Travelling Through China

Setting off from home was exciting and nerve-wracking and scary as hell. China wasn't just a little fun holiday, it was the first destination of many to come. China was mine and my besties little trip together to say goodbye to each other for the next two to three years before setting off on our different paths.

The China adventures started off a little rocky. We had a cancelled flight before getting to Beijing and I'm so grateful I have Cenny in my life, without her I'd probably still be stuck wherever we were. Everything was in Chinese, no one wanted to help us, signs pointed in every direction, constantly told we had to wait until the following day to get another flight which meant we would be a whole day behind our planned itinerary and would have missed all other internal transportation we had already booked.

Cenny, you absolute legend of a human, my best friend, thank you for having a fierce streak that no body wants to mess with. She got us on the next flight to Beijing that night. I still don't know how.

We only stayed one night in Beijing and took a train the next day out to Zhangjiajie, Hunan Region. A 24 hour train ride on a hard seat. Why would we do this you ask? Cost effective? Well yes, but no. We had tickets booked for bunk bed sleeper rooms on the 21 hour train. We had stayed in the Outer Residential Area in Beijing which isn't really tourist friendly so there was a lack of English signage and we got lost three times in the train terminal and missed our first train by 1 minute. Heart breaking stuff. But, we got to experience China in a way that not many, other than working class Chinese citizens, usually do.

As uncomfortable as it was, as long as it was, sometimes as shady as it was... I would recommend this 24 hour train to anyone. We started off shy and in Cenny's case, a little angry. A true warrior female, Cenny doesn't like to be stared at or felt victimised in any way. Older Chinese men would stare at us and wouldn't turn around when she asked them too.

Many working class Chinese citizens haven't seen Caucasian people before. Let alone young women with green and blue eyes and who are wearing short shorts to top it off. That's our bad. Plus, pretty much less than 1% of people on this part of the train speak any English and we're not fluent in Chinese either. But we made friends, played with children, looked after them while their parents slept, smoked a lot of cigarettes because yes, in China you can literally smoke wherever you want.

We passed many towns, some poor towns filled with people working beside the trainline, other amazingly lit up cities that looked empty. China is vast and in most places we saw, pretty green. That train is an experience I'll never regret. It was incredibly tiring and by the time we arrived in Zhangjiajie, we were ready for a good and proper sleep. But instead, we explored the beautiful Yongding District.

Food stalls and markets litter the streets alongside food carts and small grocery stores and rundown restaurants. Durian, the smelliest fruit you'll ever displease your nostrils with are forefront in all the fruit markets. Friendly locals let us play with their dogs in the dog park. I was taught how to use chopsticks to eat my now favourite food. Dumplings by the way, anyone tried them? Get on it.

As it got darker, we followed loud music down a dark, tree lined alleyway and found around 100 people ballroom dancing in the middle of a park. While watching, the dancers took our hands and lead us in the tango, waltz, and foxtrot and we danced the night away until our feet couldn't stand any longer.

There were bumper cars just down the road in the park where we played against violent children that weren't afraid to brutally bump into our carts. Young Chinese teenagers are sore losers... but so am I so it was a battle and a half. Their parents didn't seem to mind as long as the kids were kept entertained. Cenny and I walked away in pain.

Zhangjiajie is home to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, which also has an area dedicated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. We took a local tour bus up the steep and sharp winding Tongtian Avenue which means 99 bends, to Tianmen Mountain. We dressed up in traditional Chinese dresses called Hanfu. Hiked up the 999 steps to the Tianmen cave where we proceeded up to the peak via the elevators built under the mountain. 4983 feet in the sky, it was like walking in a cloud and we couldn't see 3 feet in front of us. The word unbelievable is an understatement.

The quietness of being on the chair lift over to the other side of the mountain was eerie. Just the two of us on a little wooden chair, hanging above the cliffs, not seeing in front, below or behind. When the empty chairs came back towards us through the fog it was creepy as hell.

Glass bottom walk ways line the East and West sides on the mountain. Fairy and stone boulder gardens lead the way to Tianmenshan Temple which was constructed in the Tang Dynasty, 618 - 907. It's like walking through an enchanted fairy-tale.

We took the cable car down the mountain, over stunning emerald views, with a family that quite literally saved me from copping a fine or imprisonment for accidentally jumping the queue of 1000's of people, all the way to the bottom.

We didn't mean to jump queue, it was honestly just a very confusing system and the security guards were savage. One of them grabbed my wrist when he saw I had the wrong ticket and held on tightly while Cenny and the family were ahead and got lost in the crowd. He was a nasty pasty but the man we have come to call our China Grandpa stepped in, growled his disapproval at the security guard and pulled me protectively away from the scene.

Plus if we hadn't of jumped queue we would have missed our flight that evening. Wherever you are China Grandpa, I appreciate you and your ferocious energy is something that will stay with me forever. I sincerely hope you and your beautiful family are happy, healthy and well. What an absolute stand up human being.

Next up, we're on a plane to Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Wow oh wow what a stunning place. Culture, food, night markets, pubs in old temples, cocktail flutes, love lock bridges, ear cleaning "doctors" in the middle of the market, black matcha instead of green, panda ears, massages, ancient nunneries, street food, theatre shows, ah what a thrill! Take me back?

The best part, taking an almost two hour scenic drive through mountains, under mountains, and up to the Dujiangyan Giant Panda Base. We were able to clean their sanctuaries, bake their cakes and feed them! I was ecstatic. The babies are cute (Baby animals usually always are) and the giant Pandas were amazing. We were well educated, fed delicious food and had a whole day to walk around and watch all the pandas. Well worth the drive, and our private driver was a legend. Dream come true for me, an experience of a lifetime.

We visited Aidao Nunnery, a small but beautiful and tranquil temple in the middle of a busy street near Wenshu Monastery. It's so quiet and peaceful inside, it's an oasis of calm that was built in 1368. There was food I've never seen before put in the bowl in front of me. When visiting the nunnery, the monks have prayer and chanting rituals that happen daily at 11:30 and people joining for lunch can spectate. They make tasty foods and share with all who visit at the right time. There's no speaking while in the lunch room. Everyone leaves a decent donation, clears up after themselves and does their own dishes. This beautiful temple is a place of peace.

Our hostel had a, what I would call, sexy little bar downstairs. Jazzy, snazzy and dark with a great selection of beers, ciders, spirits and cocktails. We spent a fair amount of time here meeting other travellers and hearing some pretty cool stories. If you're travelling and staying at hostels, make sure you spend some time meeting other travellers in the communal areas. Drink, be safe, eat, be merry, share and listen. It's one of the best parts of travelling.

We saw a live theatre show at Jinjiang Theatre. We had never seen anything like it before. The costumes were exquisite. Singing, dancing, acrobatics, flame spitting. It was spectacular and I'm so sure some of it was even real magic. Sichuan Opera, did I mention we've never seen anything like it before?

There were probably numerous places that were great for nightlife but we chose Jinli Old Street. This is where we had our ears cleaned in the middle of the market. Weird. Red lanterns light up the street from above, snack stalls offered Chinese delicacies, folk music played through the bar windows, small theatre shows were performed on stages, names written on grains of rice and made into necklaces.

We walked around the whole thing, ate these strange foods and shopped in the retail stores until we found a pub in an old temple and enjoyed cocktail flutes on a balcony where we could view the street from above. I had a great night exploring with my bestie and when I think back on nights like this, the freedom, the fun and the laughs, I miss her a lot.

Our last stop was back to Beijing. We stayed in an extremely busy hostel near the Qianmen Residential District. The bedroom wasn't great but it was cheap so I wasn't going to complain anytime soon. The 365 Inn Hostel had a great reception and tour desk for checking in services and tourist destination bookings as well as a decent sized bar at the front. Serving food and alcohol, it could get pretty noisy but there were travellers from almost any country you can think of staying in this one hostel on a busy market street and the multicultural diversity was great.

We took a bus ride organised through the hostel, just under 2 hours north of Beijing to hike The Great Wall of China in a less touristy area. Jinshanling, a mountainous province in the Hebei region of China is incredibly imposing and with The Great Wall of the Simatai section looming overhead, it's also pretty intimidating. 11kms of strenuous hiking later, across restored and unrestored steep walls that date back to 1368, we made our way back down the wall to meet with our group.

Only 8 of us out of about 30 hiked the whole way without taking the chairlift. Can highly recommend you skip the chair lift. I can easily say for the both of us that the feeling of euphoria when we made it to the meeting point was like nothing we've experienced before.

In a city so big there's always bound to be a market just around the corner. We met up with a Portuguese gal we met on our Great Wall hike at a local market in Wangfujing Street and explored for a while before finding somewhere open for a few drinks. I'll never forget the scorpions and sea creatures like squid squirming on sticks like kebabs, still alive, waiting to be cooked and eaten. I like to try all different types of foods but I couldn't stomach that and Cenny had a good laugh about it.

The day we went to the Forbidden City was hectic. The streets had all been closed down for some reason so getting there by foot or taxi was hard. It started out as a fairly decent day, but absolutely bucketed down rain after we left the hostel so we ended up in very unattractive but funny rain ponchos.

Because of the street closures we had to take a lot of underground routes which made life a little harder, along with the heavy and cold rain our moods sank a little more with each new road block. Soldiers marched through the streets and border checks popped up overnight to check everyone's bags at each street corner. Apparently this happens in Shanghai too. I'm not sure how true it is, but we were told it happen often for a show of power over the people. Cheers for making life more difficult for the working class that already have it hard enough. (Sarcasm noted yeah?)

Eventually we made it to the Forbidden City. If you've read Part two of Travelling Through China, you know all about this amazing place already. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site for us to check off our lists and a pretty massive one at that. We shivered our way through to each temple and museum until we couldn't bear the cold any longer and went souvenir shopping instead.

We were reluctant to leave such exquisite architecture behind, so gold and glamorous and detailed but without taking coats and jackets we were trembling with goose bumps more from the cold than the temples.

Because of the road closures, taxi's had quadrupled their prices and couldn't take us the whole way to the hostel. We walked for a bit but the cold eventually convinced us to pay for the overpriced taxi.

Was a bit of weird day but we made it through and back to the warm hostel where we made plenty of friends and ate our last dinner together for what has now been two years at a nearby fancy restaurant to celebrate our 10 up and down days in China. We ordered Chinas specialty, Peking Duck. https://www.quanjude.com.cn/ I never used to eat duck but holy wow it was delicious.

Then after a drunken night in at 365 Inn Hostel Beijing with our new friends, Cenny and I said our goodbyes. We hugged and cried and while sharing a cab with a new mate, waved out the window until we couldn't see each other anymore.

We arrived at the airport, drunkenly scootered around on luggage trolleys, drank some more and then parted ways when a flustered airline worker came and found me at the bar and advised me I had almost missed the last boarding call. Apparently they had been saying my name over the loud speaker for a while but I never understood it because they couldn't pronounce my name. That's not a Chinese thing, that's an everybody thing. *insert laughter here*.

I ran to the terminal, escorted by the lovely airline official and boarded just in time to message Cenny a picture of my face with mascara streaming down my cheeks to show her how much I already missed her. Then I passed out. I woke up later with a bottle of water in front of me and the kind lady beside me had put my seatbelt on me while I slept.

Like I said earlier, experience of a lifetime.