Enter the dragon

Welcome back Ninja Fans,

This latest blog is proudly brought to you by the People’s Republic of China. I was lucky enough to spend a few days there with my folks and below are some handy tips in no particular order if you ever go to the land of the dragon

Travel tip # 1  -- Taxis are an experience not to be missed. I was not able to pronounce many of their names….. so called them RickyBobby instead. I guess we should have counted ourselves lucky that there were seats in the back. I hear seatbelts are overrated anyway. Needless to say, they went fast, when in doubt went faster and when braking stood on the horn (how dare someone get in the way of them going fast!)

Travel tip #2 -- Concierges don’t stay concierges for long if they give shoddy advice. Listen to what they have to say.

The following day we were keen to see the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, the concierge was kind enough to advise we either taxi or train as it was a little too far to walk (around 5-6kms). I won’t name names, but there were 1-2 amongst us who having seen the map of the city felt ‘it couldn’t be that far as it was so close on the map’…….. it was only later that I discovered said map did not have a scale. In any case feeling brave we decided to walk so as to get a better appreciation of the city……..

Tiananmen Square didn't look same without the tanks

OH&S anyone?

We blended right in.....

The Chairman

Fancy a spot of ball inside the Forbidden City

Hello LilyPad @ the summer palace

A man-made lake dug out for the Emperors mum..... She might have been high maintenance

The dirt from the lake made the hill in the back right.
This was well before any sort of digging machines....... oh and unions

Travel tip #3 -- They drive on the right hand side of the road. The first car that will hit you comes from the left.

I had never given it much thought, but as it happens in China, the cars drive on the right, just like the US, Europe etc. There were several near misses with some of us looking to cross a road and not seeing a turning vehicle as we were looking the other way. Thankfully the locals weren’t afraid to blow use their horns. I liked to think the horns were actually saying hello. We had lots of people saying ‘hello’ to us!

Travel tip #4 -- Disregard travel tip #3, traffic ‘laws’ are guidelines at best and usually disregarded.  The first car that hits you will be the one mounting the curb to bypass a traffic obstruction.

Awesome!

merging issues?

Junior called 'shotgun' -- and then found out they were taking the  vesper

At least we know who the little spoon is!

Better take a photo of those merging issues!

The only way to walk around Beijing is in numbers. Get separated from the ‘herd’ and become a casualty. 5 is just enough to have some sort of safety, but some roads require at least a group of 10, even when you are crossing on the ‘walk’ cycle. Some would say the ‘walk’ cycle is when there is enough peer pressure amongst the pedestrians to get the brave/foolish ones to step out. On a serious note I draw the line at vespers, motorcycles, trikes and cars driving on the sidewalk and I have lost count of the number of near misses we had on sidewalks with motor bikes and vespers the main offenders. Do a youtube search for ‘beijing traffic’ and you will see what I mean.

 As an aside the government have initiated a clever little program designed to minimise car traffic within the CBD. Essentially cars are only allowed to drive if their number plate ends in a specific number. 2 numbers are excluded each day, mon-fri and the days rotated (not dissimilar to the watering days in Perth). If drivers are found in breach (by any number of cameras) they get the bejesus fined out of them. A genius idea if public transport is up to scratch!

Travel tip # 5 -- Everyone is going to try and sell you something. We went on several tours to see the main touristy sights. Every second stop on these tours was a factory, warehouse or flea market of some description. I appreciate the guides need to make a few bucks but you get over it pretty quickly especially as much of the stuff looks exactly the same!

One of the 'factories'......... anyone want to play domino's?

Roughly 70 min into our ‘Beijing city appreciation’ walk (see travel tip #2), Mother and Aunty Jill started talking to a chatty young ‘art student’ who had very good English. He said we could call him Bruce……… We enjoyed an 45 min delay walking with Bruce to the uni to see some of his art…….. and we were ‘lucky’ enough to be able to buy some. I am still not sure if he was a genuine artist or whether he sold us some other guys paintings. At the time we were just happy we hadn't been kidnapped, mugged or otherwise!

'Bruce' in the bright blue shirt -- it's the little ones you gotta look out for!

Travel tip #6 -- Typhoons do happen, no I haven't experienced one yet. On the day we were to return to the Japan, a sod of a typhoon decided to visit Tokyo. This initially delayed and then cancelled our flight. The earliest we could rebook was for 2 days later which meant we were to miss out on the Sumo tourney :( 

We also discovered perhaps the HARDEST damn mattresses in China. There was more give in the floorboards than on those damn things!

On the plus side at least we didn't take off, get within spitting distance of Tokyo, have several aborted attempts at landing due to wind and then have to fly another 2hrs to Sapporo like my Aunt and Uncle had to. In addition, the extra day meant we were able to go to Beijing Zoo and check out the Panda's! (who weren't as excited to see us as we were them!). With reference to travel tip #5 when we were heading Beijing zoo on our own, we were met with a look of astonishment and then a curse ‘independent travellers’ *spit* by a lady at the airport who was trying to sell us a tour with her! (and we didn't accept her offer!)

Stretching before aerobics

We are going for 1 situp Champ... you can do it!

 No he can't!

Hasn't quite mastered 'hide and seek'

Travel tip #7 -- China has a some pretty amazing sight to offer. The fence to keep the rabbits out is impressive (even though most of it is not the original fence any more) and the mind boggles as to the work that would have gone into its construction.

No rabbits allowed!

we didnt see any....

In addition the terracotta warriors are also amazing given their age and number. A good portion of the warriors have been left buried so as to preserve them until 'better technology' becomes available. It took them digging up the first two pits and however many thousand statues before realising the colour paint on them was oxidising in the air in under 60 minutes. Thankfully they have left almost an entire pit of statues buried in hope that when they do finally excavate them they can preserve the colour

Pit #1 -- I think the Emperor might have had some insecurity issues

Pit #2 -- waiting to dig the rest of it up....

I don't feel this blog has done justice to the week we spent in China. I also took roughly 1000 photo's and it was a task to judge which ones to put in! On the whole, I don't think I will be going back to Beijing anytime soon... but it certainly was a new experience for us and I am glad to have been......

In any case, I will now try and blog about the 2 weeks we had with my folks in Japan (I am not putting a time frame on it :P)