Snapshot to the present, I’m squished in the top bunk of a hard sleeper cabin on the way from Xian to….drum roll please Lhasa. This fills me with such excitement and maybe a few nerves (I get sick when someone else drives round a roundabout too quickly so altitude sickness is a concern) that the fact that my face is 12 inches from the roof of the cabin and someone with the physiology of a rabbit has left a little present in the squat toilet that just WILL NOT be flushed are brushed aside with abandon. It’s taken us a week to get to grips with the permit situation in Tibet and get a hold of the golden ticket like train tickets but to be honest we’ve done pretty bloody well to do this is such a short time. It can take anything from 1-3 weeks for people to finally be on their way. Access to Tibet has become much harder over the past few years by all accounts. I had these grandiose dreams of getting a permit to get into Lhasa then an Alien permit in Lhasa to travel further afield but basically to do this on our own steam and hire a driver and jeep who would be at our complete disposal whilst we were there. However the fates were against us. You cannot get a train/plane ticket to Lhasa without a permit and you cannot get a permit without booking a full tour through an agency. You can book private tours but they are hideously more expensive ($1200 each for 7 days!) to do through an agency rather than just rooting out a man and his van. In a nutshell we are doing a tour of Lhasa then down to Everest Base camp (wooooooooooooooooooooooo!) visiting some holy lakes and monasteries on the way. Plus we get to get this awesome train rather than fly which has been a bit of a dream since watching the making of the train line across the plateau on MegaBuilders on Discovery. I shan’t say anymore this as I have no idea on what to expect but I’m pretty sure that the net blog and photo albums are going to be blinders.
So, what have we been doing with ourselves for the past couple of weeks? Well, we had an eventful border crossing, in that we basically got on the train from UB to Beijing through the oily services of a Del boy wannabe agent (overly loose pleather jacket, tinted glasses, slicked back hair) who asked for $95 each to get on the train (any spare bunk, in separate cabins) and left us at the mercy of a friendly but equally shark like train guard who wanted $160 each for the pleasure of not kicking is illegal migrants off the train at will. After polite negotiations with strained smiles (it was 6 in the morning) we managed to get away ‘scot free’ by paying about $100 each. So $200 each to get out of Mongolia. Worth every penny I say. Don’t get me wrong I really did enjoy Mongolia but you know when it’s time to move on and it was definitely time.
Now, I lived, worked and travelled in China for a year when I was 18 (cough….14 years ago) but I knew if ever a country would change in that time China would be it. And so it has. I feel like this a different country! The only comfortably familiar things are the ridiculous toilets, the spitting of lugees dragged from the deepest recesses of the soul inches away from your flip flopped feet and the love of all innards, boiled, fried, bleeding fricasseed, you name it. But my point is it wasn’t the albeit amazing sights that I revisited (Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, Summer Palace and the great wall) that blew me away it was the city itself and the day to day stuff that we did.
But I digress. Beijing is AWESOME. And huge. Big shiny buildings, tip top infrastructure, clean streets, huge shopping malls, lovely little hutongs and an H & M. Important when your only pair of lightweight trousers died a death pretty much as soon as you put them on…thanks New Look. I had a great time, made great by the awesome travelling team of Nelly, Al & myself. We zipped around the city in cheap as chips cabs, ate in an amazing restaurant or 2, stayed in an amazing hotel so far removed from a dorm room in a hostel it was silly, dressed up in our glad rags, drank mojitos, bought Cuban cigars and shook our tail feathers with the beautiful people in the World Of Suzie Wong’s and basically lived it up. We managed some culture with the aforementioned sights and also managed to squeeze in a hungover ridden viewing of dead Mao who, by the way, is in MUCH better shape than Lenin. And can you believe the guards are friendlier than in Russia? Who’d have thunk it.
Following Nelly’s departure back to Miami Al & I sulked for a few days in her junior suite eating Subways and watching STAR movies (Die Hard 2, Blond & Blonder, Meet Dave….good times people, good times) before girding our loins and moving back into a hostel. Sob. Actually the hostel was pretty good and we managed to meet and the skilfully coerce some people into joining us for some light American style refreshment in Hooters. A rather attractive Italiano who was the spit of Big Rick who was called….Ricardo. after that revelation I practically strong armed him to Hooters! The high point of this evening was watxhing the very attractive, scantily clad young ladies murdering their dance routines. That and the chicken wings with blue cheese sauce. Following that it was time to move on again and get the train to Xian. The one 15hr train ride perfectly sums up China for me. We have to drive an hour across the megaopolis that is Beijing in gridlock traffic to get to a huge imposing train station. We have to push our way through security with judicious use of elbows and big north face trainers as there is no such thing as queuing in China. We provide wide-eyed entertainment (this is better than TV!) for the masses as we race through the station. We get on the spotless train exhausted and ready to drop. But then 2 lovely and very friendly young ladies quickly strike up a conversation and eventually ascertain that I am Al’s gf (grrrrr) and do a swap so that we can sit together. I watch a woman bring out mountains of Tupperware and whip up a cordon bleu cold meal for her husband who eats it gracefully and delicately whilst supping on some fresh tea. This was all lovely but then they left the fluorescent lighting all night so no one could sleep, the guy behind me talked ( well shouted) allll night and there was a man very loudly and copiously vomiting in the loos at around 2 in the morning. Happily Al slept through all of this. Sigh.
I was, understandably, a dead woman by the time we got to Xian.
We used this to justify our week of very late morning wake up calls (well….early afternoon at times), good eating, rivers of g&t’s or whatever cocktails were on offer that night and sightseeing at a very gentle pace. Most of this as in the distinguished company of Emma, Phil & Jimmy from Oxford who thankfully were faithfully following the same eating, drinking and relaxing pattern.
We did manage to squeeze some cultural sights in mind, namely the fantasico Terracotta Warriors. Now. I know that there is a Subway on the doorstep. I know that you have to watch a very badly made and dubbed film on the origins of the warriors and the eviiiiiil emporer who killed all the artisans. I know that it is heaving with chinese tourists. And I know that they are basically stored in 3 soulless plane hangers. Doesn’t matter. They really are the most awesome things and none of the above detract from this. Each is lifesize, they all have different features and are dressed differently to reflect their rank.
They even had a ‘headquarters’ where the upper ranks were to plan any future wars. Soldiers made of clay planning military excursions. Madness.
Don’t even get me started on the horses. Just don’t.
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