Dy 126: Jiankou, Hebei Province

Started off the day by packing some things into my day bag. Rissa informed me that it would get a little cold so I needed to prepare. I don't have much cold weather gear, as I sent most of it back in Vietnam after Nepal. I sent an email to the two girls from Holland to let them know what the plan was and how to meet up with us, hoping that they would get the email in time. Joseph woke up feeling really sick and could barely talk, so he decided to rest instead.

I met Rissa at the bus station and caught the last bus hoping that the two other girls would show. Once we got on the bus, what do you know, I spotted the two girls in line. I am glad they were able to meet us in time. We took the bus to a small town called Xizhazi. Once we got close to our destination, about a hour and a half later, we learned that the bus to the wall had stopped running. A guy on the bus was trying to help us. This guy had us get off the bus, we were thinking that this was the right stop. Once we got off the bus, we realized that the guy was trying to give us a ride. I have learned while traveling in non-English speaking countries (or high western tourist countries) not to trust people who speak English. It costs money to learn to speak English, if their speaking English they are making money through non-conventional means. However, I was traveling with three girls and using a girl as a translator. We were trying to bargain down the price of the ride, but he kept saying how good of a driver he is and how expensive gas is. I kept telling Rissa, not to listen to the guy, but she kept talking to him. He talked to use for about 30 minutes, slowly bringing down the price, still not near what it should cost. However, Rissa didn't have it in her to just walk away; if this guy is still talking to us, he is still making good money off us, we could have easily found another ride for much cheaper. Regardless, Rissa was in a bad position, listening to me telling her to walk away and listening to this guy telling her to let him drive, she caved in to the driver. 

Our driver dropped us off at the wrong place and it took half the time he told us it would; if they speak English, it's a scam! However, we hadn't paid him yet, so I stepped in. I pulled the guy aside, and pulled out a calculator. I plugged in our price, then divided by the supposed time (1 hour), that gave us the cost per minute, then I multiplied that by the time it actually took us and told him that that was the only price we were going to pay him; if he wouldn't accept, we would start hiking and there was nothing he could do about it. He was pissed. I stared at him and didn't move, telling him that was my final offer, take it or drive away. He mumbled something in Chinese, probably something like screw you and accepted my offer. Man it feels good to set the screwer straight.

We headed off to the wall right from the road. The trail was the most intimidating trail I have ever come across. It is going to be a LONG hike up!

Yes, on top of those mountains is The Great Wall of China, our destination before night fall. As you would expect, the hike was treacherous, especially since I was wearing long wool socks and long pants. I was thinking that we would just walk up some stairs and then walk for a while until we found a place to sleep, I had no clue it would be a real trek; my beard turned into a sponge real quick!

 (That is the town from which we started)

Once we got to the top, it was so rewarding. The wall is beautiful at this spot because it is barely intact. That is why no tourists are allowed on this part of the wall, it can be dangerous.

Night creeped up on us as fast as the cold weather did. We had found a nice old watch tower to make camp and we broke out our 'dinner,' which consisted of a large amount of snacks. We spent the night under my head lamp, sharing food and playing cards until we went to sleep.

That night, I never fell asleep. For some reason, it was really hard to sleep on large slabs of stone?! The tent pictured above was the tent for the two girls from Holland, I slept in the watch tower. Also, my thin sleeping bag and lack of cold gear clothes had the cold breeze piercing my bones throughout the night!

Day 125: Beijing, Hebei Province

As you can machine, today was a VERY slow day. Since we didn't get in until 10am, we slept for most of the day at Joseph's friend's, Joe's, apartment. The rest was spent recovering and planning out the next couple days. I have been wanting to go camping on the Great Wall of China and have heard of other that have done it before. A friend of Joseph's, Rissa, who lives in Beijing has done it before and wants to go again. We spent the day planning out what are some good places to go and how to get there. 

Day 124: Beijing, Hebei Province

Today is about to be a hectic day! We have tickets to a music festival called Intro. The venue is a huge abandoned steel factory and warehouse on the outskirts of Beijing. Now that we have a great army of friends, we made our way by bus to the festival which begins at 2pm. On the ride over, I could already see the factory, it's huge! 

Crazy?!

Once we got there, I was blown away. The set up was great as was the music and people! I would say that this was the best music concert I have been to.

The festival went on into late 

Day 123: Beijing, Hebei Province

Today we just got all of our things together before we got on the train. The train ride was really cool, we were averaging about 175mph, and the trees blurring past us. The sights were really interesting, hills and flat grounds covered in rice fields. One thing that was a little odd was all the neighborhoods. They were surrounded by high walls and barbed wire with guard posts and armed guards at every entrance. Who "lives" in there? I suspect they are in some sort of trouble and have been sent there to work or either really poor; something shady is going on there. These 'neighborhoods' followed us the whole way to Beijing. When there weren't these farms, you could see big factories and dozens and dozens of high rise apartments being built in the middle of no where.

Entering Beijing was pretty cool, I knew we were getting close when you could start to see a huge cluster of buildings in the horizon. Luckily Joseph has lived in this concrete jungle for three years; he and his friends will help me navigate this crazy place. We headed straight to one of Joseph's favorite bar/restaurants and grabbed a quick drink before we met up with one of his friends, Ben, who is from Louisville, Kentucky. After we dropped our bags off at Ben's apartment, we headed out to a great sushi place to met up with the rest of their friends. It was weird to be sitting at a table full of westerners who all spoke Chinese; I definitely felt like the odd man out since I could barely pronounce thank you correctly. 

Once we finished dinner and a couple bottles of saki, we made our way to a Goodbye party for one of the guys who has been living in Beijing. It was great to meet a bunch of Joseph's old friends. After the party, we headed to K TV. K TV is the name of karaoke bars in China; we rented out a huge VIP room and sung the night away!

As we made our way back home, we stopped off at this street vendor who was making hand made dumplings. They were so good!

Day 122: Xi'an, Shaanxi Province

With my body feeling like an old man, I could barely peel myself out of bed. We spent most of the day resting and walking around our neighborhood in Xi'an. That afternoon, we made our way to some governmental building, that the hostel recommended, in an attempt to extend my Chinese visa to obtain a double entry. Once we got there the building was lined with Chinese children, I assume trying to get a visa to study out of the country? Regardless, we were able to get past the line because I am not Chinese. It is amazing with how much you can get away with by being a westerner. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a dual entry added to my visas.

Not much happened today, we just got our train ticket settled for tomorrow to Beijing; I am really excited, it is one of the fast trains, so we are going to be getting from Xi'an to Beijing in 5 hours vs. 12 hours on a normal train. Could you imagine an intracit rail system in the US? I would much prefer to take a fast train to California or NY rather than spend all the time/money flying and dealing with the TSA or driving and pouring money into gas and parking. How about a quick train ride from Columbia to Charleston? I'd be there all the time!

That night, Joseph and I met two girls from Amsterdam who are headed to Beijing tomorrow. Hopefully we get to all meet up when we get there.

Day 121: Xi'an, Shaanxi Province

This morning we headed back to Xi'an. Instead of taking the cable car down the mountain, we made the trek down the Soldier's Path. This was an intensely vertical way to get down where the stairs, at times, looked more like ladders. 

The walk was really beautiful with steep smooth mountains surrounding us. It is really interesting to see all the foliage growing right out of the sides of the mountains. 

After about a two hour walk, we finally made it to the bottom and we popped in the first restaurant we could find to grab a beer, celebrating our successful trek and Joseph's 26th birthday. 

We caught the bus back to Xi'an and relaxed. I can't express how nice it was to shower and change out of the crusty clothes! Didn't do much that evening except relax.

That night, we did a little celebrating for Joseph's birthday. We headed around the corner from the hostel to Bar Street. The straight road was and loaded with bars and employees hustling you to come to their bar. Every place was rather empty but was absurdly over priced. We ducked into one place for two beers then headed home.

Day 120: Huà Mountain, Shaanxi Province

We headed out early and caught a bus to the base of the Huà Mountain to begin our trekking. We took a cable car up to the North Peak (there are five peaks to the mountain). When we got off, we dropped off our stuff at a hostel and began exploring. The hostel that we are staying in is a dump that is overpriced. Our beds are made of wood with a sheet over it and there is no running water.

The mountains were covered with Chinese tourists, many of which were old. I was surprised to see all of these old people walking throughout the mountains. Throughout the day, we saw many older people carrying goods up the mountain. Think about it, there are stores and hostels up here and no elevator to transport goods in (the cable car is strictly used for tourists), so the trails do have older men carrying up loads of goods.

Crazy!

The views from the mountain were beautiful. You will see in some of these photos metal locks and red ribbons. These are a symbol of good luck, so people will buy a lock and have their name engraved in it and then lock it to something up on the mountain. Not sure why they choose here, maybe because they are afraid of heights and/or falling off!

We spent the afternoon jumping from peak to peak. The hike was strenuous, either straight up or straight down, at some points, literally!!

I have an amazing fear of heights, so my hands remained soaking wet and my mind racing throughout the day! At one of the peaks we were able to climb around the edge of the mountain; this was absolutely scary as hell. We were strapped in with a shoulder harness that I could see myself easily popping out of if I fell. I can't stress how creepy this was, especially when you are relying on Chinese safety equipment!!

Here is a link to my walking across. It was filmed with my GoPro and I had the waterproof case on it, so, unfortunately, you can't hear much.

http://youtu.be/gEVlXHW8V6A

Hope the link works out good, no telling when your in China what is going to happen on the Internet.

Once we returned to safe ground and unstrapped our harness, I let out a sigh of great relief... I'm alive! Since we have knocked out all the peaks, we decided to head back to the hostel and rest.

Notice how the people are clenching to the chain for dear life. Some of the Chinese people were so scared of heights that they were walking down the stairs backwards. One wouldn't switch sides when foot traffic was coming her way.

First thing I wanted to do, shower! "Sorry, no running water!" Good God, I have to sleep in all of the filth that is covering my body! I have to peel my legs apart when I lay down! Joseph and I resisted buying all the bottled water on the mountain to wash off with and ordered some dinner. It was pretty cool being on top of this mountain under the moon with virtually no one around.

Day 119: Huà Shān, Shaanxi Province

So, we got into Xi'an relatively early in the afternoon. We have set aside four days to do some trekking in the Huà Mountain in Huà Shān. Before we took the bus to Huà Shān, we made a trip to the Terracotta Warriors. We are now way in the west of China and getting to the Terracotta Warriors can be out of the way if you are not already in this part of China. I was not that impressed with Xi'an. Outside of the train station there is concrete everywhere, which made it much hotter than it really is. Xi'an is the oldest city in China and is regarded as the birthplace of China. At the train station, we checked our big bags into a locker and grabbed a few essentials to hold us over for the next couple days. It will be so nice not to have my 50L pack!

Once we got to the Terracotta Warriors site, it was just more concrete, for miles and miles. It was like a cliché Communist area.. The concrete pathways were the same color as the buildings and the roofs, it was a little bit ridiculous. Regardless, seeing the warriors was cool. The Warriors were constructed over 2000 years ago to guard the ruler Qin Shi Huang when he passed away. The site was discovered in 1974 and around 6000 warriors and horses were unearthed; keep in mind, no two soldiers' faces look alike! Huang began his 36 year reign at the age of just 13! He was also a well accomplished ruler: he created a centralized government; he standardized measurements, currency and, writing; built over 6400km of new roads and canals; saving the best for last, he conquered six major kingdoms before turning 40! While seeing something that old is cool, it wasn't breath taking. They are life sized soldiers, some broken some still intact. You can't go down into the pits, so you have to view them from afar. I am glad I got to see them, but they are definitely not worth going way out of your way to see, unless if you are obsessed with Chinese history.

Afterwards, we made our way back to Xi'an and caught the next bus to Huà Shān. Joseph booked us a good hostel in what he thought was Huà Shān; he actually booked it in the wrong place, so we were stranded in the city with nowhere booked and its about 10pm. We stumbled upon this lady who showed us to a big hotel. Since the hotel was virtually empty, she gave us a huge discount. Flash packing at its finest.