Our Travel Blog

This covers the two days traveling to Tibet.

Woke up this morning to a misty start. The city of Xining is different the others we have stayed at, it is much quieter both traffic and pedestrian wise. Te sidewalks are probably 6 to 8 times wider than Beijing. We left out marbled palace room and headed down to breakfast. The breakfasts are buffet style, and I went hunting for the omelette station; there wasn’t one. I asked one of the chefs who spoke English, and the next thing I knew a junior cook had been sent off to find and chop the ingredients an make me an omelette. Seems there is usually no call for them; it was the best omelette so far this trip.

Next we headed out to the local supermarket to get some snacks for the train, as well as some bottled water. The supermarket was enormous, think a large Walmart on steroids. Shopping done, it was back to the hotel for 30 minutes before meeting up with our driver for the trip to the railway station. Travelling to Tibet is not straight forward, you need a Chinese Visa, a Tibet travel permit, a train ticket and in our case two passports! Our passports were set to expire n April 2017 which would have been fine for this journey, but our travel agent advised us to get a new 10-year passport as this would allow us to obtain a multi entry Chinese visa good for 10 years. If we had kept with the old passport or got a 5 year one, then the visa would only be a single entry one for the same price.

We final obtained the boarding pass, and it was off to security, just like an airport. My can of deodorant was confiscated as it was deemed inflammable! All we had to do now was say good by to our guide and wait for the train.

The New Xining Railway Station

We had pulled a bit of a trick in getting the train accommodation we did. We booked a sleeper, but the best sleeper they had was 4 berths. Being the quiet, shy retiring couple we are we didn’t relish a 22-hour trip with a couple of stranger who, in all probability we wouldn’t be able to communicate with. We finished up paying for the 4 berths in the cabin which really wasn’t that expensive and so got it ail to ourselves. Once we got on board we were really glad we went that route, the cabins were minuscule with 2 upper and 2 lower bunks which doubled as seating.

Good for 2 Cramped for 4

We met up with a group of Chines people in the same car who came from Toronto, so that helped us greatly when it came to ordering dinner. Again good prices, a filling meal for the 2 of us for $20. Currently we are travelling on a plateau about 9000ft above sea level. By about 5AM tomorrow we will be at the highest point of 16,655ft before descending into Lhasa at a mere 13,500ft. The train is equipped with oxygen ports and breathing tubes are available if required! Below are general views along the way.

A little hard to tell from the above photos, but that truck is carrying 26 vehicles, loaded 2 abreast!

Hand Cut  Sheaves of Wheat

Many of the workers we saw were hand cutting the crops, a few had combine harvesters and one enterprising girl was using a whipper-snipper!!

Scare Crows Chinese Style

Our Train

Sunset

Yaks

Village in the Foothills

Closer View of Village

More Yaks

Almost all the country houses we saw had large walled in areas.

Small Town – Big Police Station

Yak Close up

Army Camp

Military Helicopter

Not Sure – But it was colourful

Not Yaks – Sheep

5*  Sleeper China Style

Up Marke House
In many places tents were set up in the fields.

The above is for our friend Charlie who was having problems installing a steel roof, it’s easy just weigh it down with cinder blocks!

We arrived in Lhasa on time to the minute. Once we had cleared “immigration” we met up with our guide and headed to the hotel. Compared with the recent “palaces” we have been staying in this one is a little less extravagant, but none the less perfectly adequate for us.

After arriving it had been suggested  that we relaxed and acclimatised for the rest of the day as we are at 12,000ft  or 3656 metres above sea level. After being cooped up on a train we decided to risk a slow walk for some exercise. What better to do than go and find the only geocache in Lhasa. We succeeded with no ill effects.

For homework you can read about Lhasa

An interesting eating experience last night. Our guide had recommended a restaurant opposite the hotel, with a caution not to eat at the smaller establishments. We headed over to the restaurant only to find we were in the land of no English speakers! Through a series of pictures on the menu we managed to order a main dish and rice each. The staff seemed to believe this was not enough and kept pushing for us to order soup and other appetizers. Luckily we were able to resist, when the dishes came we were convinced that they had brought us 2 main dishes each! Unfortunately, it didn’t’ all get eaten. After dinner we walked along the street where the smaller restaurants were. I now understand the caution from our guide. In many cases the food was stored outside and was still moving (as in living / breathing) There were bullfrogs that could be killed and cooked to order, lobsters suffered the same fate as did some unidentifiable thing that would have been at home on a Klingon dish.

This morning we headed out to the Terra Cotta Warriors site. Again you can read about them HERE.

Before we arrived at the site we stopped at a small factory that makes full size and miniature warriors using the same techniques as the original artisans used. The warriors are hollow and their heads are detachable. The reason for this is to allow the heat and moisture to escape during the firing and cooling process.

Full Size Torso

Detailing Models

The Kiln

The factory also made Chinese Lacquered Furniture

Having bought our souvenir warrior we headed off to the real thing

Both of us thought that the warriors were in the open, but they are all under the cover of buildings. Makes sense really, as they need to preserve them from the elements. The warriors were first discovered in 1974 by a couple of farmers digging a well. When the archaeologists started work they discovered most of the warriors and other artifacts had been destroyed, this destruction was not a recent thing, it dated back to shortly after the warriors were created when the peasants revolted and set fire to the wooden structure covering the site.

In the photos below, the complete warriors are the result of painstaking reconstruction from the damaged parts. Other pictures show the state that the site was found in, and also some area where digging has not yet commenced. Some areas have been left untouched while research into preservation was carried out. When the warriors were first discovered they were all brightly painted. Within days of uncovering them the colours all faded.

Only the first few rows have been restored

Below are the remains as found

The Warriors Hospital – renovation in progress


Pictures of the warriors before the colour faded

After touring the 3 pits that are known to contain warriors, we headed off for a visit to the museum and some lunch.

After lunch our luck changed (for the worse) as it started to rain. We headed back to the car for our trip to the airport. We were a little early and would have a couple of hours to kill, unfortunately after waiting an hour, a 90 minute delay was announced for the flight. Seems delays are common over here! Our delay was “undelayed” by 15 minutes so we got airborne about an hour late.

Driving into the city of Xining we were amazed at how man of the high-rises were lit up with both stationary and moving lights, a little like Las Vegas. On arriving at the hotel we had our first real issue of the trip, there was no reservation for us. After about 10 minutes of checking and hunting through the reservation system it transpired that we were a day early! Luckily there was room available so here we are. Travel agent has been asked to confirm the remaining hotel reservations!!!

The wait was worth it, we have a fantastic suite, enough marble to sink a battleship, two 40″ TV’s a full bathroom and an additional washroom, bedroom, sitting room and even a washing machine!!

Almost certainly there will be no blog tomorrow as we board a train in the afternoon and spend 22 hours going through the mountains to Tibet. Hopefully there will be reasonable WiFi in Tibet.

Well, we survived Beijing, even after finding our own evening meals for the last three nights. Luckily the restaurants have menus with pictures! Prices are pretty good with an evening meal for 2 costing $20-25 Cdn.

There was much debate as to how long the drive to the airport would take this morning, one hour was allowed, it took 25 minutes! The waiting time will be spent between the relative quiet of the lounge and the people watching in the terminal. The waiting time has just increased due to a one hour delay!! This was the good news We got on the flight, and the captain announced a further 15 minute delay due to those pesky air traffic controllers. About 30 minutes into this 15 minute delay we were informed that due to bad weather south of the airport we were now into an indefinite delay and that lunch would be served on the ground! Not good.

Finally three and a half ours late we got airborne. Luckily this flight was an extension of our Toronto – Beijing flight and we were in Business, so the delay from that point of view was tolerable. What was more concerning was that we were to tour the Terra Cotta warriors on arrival at Xi’an (read about Xi’an here). 

Our bags were second off the belt, and we headed out to meet Julia, our guide. She had been waiting 4 hours at the airport! There was a quick change of plan, there was no time to everything we had planned for Xi’an so we settled for a visit to the old city wall this afternoon (forgoing the Muslim Quarter and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Neither were high on our priority list anyway. We would visit the Warriors tomorrow before flying out.

The traffic out of the airport was bad due to a broken down car, we then picked up speed until we hit the outskirts of the city. Again a well populated city with 8.75 million people. It is also unique in that it is the only Chinese city still surrounded by the original city wall.

Below are some general views taken from atop the wall.

Inside the wall new buildings retain some of the old architecture

That’s what happens when you try to switch lanes when you shouldn’t

Luckily Julia stayed with us until we checked in at the hotel as there was an issue with our free breakfast. The Hilton wanted to charge us $20 each for it! I have a Hilton Loyalty card, whether that made any difference or not I don’t know, but shortly after we settled into our room the front desk phoned to say that although the breakfast / room rate was not booked, we were offered a complimentary breakfast each!

Time for more Chinese food!

A later start to the day as we had a shorter itinerary, we also had a new guide who just happened to be the husband of our previous guide! Today we headed out to the Temple of Heaven, then for a rickshaw ride around one of the old Beijing hutons.

A new idea…… instead of me providing too much of the background history, of which there is too much to recall correctly and write I’ll post a link so you can read the details yourself if you want! Temple of Heaven

Apart from being a religious place, the area is also a large public park which is very popular with the locals on the weekends for exercising and socialising. Most Beijing residents live in apartments with no access to land, so they flock to the city parks instead.

Above they are playing cards and dominoes, also popular are Chinese checkers and Mahjong.

The main building is the The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, an all wooden structure built with no nails!

The building is supported by 28 massive columns, 4 in an inner circle representing the 4 seasons, further out a ring of 12 representing the months and finally another ring of 12 representing the time periods of the day (evidently in Asia they had 12 time periods each day).

Next was the Circular Mound Altar.

The altar is built atop a 3 tiered structure


The altar is the floor area of the mound, Local people believe it brings good luck to stand on the central stone. Nine is a very lucky number in the Chinese culture, the first circle of stone around the central stone contains nine stones, the next circle 18 up to the 9th circle which has 81. Each set of steps between the three layers consisted of nine steps.

Below the view is looking towards the Beijing sky line. Although the picture doesn’t show it too well, the row of objects in the centre of the picture were used to burn tree bark to scent the air, and on the far right of them is the oven where sacrifices were burnt.

Next we went to one of the Huton districts, huton meaning alleyway. These alleyways lead through a series of houses built around large quadrangles and were usually for the richer people. In more recent times more houses have been built within the quadrangles leading to dense population in some areas. The houses are in great demand though, due to their central location. Continuing our luxury tour, we were driven around on a cycle powered rickshaw!

Even rickshaws can run into traffic jams!

Below is the entrance to a renovated house. In older times this would have been owned by a military officer, shown by the round drum like ornaments on the front step

We had lunch at one of the houses, it was all locally cooked dishes and was very tasty. My only complaint about the food to date is they leave all the bones in. Trying to extract the meat from pieces of chopped up chicken wings (while using chopsticks) is cruel and inhumane punishment for a hungry traveler!

A typical sitting room

Maybe this guy made vases?
View along the hutong

Once back at the hotel we had a rest then headed out to a pedestrian precinct a few blocks away. We also managed to find our first Chinese cache there!

Today’s trip was modified slightly due to a number of roads being closed tomorrow for a large triathlon in the area of the Summer Palace. We finished doing two major trips today and then two smaller ones tomorrow. Today’s trip was Tiananmen  square and the Summer Palace. A lot of walking and sitting in traffic jams was called for making for a tiring day, so this will be a mostly picture blog again.

We headed out from the hotel and got a few pictures of the “locals”

Bikes and Scooters are Everywhere

Beats an 18 Wheeler Anyday

Hard Working police get Their own Shade

We arrived a t Tiananmen Square and met up with half the population of Beijing! The area was enormous, around 48 hectares (whatever one of them is). Here is the answer:

The hectare (/ˈhɛktɛər/ or /ˈhɛktɑr/; symbol ha) is an SI accepted metric system unit ofarea equal to 100 ares (10,000 m²) and primarily used in the measurement of land. Anacre is about 0.4047 hectare and one hectare contains about 2.47 acres.

It was BIG, unfortunately due to the crowds you didn’t get a good feel for the enormity of the place.

Above is the mausoleum of Chairman Mao. Evidently it is the dream of most Chinese to visit this site once in their lifetime, if you look in front of the building you can see the line of people waiting to enter, multiply that by 3 for the people you can’t see round the corners of the building and that was today’s lineup. The crowds are kept moving and if you were at the end of this line your wait time would be around 30 minutes. In mid summer the wait time would be 4 hours or more, hence the portable barriers in the foreground.

On one side of the square is the National Museum of China

And on the other the  Great Hall of the People with Monument to the Peoples Heroes in front.

Below are some of the gardens surrounding the square Here are some general shots

Incense Burner

I get really bored guarding this fire extinguisher!

Random couple in the “must have” shot with Chairman Mao at the North Gate aka the Gate of Heavenly Peace

Another Incense Burner

Sun Dial

Fire Extinguisher (13th Century Style

The large bronze or iron pot above was filled with water for use in fire fighting, in the winter a fire was lit under the pots to keep the water from freezing.

The official grain measure standard.

A world famous artist /calligrapher at work in the museum.

Moat surrounding the Forbidden City

From here we headed off for lunch and saw a few more of the “local” vehicles.

After lunch we headed off to to Summer Palace where the Empress would spend about six months of the year.

Giant Lily Pads

Just showing off with the new camera, in the first picture you may be able to see a flower almost dead centre in the pond. Above is a close in on that flower

Below are some general views of the Palace and Lake
Lyn and Lisa (our Guide)

Above are two lions guarding a gate, one is male  the other female. Which is the male and how could you tell?

The 17 Arch bridge joining an island to the mainland.

Enough for now…….. need food

PS There will be spelling and grammar errors in the above!

Jet lag wasn’t too much of an issue for me, I woke up for an hour around 4 AM then managed to get back to sleep again. Lyn managed to sleep right through. China is 12 hours ahead of Canada and despite its size, it only has one time zone.

We discovered the first advantage of the private tour, we get to choose the time the guide picks us up at the hotel, not the other way around! Today’s tour was to the Great Wall, with a stop at a jade factory on the way there ans a cloisonne factory on the return. We hit the busy Beijing streets and proceeded at a crawl for the first 30 minutes or so.

The Colonel Welcomes Us to Beijing!

About 20 years ago most people in Beijing traveled by bike or motor scooter and there was one ring road around the city. Now most travel by car and there are 6 ring roads around the city. The use of car horns is prolific. Although I am not fluent in Chinese car-horning, there appears to be 3 main messages, 1. you are where I want to be……. move, 2.I am going to pass you don’t do anything stupid and 3. you just did something stupid. I haven’t yet manage to work out how many cars should fit in 1 lane, logic dictates 1 is the answer, reality suggest between 1.75 and 2.25! The jury is still out on the legality / wisdom of using the bike / transit lane as a means to pass on the inside. Whatever way the rules are (mis)interpreted, it may be chaotic but there are no signs of road rage.

First stop was a jade factory where we were hoping to see jade being carved, unfortunately all we saw was a showroom; finished up buying  a happiness ball, which starts from a solid block of jade from which 3 balls are carved within each other. Quite intriguing.

A Fat and Happy Buddha carved from Jade

Next stop the Great Wall, this took about an hour to get to from the Jade factory, and as we got out of the car this was the first thing we saw!

A Pizza Restaurant

The Wall stretches approximately 6200 kms. Six parts of the wall have been opened to tourists. This section north of Beijing dates back to the 1400’s. Picture time

The wall itself is an amazing construction, if only they could have built it level, there were some VERY steep up / down sections.

After the Wall we headed out to a Cloisonne factory. I’d never heard of this, but Lyn had and it was one of her requests when we put the trip together, The process involves using a base of copper which is hand formed into shape e.g. a vase. Next copper wire is applied to create the pattern, often the copper wire is formed into rings only about 2 – 3mm across. Once the wires are attached to the vase, painting and firing takes place to create an enamel finish. This painting / firing takes place about 8 times to get a level finish. The whole vase is then polished to a glass like finish.

A similar technique can be used for pictures, in this case the copper wire is plated with 24 ct gold.
Once back at the hotel we relaxed a little (and wrote this). Now it is time to head out and try a restaurant on our own!

A couple of years ago there were a number of tours to China on sale for around $2500 including air fare. We decided that China was going to be high on the list of places to visit. About a year ago I started researching the trip, and decided it was going to be a nightmare to plan. Each trip I looked at had places we wanted to go, and places we didn’t want to go. Many trips seemed to revolve more around shopping than sightseeing! So, what do we do?

Earlier this year a friend and I were sitting in Timmies (doughnut store) having lunch, and we started talking about the trip. There was an oriental looking woman sitting just across from us typing away on her computer, and she kept looking up and smiling! Finally i said to her….”let me guess you’re Chinese and  travel agent?” The rest is history! We somehow went from a group tour to a private tour with our own car, driver and guide at each stop.

Both of us have developed an allergy to traveling “down the back” on long haul flights, so we bit the bullet and splashed out for business class. We found a good fare with a Chinese airline with a good reputation and had that booked for us.

Las night i went to check in and was able to get boarding passes for myself and the Toronto Beijing flight for Lyn, but there was a problem with the Ottawa -Toronto leg for  her ….  perhaps I’d be going on my own!!!

We got to the airport this morning, and checked in with absolutely no problem. We left Ottawa at noon, and then spent a few hours in the lounge at Toronto before boarding the next flight direct to Beijing.

Above is our home for 13 hours! I would have got a better picture, but the camera was on self timer mode, and by the time I had figured that out and corrected it the plane had parked right outside the lounge. The aircraft is a Boeing 787-900 and is brand new. We saw the first one for this airline when we were at the Boeing factory in May. One of the perks of the new aircraft is a larger TV display AND free WiFi!

We departed right on time and headed off to the northwest with 13 hours travel time ahead of us. First order of business was getting all the ‘freebies”; slippers, amenity kit, decent (Bose) noise cancelling headphones and a pair of PJ’s!
This is the first time we have been on a B787, the windows are much larger than other aircraft, and there are no window blinds. Each window has an electronic controller that “dims” the window, very nifty. The plan to publish the first entry from the aircraft failed as there was an issue with the WiFi. Maybe the last entry will come from the aircraft.
I managed to get almost 6 hours sleep, Lyn about 3. It was all very civilised, call the flight attendant who converts the seat into a bed complete with bottom sheet and a duvet while I went off and changed into PJ’s. One of the main improvements on the B787  is the improved air quality and greater humidity, I certainly felt a lot better at the end of a 13 hour flight than I normally do after a 7 hour  flight.

In the end we flew 7085 miles n 13 hours 10 minutes. It was about an hour by car to the hotel in stop and go traffic, even at 9PM!

Time now to settle in and rest in preparation for our walk along the Great Wall tomorrow.