16th August: Beers and queers

Today is Fi’s birthday. And what a better way to start your birthday than waking up on a train, one hour from Shanghai with the smell of Pot Noodle oozing up your nostrils. Yes, they even eat them for breakfast. We were exhausted and the humidity in Shanghai is an absolute killer. No one could speak a word of English and we were even told to move on by Security outside a building where we decided to sit down for a breather. Eventually a FedEx crew were passing so I got them to direct us to our hostel.

After a quick shower we headed down to the Bund. Shanghai is really modern and again with really good underground systems. Back at Renmin Square I picked up a snack on the street. This time it was a kind of noodle/pancake/cheese thing. It was gorgeous, much nicer than scorpion. For Fi’s birthday we decided to treat ourselves to a good meal. We ended up at a really nice Indian and after dinner we hit the nightlife of Shanghai. The first pub we spotted, we headed for it. Myself and Rich walked in first but they stopped Fi. Apparently, we were heading into a Japanese gentlemen’s club. No ladies allowed. So we moved on to a quaint little spot that serves shots with every drink. After a few of those it was on to the night club.
The night club was on the top of a shopping centre, which was a bit weird. As we went in we were put sitting at a seat. It looked as if they didn't want us mixing with the locals. After a beer or two my bladder was calling out to me, so I headed for the toilet. Like at home, there is a bathroom guy armed with sweets and perfumes at the sinks looking for tips. I noticed this as I went in. I was the only person in there. I proceeded to do my business at the urinal when suddenly I felt two hands massaging my back as I was taking a piss!


Me: NO!
Toilet guy: Blah blah blah in chineese.
Me: NO! NO! Get away from me.
Toilet guy: Blah blah blah in chineese (still massaging.....and taking a little peek)
Me: Get the F@%K away from me.


I zipped up and went over to wash my hands. He followed me and as I tried to leave he insisted that I gave him a tip, and became very angry. My angry stare got him to move away from the door. Now I couldn't go to the toilet again all night! Very strange experience. When Rich heard my story he too decided to give the toilets a miss for the night.


After a few more drinks I spotted a flashing sign pointing upstairs. It was like a call from heaven.....


KARAOKE ROOMS UPSTAIRS!


We burst up the stairs and spent the rest of the night in a drunken haze screaming out such classic hits as "Livin on a prayer'' and ''Sweet child of mine''. Absolutely great craic!


Conveniently we sneaked out of the place reaslising we had no money to pay for our 3 hour private karaoke room session. Ah well!

15th August: Cabin fever

During last night, a new German girl came into our dorm, something Rich must have slept through because as he tried to make his way in the dark to the toilet from his top bunk he slipped and fell. Literally onto the new girl who thought that she was being molested by some ogre! After a while she calmed down a bit and agreed not to call the police. Luckily today we leave Beijing, so an awkward second night in the dorm was prevented.
Myself and Fi got up early to go down and watch the raising of the flag in Tianamen Square. At 4.30am it was mobbed with people. We were nowhere close to it with the thousands of people. Nice to see it all the same. For the rest of the day we walked the streets of Beijing. There was stalls everywhere selling street food so this was the time to step up to the….ahem….plate.

There are certain things that I don’t like to eat, mushrooms being one of them. It’s not the taste that turns me off, it’s the texture but after eating a fried scorpion on the streets of Beijing I would gladly stuff a mushroom in my mouth. Again, it was the texture that turned me off…..and the taste…and the look of it…..and the crunchy tail….EUCH!!!

It was then time to go get the train. A 12 hour sleeper train to Shanghai. When we got to the train station we had our first real experience of China. Masses of people squashing into the station, chaos prevailing! I’ve never seen so many boobs in my life with all the women breastfeeding. I think some grandmothers were even giving it a go. The grandfathers would have happily joined in too if they weren’t so busy spitting the contents of their nasal tubes onto the ground.

On the train was a bit more peaceful. We had gotten a soft sleeper, which is a luxury. A cabin with 4 beds and a Chinese woman. She seemed a bit intimidated by us. One thing that is really popular in China is the Pot Noodle. But not the one’s we’re used to. These things are sold in buckets as a full dinner. Same principle. Just add boiling water, and all the carriages have hot water dispensers so the place was full of them. You can just imagine the smell. It’s like sticking you’re head into a sauna powered by pot noodles when you get on the train.

14th August: The Great (hard, tough, big, hot, steep) Wall

Today is the day that I became a man.....according to Mao anyway. He is of the opinion that you are not a real man until you walk the Great Wall. And after today I half agree with him. We were told not to go on a tour as they bring you to a Hollywood version of the wall where the wall is all nicely preserved and there are stalls selling memorabilia every 2 meters.

So, we got a bus to Jinshaning, in Inner Mongolia and decided to hike along the wall to Simati. It was a scorcher of a day and we had decided to walk the length of the wall with 500mls of water each. Stupid? Yes. The walk up to the wall itself is pretty steep and immediately you get a sense of how the Mongolians must have felt as they approached this monstrosity.

Once on top of the wall you are hit by it's enormity and can see it stretching to the horizon in both directions. It really is breath-taking. The heat took it's toll and after 2 hours the pace was down to a crawl. At each watchtower we were given a bit of shade but quickly had to move on because Mongolian farmers try to sell you their life's possessions.

The last hour of the wall was the hardest, a 70 degree incline up steps that were falling down around us. We had the option of either walking an extra half an hour to get to the road but me and Fi decided to take the flying fox down which took less than 30 seconds. They tied us together because they said we were too light and if we went on our own we'd get stuck hanging 30 feet up in the air in the middle of the wire. Nice.

Sweaty Betty and sweaty rambo

The trip back to Beijing took forever because the driver decided to pick up his lady on the side along the way, or should I say, way out of our way. She insisted on screeching, the whole way back to Beijing (from my level of Chinese I think she was talking about some bitch in work who was wearing the same nail polish today) while we were wishing we had brought the earplugs.

13th August: Japan again

We were awake early so we decided to get the day off to an early start. Since Rich was a late edition to the trip and he has no idea where we are going or what our plans are, he is getting a bit confused. He keeps saying that he loves being in Japan.

''When I see the people on the street, with the eyes and all, I just presume we're in Japan.'' (I think we should have gone through the trip with him before we left Ireland because he seemed very shocked when he found out that we would also be going to Vietnam.)

We attempted to rent bikes for the day but the guy was a total prick. Lazy out, didn't want to help us at all. So, we headed off in search of the Summer Palace.

This place is amazing. Set beside a lake it is by far the most beautiful sight in Beijing.

We spent hours around the palace and even rented a pedalo on the lake. The place was packed full of chinese tourists. Not a westerner in sight. You'd tend to forget that with 1.2 billion people some of them must be tourists.

From there it was over to the Lama temple, the most impressive Buddist temple I've seen. It's huge! Every builing houses a giant Budda, with the biggest Budda housed in the very last building. To give you the scale of it, since no photos are allowed (and I nearly got Kung Fu'd in to next week) his eye was as tall as me!

We rushed back to the hostel and Rich collapsed onto the bed. Me and Fi went to find the famous Chinese opera but ended up being taken down a really dark, intimidating alley which we got out of as quick as we could. No opera but an adventure none the less. Rich was still asleep when we got back and slept till morning.

12th August: Day two

After 12 hours sleep we eventually got up and decided to get off to a good start. We went down the street and into a chineese restaurant for breakfast. The menu was all in chineese so all we could do was point. It is the biggest language barrier I have come across in my travels and explaining things only got worse as the trip went on.

It was straight to the Forbidden Palace from there.

It looks a lot more impressive from outside with the massive portrait of Mao looking over Tianamen Square. Inside, there isn't much to see and the museums are very badly laid out with artifacts that were not that interesting at all. What was amazing was the scale of the place though. We were walking for hours around it and i'd say we missed a lot. The designs on the roofs were the most spectacular with unbelievabe artwork. From there, it was on to the Heavenly Gate Palace. Our mission was to get there using only public transport which we did with ease, as the subway and bus system in the city is a dream. Travelling around I was completely shocked. It was not as I had imagined China to be. Really modern, spotlessly clean and not as crowded as you would expect.

We arrived at the Heavenly Gate Palace to find that it was closed but we walked around the park and got to see the main sights anyway.

After a heavy day's walking we had a few beers (Tsingtao beer, gorgeous stuff at 30 cent a pint) and headed to the bed.

11th August: Day one

I woke up and we were an hour from Hong Kong. We transfered to the Beijing flight with great ease as the airport is very well layed out, with plenty of English signs.

In Beijing we got the bus into the city. The bus passed Tianamen Square where literally hundreds of thousands of people had gathered to watch the lowering of the flag at sunset. We jumped off the bus and hopped on the 52, in the wrong direction! We jumped off again and got on the right bus. We then had to get on bus no. 2 to get to the hostel. We showed the driver the name and he seemed to know. He dropped us off in the middle of no where! Since we didn't have the name written down in English no taxi driver could help us.

By some stroke of luck, two french girls passed and we asked them if they knew where the hostel was. They had been there a day ago and had a card. So, they put us in a taxi and showed the driver the card and in a matter of minutes we were at the hostel.

Club sandwich + Beer + Day of travelling = BED

10th August:China at last

I looked out the window and saw Dave Murray getting on to a bus, he has arrived in Dubai and is staying in my old apartment. I ran down and met all the Newbie's heading off for their orientation day. None of them have stepped outside for more than a few seconds because of the heat.

For the rest of the day I lay by the pool hoping that today would go smoothy compared to yesterday.

They did and we got on the plane after a few pints in the Irish village. The flight was excellent, huge seats, good food. I took some travel advice and took a pillow from the plane which would prove invaluable in later days!