Beijing

Shanghi

Shanghi is a super modern big smoggy city, i stayed in pujiang hotel, very good, a big old building overlooking the river bund, the centre of shanghi, i would fully reccomend it , i was only there a couple of nights though, i met an australian geezer called ashley and we went out on for too many drinking binges.
The highlight of shanghi for me was the french quarter which is the old part of town, a maze of tiny alleys full of markets selling everything from  kipper ties to snakes, apparently when you order snake in a restaurant, they bring it to your table,cut off its head in front of you, and pour its blood straight into a cup for you to drink, mmmm yum. many restaurants pride themselfs on fish, and have giant tanks in the windows with turtles, sharks and any other endangered species you can think of for sale, not a place for animal lovers.

Beijing , the resting place of mau, tiananmen square and the forbidden city, i stayed about a week here at first in a hostal reccomended by lonely planet called jinghua hotel, renamed by me and some other travellers as stinkhua because of the retched inustrial river running right next to it, i would fully reccomend not staying there, i dread to think how bads it gets in the summer, luckily ashleys cousin cambell, who works there running the australian chamber of commerce offered me a place to stay,good old boy, and if he ever reads this, thank you. He was in a couple of bands who me and ashley became temporary groupies which was fun.
Beijing is the number one tourist trap in china, and as a result the locals are not all that friendly, if they talk to you its usually to try and part you from your money, but the attractions of the city certainly are worth it, despite being overrun by thousnads of people.
I went on a day trip to the great wall which was fantastic, some parts were only a few inches wide and pretty dangerous, ashley had to turn back because of vertigo, i wish i could have had enough time to walk along for a few days. About now i realised i was really missing julieta and decided to curtail the south east asia part of my trip and go home in june, so i had to get a move on and go to tibet asap

Tryin to get to tibet!

Well i was wrong about it being easier to go to tibet from china, its pretty well sown up, but makes for a pretty good story of the trials and tribulations of traveling in china,
So i arrive in Xian, about in the middle of china, and decide to buy a plane ticket to tibet, so i go to the edge of town to china airlines office, and ask for a ticket
"have you got permission?"
"well ive got a visa"
" no you need special permit"
"who from"
"special permit office here is number'
so i call them and after some time they tell me i cant get a permit in Xian, even though there are direct flights from there, i have to go to chengdo, about 800kms away, ok i can do that, so i go to a tourist booking centre only to be informed they cant sell me train tickets that week because of national holiday ill have to go to the train station.
So i head to the train station, the place is like hell, be best comparison is to imagine the scene in vietnam, when war was declared, and everyone was fighting for whatever tickets they can get, i queue for 1 hour to get to desk 9, foreign guest tickets and stuggle through what i want, they tell me i can get one for saturday, 3 days time, ok, then i have to go to queue 2 with my slip of paper the queue is huge and moving mind numbingly slowley, people are pushing to front all the time in the end i join in the full on crush, the reason its taking so long is that most people are buying 50 tickets at a time, to sell on, i fight like hell to get in front  only to be told there is none left! ther is another english guy a few people behind me, he speaks a bit of chinese so stands a slightly better chance, i give him my slip of paper and say " where are you going"
him "chingdow"
me "me too but there none left!"
"well ill try anyway"
so he gets to the front and success! he trumphantly come away with two tickets, we retired for a drink to steady our nerves.
Sitting in the bar it transpired we had misunderstood each other chingdow which sounds the same as chengdoo when i dont really know how to pronounce either of them is 2000kms in the wrong direction!
After all that fuss with competely the wrong ticket all there was to do was laugh and get a few drinks down me, resolving to get there early in the morning to sort it out, i went into a friendly english speaking air conditioned travel agency and they wrote it all out for me in chinese to hand over the counter,
I arrived nice and early and queued up, much confusion at the counter and they sent me to another place downstairs, i queued there for ages only to be abruptly told to go back to the counter i had started at, help! i was loosing my patience so i returne dto the friendly travel agent at subbmitted to the system, i asked them to sort me out with a flight, 500 rmb, abot 40 quid, easy, and they got a refund on the ticket for me, it turns out you cant get a refund unless its within 24 hours of depature time, wheres the logic in that!
the moral of the story is, if its a public holiday dont bother! or pay someone else to sort it out! cos its way too much fuss phew!