Beijing - the City of Multiple Palaces with Auspicious and Prosperous Names

My weekend in Beijing was fun. Exhausting, but fun. Rachel and I didn't have time to take in all the usual tourist sites, so there was no hope of us getting a taste of 'real' Beijing, but everything we visited seemed to have more than it's fair share of Chinese tourists so the experience wasn't as 'Disneyfied' as I'd read in some guidebooks.

We flew into Beijing on Thursday night and took the airport shuttle bus into town (something I'd highly recommend if you don't want to spend a fortune on a taxi) and then a taxi to our hostel (http://www.xihuahotel.com/eng/zhide/index.asp) where we enthused over the TV in our twin room and then promptly went to sleep. When you're on a weekend tourist mission you don't have much time for bars and clubbing!

Friday was Ching Ming Festival, which was a public holiday, so the Forbidden City (or Palace Museum as the signposts in Beijing call it) was swarming with visitors. This doesn't detract from the immensity of the various palaces and halls inside the city, or the huge courtyards in between them, but it does add to the sense of claustrophobia when you've taken a few turns through the narrower alleyways and then find yourself face to face with a few locked gates. I'm not sure what I was expecting of the Forbidden City, but it didn't really fill me with awe. I could be impressed by the scale of the buildings and admire the intricate details and paintwork on the roofs, but perhaps it was all just too big to take in at once. The most interesting bit was an exhibition in one of the smaller, shadier courtyards, about the imperial concubines! It was full of little artefacts like snuff bottles and dominos that you could connect with on a human scale.

Me in the Forbidden City

Crowds between the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Gate

From the Forbidden City, we joined the flow of tourists gushing out the Tiananmen Gate, under the 6-lane freeway and back up on the other side in Tiananmen Square. The square was sprinkled with groups of tourists, in between which there were very serious marching guards in their green uniforms and little yellow camper-van shaped vehicles emptying the rubbish bins. I smiled at some little kids running around with Chinese flags and their mum asked me and Rachel to be in some photographs with them!

Tiananmen Gate from Tiananmen Square

In our attempt to conquer as much of Beijing as possible in one day, Rachel and I then caught a taxi (which we overpaid for as we tried to bargain instead of using the meter!) to the Temple of Heaven in Tiantan park. The temple is another impressive building with a beautiful roof, this time in blue and gold rather than the reds and yellows of the Forbidden City. The park around the temple immediately seemed a million miles away from the buzz of the city centre, even though we'd been less than 15 minutes in our taxi to get there. We heard some music and joined the crowd around a group of (I assume) amateur musicians playing traditional Chinese instruments for a few songs. The crowd and the group really seemed to be enjoying the music and they smiled at us as if bemused that foreigners would be interested in the show. We did take some time to admire the beautiful buildings in the park, but the best bit was when we copied the locals and stretched out on a patch of grass in the shade of some trees. There is very little grass in Hong Kong so to find a whole lawn of it in Beijing was a great suprise, especially as the grass was really lush and green and springy. The park is planted with lots of ancient cypress trees and has long treelined avenues that reminded me of the jardins in Paris.

The Temple of Heaven

Paris or Beijing?

After our busy day, Rachel and I set out in search of some Peking Duck for dinner. The hostel recommended a restaurant to us, but it had a 30 minute wait and wasn't cheap at all so we checked out a few more places close to the Dong'an night market (where they sell interesting things on sticks). We eventually settled on a place that would do us half a duck, but it turned out to be mostly fat with a bit of skin and a hint of meat so we were quite disappointed really.

On Day 2, we were in our hostel lobby at 6:15 to head out to the Great Wall of China. The bus took about 3 hours and was filled with a French school group, which Rachel was eager to leave as soon as we started walking. We walked the section between Jinshangling and Simatai, although we cheated and took the world's slowest cable car to miss out the first 2 towers. This section of the wall is steep and involves climbing up many many many steps and then carefully scrambling down the other side where the bricks on top of the wall are broken and loose. Although there were lots of tourists, it didn't feel overrun, and there was a nice feeling of cameraderie as we all struggled to deal with the rollercoaster like route. Rachel and I adopted an English guy called Tom who was also on our coach trip and was on Day 2 of his round the world trip.

The Great Wall of China!

Me and Tom debate which way to go

At the end of our section of wall ("Cross the chain link fence and then turn left at the second tower" as the guide said) we had to walk down a well paved path to the carpark... OR... take an entirely authentic Chinese zipwire across a reservoir followed by a little boat trip! The three of us stood and contemplated our options for at least five minutes. After our guide whizzed off on the zipwire, I decided to give it a go. We were carefully hooked on with some lower body harnesses and after we'd sat down and kicked off it was all rather relaxing really. It almost blew the fine loess dust out of our hair.

Rachel and I wave goodbye!

On Day 3, Rachel and I had arranged to meet Tom at the Summer Palace - a highly landscaped park where the Emperors and Empresses used to laze around in summer. The guidebook makes it sound a bit like a park, and it's possible that there are park like areas, but the place is SO vast that we only managed to cover a small corner of it. We admired more red and yellow and blue buildings, saw an acrobatic show and girls dancing with long sleeves on the Great Stage (apparently the biggest of the 3 imperial stages in China), dressed up in some imperial outfits for photographs and had a ride on a pedalo! The Summer Palace contains a MASSIVE lake - so big we could barely see across it in the haze - and lots of Chinese people take pedalos and battery-powered boats out on it, so it felt like a 'real Beijing' experience even although it was clearly a frivolous tourist activity.

Rachel through the painted glass in one of many courtyards

Pedalos on the lake

Empress Jill, Emperor Tom and Empress Rachel

After all that, it was time to catch our (delayed) flight back to Hong Kong. I was sad not to get the chance to see more temples, wander the 'hutongs' (alleyways) or take a bicycle ride, but I'm glad a went for the short time I had.

Borneo travels

Happy New Year!



It's been a while since I blogged, but I've been busy in Borneo!



We arrived on December 23rd (at 1am!) and (later that day) got picked up by the lovely people at Borneo Native Homestay and Tours (http://www.borneonativehomestay.com/) who we'd booked our 3 day, 2 night trek up Mount Kinabalu with. Mount Kinabalu is the highest peak in South East Asia (4092.5m above sea level) and is apparently one of the easiest mountains to climb. However, if you're not very fit and haven't done any training other than taking the stairs rather than the lift every day, it's definitely not easy! Luckily our first day involved nothing more strenous than visiting the visitor centre and watching a video about Mt Kinabalu.



We set off on our hike at about 9am on Christmas Eve. We did the Timphon Trail which is the easiest, shortest route, but involves an awful lot of very large steps. There are 7 shelters to pass between Timpohon Gate and the Laban Rata Guesthouse where we would spend the night and Rachel and I stopped at every single one of them, and plenty of other places along the way! It began to rain quite heavily around Shelter Number 4, so we donned our waterproofs (thankyou Jude!) and continue to trudge uphill. We didn't see any views due to the cloud and mists, but we did get to see the cool vegetation. There are impressive tree ferns (ferns the size of trees!) that are some of the oldest plant types on earth and crazy pitcher plants that slowly digest any insects that get trapped inside them. We stumbled in to Laban Rata at about 4pm and peeled off our wet layers before grabbing a hot cup of tea. The Guesthouse has a really nice atmosphere, everyone is going through the same challenge, and when the rain cleared up a bit later we were able to go out onto the balcony and admire the stunning view of blanket cloud below us and the dark granite peaks above. After digging in to the buffet dinner and chatting with a few fellow climbers, it was time to have a nap...



... then at 1:30am on Christmas Day, we were woken up! I'd set the alarm for 2:15 but other people in our dorm started rustling about much earlier and there didn't seem much point in lying in bed. We had a little breakfast (Remy our guide had said don't eat too much in case of altitude sickness!) and put on our Santa hats (Rachel had brought 7 along and distributed them amongst our fellow climbers) and headed out in the dark at about 3am. The full moon made the peak look even more impressive as it glistened slightly against the black sky. It's surprisingly cold at 3am at 3600m, so we were wrapped in layers of clothing and woolly gloves, scarfs and hats. The effort of climbing, however, rapidly warmed us up! It was extremely tough going that morning. I would stumble forward for about 20 steps and then need to sit down and catch my breath, then pull myself back into standing position before the cold set in! The path over the granite dome is pretty steep in places and there are sections where you pretty much haul yourself up using a rope, although things flatten out a little when you get closer to Low's Peak, which is the highest point. With our extremely slow progress, the sun began to rise long before we'd reached Low's Peak and it was extremely tempting just to sit down where we were and watch the colours glow, but our guide was very good and kept pushing us on, so we reached the top before the sun was fully up and were able (after another rest to get our breaths back!) to admire the beautiful views and take some photographs. After that, the world seemed to be a much brighter place, for a while, and I felt pretty cheerful on our descent to Laban Rata for breakfast. We had a short break there to repack our bags and have some more coffee, and then we began the long walk back to the Timpohon Gate. It rained again on the way down, so things got quite low for a bit, but as we got closer and closer we started singing some Christmas songs. We finally made it back to the gate at about half 3 in the afternoon. We were given our colour certificates and fell into the back of our waiting van... one of the best things about booking your climb through a tour group!

The other worldly landscape near the peak.

Sun coming up

Me and Rachel at the top!

From the mountain we were driven for about 5 hours to Tempurung Seaside Resort (http://www.borneo-authentic.com/tempurung2.php) which was a bit of a long trip when our day had started at 2am! But the drive was worth it, we were greeted by extremely helpful staff who took us straight to our room to dump our baggage and then whisked us back to the restaurant to help ourselves from the impressive Christmas buffet. The restaurant is open sided and thatch roofed. It was amazing to suddenly find ourselves in such a serene place, sitting at a carefully laid table, being brought glasses of ice cold water and listening to the sounds of waves on the beach. The only hiccup was the lack of phone or internet connections, which combined with an extremely useless mobile phone signal to make it pretty impossible for me and Rachel to send Christmas wishes to anyone.


We stayed at Tempurung for 3 nights to recover from our climb. Our muscles were aching the next day and we hobbled about like old women and moaned every time we had to stand up. Swimming in the sea helped, as did the massage that Amy (one of the lovely staff) arranged for us on the third day. I think we had just enough time to appreciate the peace and beauty of the lodge, if we'd stayed a bit longer it would've got a bit boring as there's nothing much to do, although we could've arranged trips to go white water rafting if we'd had the energy!


We were picked up at Tempurung by the lovely Borneo Native Homestay people (our driver, Conran, was incredibly helpful and full of fascinating facts about the things we passed - for example he told us that in a few years time all the fuel in Sabah will be 30% palm oil) and driven back into Kota Kinabalu to catch our bus to Uncle Tan's Operations Base near Sepilok. Sadly, we couldn't get a seat on any of the earlier buses so had to leave at 8pm, which meant travelling in the dark and not getting to Uncle Tan's Ops Base until 3am! The bus was clean and comfortable enough to nap on and the driver helpfully dropped us off at the right place and pointed at the building we wanted, so we were able to get ourselves inside and fall into bed pretty quick.


Uncle Tan's (http://www.uncletan.com/wildlifetour.html) is a camp in secondary rainforest along the Kinabatangan river. It started off as a really small basic camp run by Uncle Tan (who is sadly dead now) and has grown over the years. Most of the guides live on camp year round and in the peak season they employ part-time workers from local villages. They're also involved in conservation projects - at the minute they're growing tree seedlings to try and create an elephant corridor with the WWF to connect some of the patches of fragmented rainforest.


The camp is pretty basic but has everything you need for a few nights stay. The rooms are basically raised wooden boxes with 3 sides of wood and the front side covered in wire mesh to keep the monkeys out. There is a troop of long-tailed macaques that like to visit the camp in the afternoon and you can hear them dropping on to the tin roofs. During our stay, one of the other guests was napping in a hammock and a monkey came and stole his packet of cigarettes! We saw an awful lot of monkeys, most of them hanging out in trees by the river when we did our river trips, including the strange nosed proboscis monkeys that only live in Borneo. There were also a few crocodile spottings, which is a bit disconcerting when you're only in a wee boat, and a river otter, which was a bit nicer to look at! The boat trips were my favourite part. The camp is set in a flooded woodland so you spend a lot of time winding your way out to the main river through the tree trunks, with large branches covered in ferns and bryophytes flying over your head. At first you wonder how on earth the guides know where to go, but by the end of your stay you start to recognise the way yourself and it feels like you've learned a way into a secret garden.

Inside our cage/room!

As well as the river trips, we did a day walk and a night walk in the swampy forests around the camp. We were all told to wear rubber boots (wellies!) for our walk, but the water levels were so high that the murky puddles came right over the top! The wet feet were very much worth it when we found ourselves standing directly underneath a young male orangutan. He just hung out in the shade, gazing at us nonchalantly as we snapped hundreds of photographs (I'd lost my camera but Rachel gave me hers whilst she took video clips) and didn't even complain when we followed him for a bit as he wandered off. The night walks were more focussed on little creatures - we saw lots of frogs and spiders and the Borneo Blue Tarantula and a black scorpion which the guide let us each have turn in holding. It was surprisingly light for such a scary, spikey looking creature.

The beautiful Orangutan

On our last morning in camp there were no spaces to go out on the boat trip (the new arrivals get priority) so me, Rachel and a Glaswegian girl called Louise had to stay in camp. Louise's boyfriend John went out on the trip and reported that we didn't miss much, just a few more monkeys, and we were much cheered up when a few monitor lizards decided to come and visit the campsite! After that, there was only time to lie in the hammock for a bit and look at the pygmy squirrels (SOOOO small and cute) chasing each other around the tree before we had to pile back into the boats with all our stuff and say goodbye to Never Never Land.


The long bus trip back to Kota Kinabalu was air conditioned, which was fantastic after the oppressive heat of afternoons in the jungle, and as we passed Kinabalu National Park I was able to look up at the spikey peaks poking through the cloud and remind myself that I'd been up there! We had the same experience when we saw the mountain from the window of our plane, but somehow it all seemed a bit surreal.


We made it back to Hong Kong by 1am on Thursday morning, by sneakily using our 1am ferry tickets for the 11:15 ferry from Macau! Then it was back to work.... only for a month and then it's Chinese New Year!