With the journey being as important as the destination we kept a map of our journey, which is shown above. Look how large the world is – and look what a thin line we drew through it! It made us realise just how much more there is to see.
KEY:
Blue = train
Green = Bus
Yellow = Boat
Purple = campervan
We go from one great bus journey to a terrible one, which is delayed for 2 hours and requires us to change buses in the middle of the road before delivering us to the wrong bus station, whilst costing a fortune… in Chinese terms anyway!
It is a while before we see any non Chinese people.
We travel by road for 7 hours from Pingyao to Xi’an.
We leave China’s capital for China’s only intact original walled village. Ahead of us is…
an 11km drive to Beijing West, the largest train terminal in Asia,
a 5 hour standing train journey to Taiyuan
a 3km drive between Taiyuan train station and bus station
a 2 hour mini-bus to the Pingyao area
a 10 minute electric rickshaw into the walled village
As always，the best times were where we managed to find some authenticity and meet some real people who have lived in Beijing all of their lives。
These pictures are a few of those。Others would not upload!…
We also found the exact same stall where me and Jo were in 2006. Jo ate a starfish and a live scorpion (which apparently tastes like chicken wings). The rest is history…
Temperature – 9 degreesC
A few highlights from Beijing.
We managed to have an excellent time in between dodging the scammers that seem to have plagued the city since the Olympics！
We are unable to give a full account due to China’s OTHER Great （fire)wall。。。
Good afternoon Beijing.
It feels a little bit familiar and we are so happy to be here!
With all due respect to Russia and Mongolia… we can’t wait to eat! Staying away from the starfish and live scorpions though. I saw what it did to Joanna last time we were here in 2006! It’s post-Olympic now though. Maybe things have changed?…
A few words to say that wordpress is blocked in China. However we can e-mail posts on to our blog – though no chance to format them, i.e. no captions, and all images end up in a gallery – we hope this is not too annoying for you!
Anyway, we boarded the train to Beijing leaving Ulan Bator and the large plains of Mongolia. The train was the most basic yet, with a mixture of Mongolian, Chinese and "foreigners" like ourselves. The border took 6 hours to cross, with lots more immigration and customs forms to fill in as usual! The border was particularly on alert, as it turns out that the Dalai Lama is or was in Mongolia, which meant China’s border to Mongolia was on high security!
… please stay posted – we will be back soon!
londontoaustralia 