Is Going On A Trip: October 2008

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Forbidden City

Mao was greeting us when we arrived outside the Forbidden City in Beijing

It was beautiful inside...

...but extremely crowded.

It was a great artwork on the buildings.

You could see that the buildings was old.

They had a beautiful garden inside the Forbidden City as well.

So we are now in Shanghai, we arrived here on Friday after 12 hours on the train. The train ride was slow but not terrible. We took a night train but we didn't have a sleeper so we had to sit up all night. I also managed to get a cold on the train but it's almost over by now. So we have been here for a little more than two day now and I have to say that I like Beijing more than Shanghai but Frida likes Shanghai more. There isn't much to see here in Shanghai so we are leaving for Hong Kong on Monday. The by far the best thing we have done here in Shanghai is going up in the 492 m (1,614.2 ft) high Shanghai World Finance Center, it's the second tallest building in the world and has the highest roof of any building in the world. We could go up to three different levels. If you look at the picture below on the skyscraper you can see that there is a hole in the top of the building, one of the levels where right under the hole and the highest right above it. At the top level you could walk on glass and look straight down to the ground, it was really amazing a little scary at first but a really great experience. We went up after sunset so we could see the lights of almost the whole Shanghai and all the other skyscrapers around it looked small compared to it.

Shanghai World Finance Center

SWFC with 421 m (1,380 ft) high Jin Mao Tower in front

(421 m (1,380 ft) with the spire)

Me 474 m (1,555 ft) up in the Shanghai World Finance Center

Frida in the SWFC

View of Shanghai from the SWFC

Another view from the SWFC

Changing wheels in the train

When we arrived to Chine with the train they had to change wheels since China is running on smaller tracks than Russia and Mongolia. We where still on the train while they did this and here are some pictures that shows the process.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Great Wall

Our guide

Me on the Great Wall

Our group

Me again

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man"

So the stay in Beijing is almost over. Tomorrow the train are leaving for Shanghai but after almost a week in Beijing we have seen most of the things that are worth seeing. We have seen the Forbidden city, the Great wall, the Lama temple, the Temple of heaven, the Olympic stadiums and much more.

Today we went to the Great Wall of China we went to the secret wall, that's what the hostel called it. It is a part of the wall that's not rebuilt where no tourist are going. We where 20 people from our hostel that went there, it took 2.5 hours with mini buss so it was a long car ride there an back but it was so worth it. We were the only one's on the wall so you could get pictures with no one on them which is impossible on the rebuilt walls. We passed a couple of them on the way out at they were packed with people. So we walked of the wall for almost 3 hours before we went down and got lunch in a locale village. After we had walked for 1.5 hours and where at the highest point we found a guy sitting there selling souvenirs so he has to walk up there everyday to just sit there and wait for the few people that comes there. So it was a great day the the quote in the headline comes from Mao Zedong and is something everybody should live after, don't you think?

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Second day in Beijing

So we have spent 2 days in Beijing now, well we arrived at 2.30 p.m. yesterday so almost 2 days. The train ride here was much better than the last one, primary because it wasn't so long only 30 hours. The train was much better as well it looked brand new so that was good the only downside was that we couldn't open the window so we had to take pictures through the glass. The landscape was beautiful with mountains and rice fields. The last couple of hours we went trough tunnel after tunnel and every time we came out on the tunnel the landscape was fantastic and we even got to see the Great Wall.

When we arrived at the train station we decided to walk to the hostel which took about 30 minutes so that wasn't to bad. But since we carried our big backpacks people saw that we just arrived and one guy just came up and sad "welcome to China" and he followed us for the next 10 minutes speaking English. And when we where almost at the hostel another guy came up and asked where we where from so we sad Sweden and he just "ooh and worked in Stockholm for sic months" and we talked to him for a while. Everybody is so friendly here and if they can speak English they love to speak it with a foreigner. So we got a really got first impression of Beijing with the people and the traffic is much more organised here than in Russian and Mongolia.

Today we have been walking for at least 6 hours, we spent the first 5 hours of the day shopping at Xidan one of the biggest shopping streets in Beijing. And when we got back to the hostel we met Pablo a Spanish guy we met at the hostel in Ulaanbaatar. So he joined us when we went out looking for something to eat. We ate at a market where they sell grilled food on sticks (pictures are coming) and they had everything, chicken, beef, lam, fruit, sea food, starfish and even different bugs and scorpions. We bought beef, lamp and some grilled corn and left the bugs for someone else. And we also walked to the biggest square in the world (that's what our guidebook told us) and we also saw one of the old city gates. After that we found a shopping street but I guess the Chinese didn't think it looked good enough before so they have rebuilt all the facades of the building and rebuilt them, it look really fake. But we guessed they want it too look new and that it was a thing they did for the Olympics even thou there where no stores get.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

A trip to the country side

We just got back after at two day trip to the country side of Mongolia. It's supposed to be really beautiful and I have to agree. The trip started on Tuesday and when we woke up we saw that it was raining outside but before we left it had changes into snowing. SNOWING! I didn't expect to see snow on this trip but I guess I had my hopes up for nothing. So when we got out to the National park to do some hiking it was extremely foggy and the wind was blowing and it was really cold. It turned out to be more car riding than hiking which was fine by us. After we had seen the things we where supposed to see we tried to drive to the family where we would spend the night. After 4 hours of driving around trying to find there winter camp (they are nomads, moving around on the country side) we met another group that told us we couldn't drive up to there camp because of the snow so we went to another camp. It felt like this camp was out in nowhere but we finally got there after driving thru the snow, we didn't even see the road. And we were driving a small Hyundai that had front-wheel drive, and we drove off-road with it (and I really med OFF-road). So we spent the night in a ger, a typical Mongolian tent. We didn't have any heat so we had a fire at the beginning of the night so the temperature most have been up to 30 degrease when we went to bed and close to 0 degrease when we woke up.

So today we went horseback riding thru the snow. It was fun but really cold. I succeeded at riding even though I haven't done it since I was maybe 10 at a zoo. At first my horse refused to move faster than 3 km/h but after a while it decided to hurry up a bit. So we went to an old temple ground from the 16th century but the temples was tern down by the Soviet when they had control of Mongolia. It was so cold outside that we decided to not take the horses back but the car so now we are sitting here at the hostel in Ulaanbaatar our last night before we are boarding the train for Beijing.