The Great Wall of China – Images by Jamie McDonald

D5675, Shanghai South Railway Station to Hangzhou, 17.58 scheduled arrival time. This wasn’t a train that I was anticipating sitting on. A couple of weeks ago I booked a flight from Shanghai to Kuala Lumpur on Air Asia X. I never took too much notice of the airport as I figured I’d sort it out when I arrived in Shanghai.

We flew from Beijing to Shanghai on China Southern and flew into the Hongqiao terminal, which is predominately used for domestic flights, but the occasional international comes in and out from it. So when I saw that my flight was out of H something I assumed it was the nearby one that I’d flown into. Until lunchtime today when I double checked flight time and noticed it was a different town – over 100km away.

Everything in China is nice and big, so I guess I was amused and relieved when the next ‘town’ turned out to be a city of 7 million residents and has 5 express trains per day it wasn’t a problem, and with the speedo on the first class display indicating 171km/h I’ll be at the airport in plenty of time.

Cheap thrills hey?

59 days and 11 hours since I left Australia for China and whilst it has been great it is time for a change. Last night I thought about some of the things that I’ve managed since coming to China:

Travelled in the most populated country in the world (China)
Walked on the greatest Great Wall
Walked around the second highest lake in the world (Karakul Lake)
Had a beer in the second lowest place in the world (Turpan)
Had another beer in the hottest town in China (Turpan also)
Driven on the highest highway in the world (Karakoram Highway)
Walked from the bottom to damn near the top of one of the worlds deepest gorges (Tiger Leaping Gorge)
Spent a night in the city furthest from the ocean anywhere in the world (Urumqi 2570km)
Walked across the largest public square in the world (Tiananmen Square, Beijing)

All in 8 weeks and approximately 15,000 kilometres.

I guess on the one hand there is a lot to catch up on, but on the other there isn’t really. As I mentioned earlier I was looking for a change, and by the time I arrived in Beijing on a 6 bed open compartment hard ‘sleeper’ I was pretty tired.

I stayed in Beijing for 8 days at the Far East International Youth Hostel. If you can, avoid it. It was cheap enough at 45 Yuan per bed per night in a four bed dorm, but it had zero atmosphere, no free internet and a bar that was expensive and dead. It also is a pretty boring location. A ten or fifteen walk from Hempingmen subway station means you’re not far from getting to the action, but it would be nice if there was something in the street to maintain some interest.

After spending a while trying to locate Plastered 8, a t-shirt shop in Dongcheng we came across the street we were looking for, Nan Luo Gu Xiang. A great strip complete with bars, shops and pretty good restaurants – get there, and if you can, stay nearby as there isn’t a subway stop (yet) and it’s a bit of Beijing I could have spent long days in. By chance when I was walking past last Sunday night the Wimbledon final was playing at Ned’s Bar and as an ardent patriot I was pulled into the australian themed bar for a cheap VB. The next night I returned and enjoyed several ‘Melbourne’ Long Island Iced Teas. The following day was a write-off!
The sites are famous, sure, and I’m in no doubt that for people visiting China for a fortnight, they’re must-see too. But I walked across Tiananmen Square, and like most Westerners I knew it as the place that brave students demanded democracy, but received the Communist Tanks instead. The Kashgar pocket knife that was in my pocket could have caused alarm given the fact that it’s a knife (albeit very small) but given that the police were more interested in propaganda than weapons it became clear I would be in more trouble with a ‘Free Kashgar’ poster, than one of their deadly sharp knives. The largest public square in the world it is, but with the worlds largest population swamping it all day, every day it loses some of its appearance of size.

And in Beijing that’s it, yep, Summer Palace skipped, Forbidden City skipped, olympic venues skipped, Temple of Heaven, yep, skipped. I may look back on my time in the East with regret after missing the must-see, but after seeing the natural beauty in Xinjiang and Yunnan, not to mention roman ruins in the middle east, these grand sites just didn’t seem so goddamn grand. Oh, and I read Catcher in the Rye the other day and I can’t stop saying ‘goddamn’ – it’s bad I know.

Of course I went to the Great Wall – I’m not a complete idiot, I just know ‘great’ when I see it, and for once in the last few days I wasn’t let down. Originally planning on going to Simatai to stretch the legs for an hour or two ended up becoming a 10.1 kilometre trek from Jinshanling to Simatai. It was fantastic, and not in the hyperbole fashion that Lonely Planet and other guidebooks describe it; a long, tough walk in the middle of a Beijing summer on some treacherous paths it is, but with sacrifice comes reward. No guard rails, only tiny bits of the wall renovated, and as isolated as you’ll ever get only two hours out of Beijing. I hope that my pictures speak for themselves, but the Chinese can rightly call this a seriously Great Wall.

Naturally things never go without some sort of hitch, especially in China where it seems that everyone is looking to make an extra buck. It was the cabbie this time, again.

LP (granted, published 2007) states that after catching the bus to Miyan to get a cab for a round-trip cost of 120 Yuan to Simatai. After getting the guy down from 480 to a more respectable 140 we headed off. Immediately he decided that we should do the walk and he would meet us in Simatai, ‘no money – ok’. Four hours and a helluva lot of sweat later we meet him and drive back to Miyan, at which point he demands 160; give him 140 and tell him we had a deal – he tries to swipe a bag. Mark Latham was onto something with cab drivers. Old Latham. Old sport.

Maybe he had the last laugh anyway as we caught bus 980 back to Beijing, though we caught the 980 that stops at every bus stop from Miyan to Dongzihen – 70km, and I’m not joking, more than three hours.

I didn’t do too much after that upon returning to Beijing – ate at Pizza Hut (Don’t, it’s really, really expensive, and not that great,) had another few beers at Neds and watched the football (Australian, Brisbane v Geelong, surprised the Lions got up too) and before I knew it we were on a plane to Shanghai.

We only caught a plane because it cost the same as a soft sleeper, and we couldn’t get a hard sleeper even if wanted one. How a 12 hour journey from Beijing to Shanghai costs the same as a 27 hour journey from Turpan to Xi’an is beyond me, but tough to China Rail, because we flew and had lunch in Shanghai instead of on the train!

Immediately after arriving in Shanghai it became apparent that this is a city that is busy, happening and cosmopolitan. And immediately after arriving I regretted that we didn’t have very long to enjoy it. Damn Beijing.

The hostel that we’d lined up, the Hiker Hostel, just of East Nanxjing road was fully booked, so we headed around the corner on their suggestion to the Hong Kong Hotel. Which was actually a pretty darn nice double for 150 Yuan. The hostel knowing that it was in out best interest to stay sweet with us understanding that we might return invited us to use their bar and free wi-fi. The bar was busy, the hostel was busy, and the street was busy. A very welcome change from beijing.

Just around the corner from Nanxjing road we found a western restaurant called Food Puzzle. Not only was their food really good, it was dirt cheap. The best western food that we found in China, and at the best price – all in a city that we had heard was the most expensive in the country. And get this – bottomless coffee, not percolated or nescafe, but really nice espresso illy coffee. After paying a fortune for coffee around China I damn near shook out of my seat one day after excess consumption of caffeine!

A shame for me and no doubt hundreds of thousands of other travellers to Shanghai is the lack of the Bund. Arguably Shanghai’s most famous strip the Bund is the esplanade along the river and as the 2010 World Expo is arriving in the city in less than 300 days the entire Southern strip is locked up behind temporary walls for construction. We got to have a glance at it by catching a 2 Yuan ferry across to the other side of the river, but the sad fact is I doubt I could afford a drink in Pudong on the northern side of the river. I walked past the first Hooters I’ve ever seen in my life. Not to say it’s a highlight, nor a lowlight, perhaps just a light?

That just about brings me back to the express train from Shanghai to Hongzhou. I made my flight, easily. The bus station at the Hongzhou took some finding, so much that I found it by driving past in a cab I spit with three other people. Hongzhou airport is a bit of a dump – the flight to KL was the only one going out that night with international credentials, which meant the immigration, customs and check in didn’t open till 2 hours before the flight departed, which meant there was no waiting room for silly folk that catch trains too early.

But I made it, I’m in Phnom Penh tapping this out at the FCC. I’ve also got a cold, but hey, I’ve been on the go for 62 days – I’m not going to whinge about the world being against me. Meeting a mate who lives in Saigon here tomorrow for a few drinks and then I’ll bus back with him on Sunday. To quote him to sign off from this long update -

‘Adios amigos’.