Hello! Apologies for the delay in this, although it was written a while ago I am just putting the finishing touches on it now in the Chinggis Khan Museum coffee shop in Ulaanbaatar! It was a packed week so a relatively long one, feel free to just look at the pictures!

To the Capital!↗

Welcome back to the Journal of the Journey! You join me on the train just as it is pulling out of BěijīngBěi (North Beijing) station. What a week it has been, from big city life to stunning landscapes, the world’s tallest outdoor elevator to the world’s worst train ticket.

I left you just before we were heading to Chóngqìng, what a place! We spent 3 nights there and finally managed to get some laundry in just as the BO was starting to set off metal detectors. Our hotel was called river view but unfortunately seemed to only face rooftops which hosted dog barking matches all throughout the night. For the world’s biggest city (population of 32m) I wonder just how many people that dog keeps awake…

Although it is the world’s largest city by population it really didn’t feel like it, I mean it was biiiiiig but didn’t feel too busy or very dense, I was imagining it to be a bit like Hong Kong but a lot bigger but it felt much more spaced out and in one of the central parks felt like I could have been back in Newbury.

Now if there’s one food to have in Chóngqìng it’s the hotpot! The city is home to the notoriously spicy and inventively named ‘Chóngqìng hotpot’. Unfortunately for the residents of Chóngqìng during WW2 they were bombarded by the Japanese and as a result built numerous bunkers and emergency shelters. Fortunately, these have been kept, maintained, and turned into some of the coolest hot pot restaurants I have come across. Thank God we ate our hotpot in the bunker as all Xǐshǒujiān (toilets) I visited that night saw explosions. It was hands down the spiciest thing I have ever eaten, I know I’m already shite with spice but within the first couple of bites my mouth was numb and therefore I didn’t really know just how badly my mouth was messed up until just trying to eat plain rice at the end which felt like it was shards of glass.

After a few system resets with the help of a talking toilet, the next day we explored Chóngqìng and finally got one of our first days of good weather, using it as an opportunity to have a beer while crunching through some work. We then used it as an opportunity to have about 5 more beers while crunching through some Bīngqílín (ice cream).

All in all I have to give Chóngqìng an 8/10 as cities go, very iconic but in all honesty not too much to do there once a river boat tour and walk around has been done. We then used the world’s biggest train station which had literally just opened, Chóngqìngdōng (east), to catch a bullet out of the metropolis and into the more familiar territory of rural China.

We stayed for a night in a really picturesque town called Fènghuáng and had what we think was Salamander soup which the mosquitos seemed to suck back out of us all throughout the night…

Now… If you have read anything about the Navy Seals or US Frats you will know there is something called ‘Hell Week’, we were just about to head into that.

The next 6 or so days were non-stop, averaging around 4/5 hours sleep, 25k steps, 5 coffees and 10 Bīngqílín. We caught a train out of Fènghuáng into the Chinese Yosemite of Zhāngjiājiè, a place filled with the most incredible landscapes and supposedly the inspiration behind the Avatar world.

We started off at Tiānmén mountain, meant to be a jaw-dropping ‘stairway to heaven’ but a thick fog reduced heaven to a coffee shop (which I wasn’t complaining about). After heading up the supposed 999 steps through the cloud and then a 7-stage escalator to the top of the mountain we started to catch glimpses of surrounding hills. On the way back down the iconic hole in the mountain presented itself and we managed to get some good snaps in before needing to speed back to town to pick-up our bags from the soon-to-be closed station.

On the way to our hotel happens to be one of the strangest buildings in China, aptly named the ’72 strange buildings’ it’s a towering collage of traditional style buildings with a rather large natural window. We dumped our bags in the lobby of a nearby hotel and headed into the 72 buildings…

The strangeness only increased from there, at 10pm a ‘bonfire party’ kicked off involving a police officer who proceeded to flex a drippy Temu buss-down the whole night as well as what I can only assume was two attractive Chinese males as they paraded around this bonfire and every now and again revealed one of their pecs making the crowd go wild. I’m not really sure why we ended up watching that for around an hour but it was certainly unique…

As I said in my previous entry, stuff like this not only confirms some of the oddities of this part of the world but more importantly the social nature of it. Everyone is so social and there seems to be very little time spent in one’s house as the streets, restaurants, bars and especially karaoke places are always packed.

The next day we devoured some hotel breakfast and headed towards a cable car to take us into the main park. After taking the world’s tallest outdoor elevator (double decker!) we found ourselves in a very special landscape, pencil-like rock towers rising up from a sea of jungle. It was here we saw our first proper wild monkeys!

Zhāngjiājiè park was so incredibly busy but in fairness a major public holiday had just started. Little did we know what Xi An had in store for us…

A train from Zhāngjiājiè to Xi’An would have been a welcome time to sit down but due to the public holiday (labour week) all of the trains sold out very quickly, forcing us to hop onto a flight into Xi’An after just staying the one night in Zhāngjiājiè.

Upon touching down in Xi’An in the early hours the next day, we took a quick sleep and headed towards Emperor Qínshǐhuáng’s Mausoleum to find an army of both terracotta warriors and tourists. If we thought Zhāngjiājiè was busy this was on another level. We had to wait at least 15 minutes for the rows of people to finish taking photos to be able to squeeze into a gap and actually see the army.

In fairness, it was very impressive and is certainly iconic, I was surprised to find out that it was only discovered relatively recently and there are a lot more under the surface which they are aware of but don’t want to damage. In all honesty though I wouldn’t say it was an enjoyable experience and kind of not really worth the hassle of stopping in Xi’An for but it is one of those things that you cant go to China without seeing.

Here comes the pinnacle of hell week.

From the start of planning this trip we wanted to include a sleeper train in somewhere as we could firstly kill time travelling by sleeping as well and also experience the Chinese sleeper trains, a win win.

Our journey from Xi’An to Beijing was certainly not win-win. As this was still the labour week holiday we didn’t realise that virtually all train tickets had sold out and the flights available were far too expensive. We signed up for the waitlist for any sleeper train in the hopes that someone would cancel. To increase our chances of getting tickets we even opted for first class tickets…

What we ended up with were ‘standing tickets’ for a 12 hour sleeper train meaning we literally had to stand/crouch next to the door for the entire journey. It was actually quite fun for the first 10 minutes but the remaining 11 hours and 50 minutes were genuinely awful. There was no room and we happened to base ourselves next to the door that opened at pretty much all of the stations throughout the night. But we weren’t alone! We had some company in the form of two very loud women who both were kind enough to give their colds to me as a way of soothing the journey. As a result we came into Beijing in the morning with absolutely no sleep and a cold (I then donated mine to Josh :)).

If that was the thorn, the bud was our hotel in Beijing allowing an early check in which was used straight away for a bit of shut eye and a much needed shower.

We used the rest of that day to explore around Beijing and checked out the very cool temple of heaven.

We tried to get a relatively early night due to needing to be up bright and early for a 3 hour journey the next morning to see the Great Wall!

Upon seeing the wall the heavens opened, forcing us to give in to the very determined poncho sellers who were all congregated around our minibus. Fortunately, this rain or some other divine factor caused there to be practically no tourists (especially because we walked the wrong way for the first 3km) meaning we had the Great Wall to ourselves and after the rain cleared we were able to get some good snaps in.

After a full day on the wall we headed out for some Peking Duck along with one of the people on the tour. The duck itself was pretty good but we were served some ice cream for dessert at the same time the starters came out and as a result it tasted pretty grim by the time dessert came round.

The next day was quite literally a shitstorm, within a few minutes of walking towards Tiananmen square I forced out what I assumed was some gas but turned out to be somewhat wet. To make matters worse I was wearing pretty light coloured shorts and a white t-shirt. Without going into too much detail I had to figure out a way to both let out and clean up the mess in a squat toilet with no toilet paper or bidet (I had to use the flush water lol). The guy in the toilet next to me was so empathetic he played the same reels over again and again at full volume to help me take my mind off the 30 min crap battle.

One man’s shit is another man’s story I suppose…

We then saw both Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city, both of which were verrrrrry impressive and I definitely recommend seeing them. Our final stop was heading up to the top of a hill to get a good look on Beijing, a very fitting conclusion to both the city and hell week.

I think I definitely should have broken this one down into two blog posts but am already behind as of writing this so needed to just fire it out. The next post will be all about the north of China and Mongolia!

I hope you are all well and thank you very much for reading :)

Thought↗

I have always wanted to ‘embrace the cringe’ that is needed when filming videos in public or even doing anything that puts attention on you in a public space and I think the way I am handling that now is by no longer ‘watching myself’. If I don’t ‘watch’ myself I cannot judge myself and therefore cannot tell myself to not do something. Of course it is easier said than done but I am trying to be much more present.

Album of the week↗

Trying times - James Blake

The hugely influential producer/singer/songwriter James Blake recently released ‘Trying Times’. I really liked his previous two albums and love the texture he brings to songs he is featured on so a solo album was sure to hit. My favourite song has got to be the titular ‘Trying times’ with a close second being ‘Doesn’t Just Happen’ with Dave. I highly recommend listening to the album in one go (again with headphones) and you will see why ‘Doesn’t Just Happen’ fits so well, the whole album switches up with that song and it really delivers. Also if you listen to this and even somewhat enjoy it I really recommend the album bad cameo with James Blake and Lil Yachty it takes two very different sounding artists and creates something very unique.

Photo Dump↗

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