Datong-Beijing

Dear followers,

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All the pictures of Russia and Mongolia have been posted on the site, if you want to see them you can find them under 'Foto's'. We will post the pictures of China as soon as possible, we hope we'll succeed in the hostel in Hanoi!

We got out of the train in Datong to go to the Datong Youth Hostel and said our goodbyes to the people we met. The city looked nice with a big wall that surrounded the old center. Unfortunately we had a dificult time finding the hostel, kind of hard walking that much with a lot of kilos on your back. The hostel was very nice, the inside looked like an old Chinese village. We also had to look for a bank that worked, a lot of banks don't accept our cards. ICBC works! Just a tip. After all that walking we got some nice tofu at a food stand, watched a few episodes of 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' (My favourite show, Janneke is watching it for the first time and adores it! Haha.) and found out that social media is totally blocked in China. Oh well. The next day I woke up and found out that my hip had been dislocated all night because of all the walking with the backpack the day before, so I kind of couldn't move that much. Janneke was first doubting going to the Haning Monestry by herself and leaving me alone in the hostel, but I said she should just go for it. Unfortunately she never got there; the whole city was broken up because of remodelling and the bus that she had to take was nowhere to be found. This really was the first day that it didn't go so well for us, but you can't expect it to go very smooth troughout the whole year of course :). We had to go to the train station to catch the train to Beijing, but there was no way I would be able to carry my backpack. So Janneke, she is now my female Rambo, carried mine and her own to the station. This time we sat in a normal train (so far, we have only been in overnight trains with beds) and were stared at the whole time. We were already used to it a bit, in Datong we were a real show stopper. The landscape was truly amazing, with mountains, rivers, lakes and nice towns. 

In Beijing we stayed in the Lucky Family Hostel, nice common rooms, good atmosphere and very clean. We stayed in a room with Mark (a Scottish guy that just started travelling) and Gary (an English guy who was at the end of his travels). Janneke met Anneke (a German girl who had been travelling for two months) in the common room and with the five of us we decided to go on a tour to the Great Wall later during the week. That night we ate at the best restaurant ever (Kong pow chicken and Flavored pork!!), alltough you wouldn't guess that just by looking at it. We met Sara and Emil there, Swedish people we met in Mongolia. We also saw Joska again. Very nice to come across people you already know! Janneke went with the group from Mongolia to the Forbidden City and I stayed in for a day, giving my hip a break; watched some movies, wrote in my diary and met chatted with some people. The next morning, the moment was finally there, we went to the Great Wall!! We got in the van with Anneke, Mark and Gary and went straight to the Great Wall. Well, we went to a small town from where we had to hike for two hours to get to the Great Wall. On our way we passed a sign that said 'This part of the Great Wall is forbidden for tourists', so we knew we were going in the right direction. Sometimes it was a bit difficult to find the way up, we had to follow red ribbons but for some reason they sometimes switched to yellow. So going up a steap hill following a ribbon: 'Guys, I don't think this is the right way!' 'Are you sure?' 'Yeeaaah, kind of really sure haha.' So then we had to go down again, a bit dangerous. After a few hours of hiking, stopping, eating, "singing" and making pictures, we arrived at the Wall. Everyone was euphoric, it was spectacular. You were able to see as far as your eye could reach, the wall making his way over the mountains and the sky being completely clear. This part of the wall wasn't restored, sometimes you had to walk through planting, on a small ledge over crooked rocks. An amazing experience. On every top was a beautiful watch tower. In the old days, six people manned the tower taking shifts of six hours with three people. Every watch tower is in eye sight of the next, so they were able to pass on messages. Sometimes the wall was so steap, it was ridiculous. Making a real effort going up and then sort of sliding down. After a few hours we arrived at the restored part of the Wall. This part was more touristic, so we were glad we started at the old part. It was nice to see the way the wall looked like a few hundred years ago though. When we got down, the driver had been waiting for us for a long time, so he was a bit in a mood. But after a few gestures of 'Oh it was so hard' and 'We are so tired, we couldn't walk any faster', he lightened up. At night we went to the amazing restaurant again and went clubbing at Club Latte. It was great, nice music, pretty decor and a good atmosphere. The next day we just ate a bit, watched some movies and replied some emails. Well, you can expect a hangover when you drink rice wine with a percentage of 56. Janneke and some others went to the Night Market in the evening and ate some scorpions (!).

In the next days, I went to the Forbidden City with Mark and Patricia (a Portugees girl who had worked for six months in China), really beautiful, Janneke and I arrainged some travel stuff and we met Sebastien (the French/German guy with whom we went to Olkhon Island in Russia) and his friend Alexander at the Night Market. I also tried some scorpions, when they are fried they taste like potato chips. We ate Peking duck at a nice restaurant and tried to join in some Chinese dancing. Because there was no room in the hostel anymore, we had to move hostels. Mark, Sebastien and Alexander joined us, so that was 'gezellig' (sorry guys, no real English translation available). We went to the Olympic Park with them, it was great. We saw the Bird's Nest and went into the Water Cube to take a swim in the Olympic warming up pool. At night we went to Club Latte again and danced our asses off. That week we also went to the Lama Temple (a Buddhist temple where they burned a ridiculous amount of incents) and the Temple of Heaven (the place where the emperors went to pray to the gods). The Temple of Heaven is surrounded by a nice park, a lot of Chinese people go there to play games, dance and sing. Great to see. That night it was time for us to leave Beijing. Mark and Sebastien walked us to the bus stop and we said our goodbyes. Not for long though, we are meeting Sebastien in Vietnam and maybe we'll meet again Mark in Thailand.

We got on the night train to Xi'an, but this time we didn't have a bed, we booked a 'hard seat'. A condoctor took a look at our tickets and offered us a hard sleeper for some extra money. We told him we didn't want to spend that, but he still took us to the cabin with the bar. We sat and waited there, it was a bit strange, then it turned out that we had to pay 30 Yuan to sit there until sex o'clock. Oke fine, so we payed and played some games with Patrick (a Swedish guy we met outside and saved from doom; he booked a standing place). After a guy puked in the hall, we went to find our own seats. It was alright, but we won't do it again that quickly. Sleeping in a hard seat in a crowded cabin is just not really working haha.

I wanted to tell you about our stay in Xi'an, but this story turnes out to be quite long. So I will leave the rest of China to Janneke!

I hope you enjoyed it! If you feel up to it, please let us know how you are doing! :D

Kisses and hugs, 

Fleur