around the corner easily enough! We hit the main station in Beijing, heading for another soft sleeper bound for Shanghai.



So now we are back in Shanghai, at the same hostel we stayed in before. We have another night here tomorrow, before we have to get up at 4 am (cry) to head to the airport to catch a flight back to Hong Kong. There we have to spend another night before finally getting the plane down to Hanoi... roll on Vietnam.