I gave up... What a wuss part 4: Beijing

Truly massive. And not in a way where any particular area has a different character, at least as far as I could tell. Put me in any street, and I was lost. Not least because I couldn't read any signs at all. This didn't matter quite so much in Harbin because it wasn't anywhere near as big, and we generally only went in one direction. But In Beijing you have to rely on the English street names that you can't pronounce and that the taxi drivers therefore can't understand or read what you've got written down. Which is interesting. When we first arrived, we spent a good hour wandering around the taxi rank with Alex getting annoyed at me for refusing to pay large sums of money to someone who was first convinced we wanted to find a hotel, then get to the airport. When we eventually found a driver who spoke English, we were still overcharged for the trip to the youth hostel and I was shaken and had never felt so isolated.

The hostel was very nice; in the end it was very convenient and very well set-up, nice rooms, a communal area, computers with good internet, staff that all speak English very well and really extremely cheap to boot. It was 2 minutes from a metro stop which as of yet only has 3 lines, but is still very useful. We were put in a room with 6 beds, but there turned out to only be one other person there; an Australian called aargh just a sec eerm Liz? I think... don't hold me to that... who introduced us to a load more Australians:

Activities partaken of with the Australians:
1)Turning up to a festival just as it ended... but you can't have it your way all the time!
2)Japanese meal: I spilt stuff and was told that I can't use chopsticks, but the food was good
3)Expat bar with dice drinking game that I can't remember, which is the sign of a good drinking game
4)Karioke! The greatest night out you can have in China or indeed anywhere, especially with Australians.
5)Buying a mobile phone for someone. Admittedly not a high point. But my god they were cheap.
6)Hanging out in their flat.

Me and Alex also did the normal Beijing sightseeing trail with the forbidden city (lots of old stuff, to be honest that doesn't get me very excited... and there was a starbucks actually in there, which is disgusting. And a lot of it was closed for refurbishment), Tian'men square (huuuge, again well worth seeing, and if you want to get, for example, one of the little red books that everyone seems to be trying to sell you HAGGLE LIKE HELL!! Get it down to at least a fifth of what they first ask for, seriously everyone is trying to rip you off), golden gate, and later with two of Alex's friends we went to the gardeney place... y'know, with the echo wall... the summer palace or something? You can talk to eachother for behind two buildings! Pretty cool. Even though the main building was again closed for refurbishment, because of the Beijing 2008 games as it turns out. So not really particularly good timing to visit China really... oh well. And we went to karioke again.

I had already decided that I was going home fairly soon after arriving in Beijing, after never feeling 100% well and just so insecure and isolated, and had spoken to Alex a few times about it. The day before I left, we went to see the great wall which was spectacular; we went to a bit which steamed up the side of a mountain, revealing an amazing view of the continuing stretch of wall and foreign countryside. It was amazing, even though we probably didn't get the most fair deal getting there and back in the world.

I flew home the next morning to an empty house and spent a month trying unsuccessfully to post some stuff Alex gave me to post. It was not a good time. I lost the money for the remaining plane tickets and travel insurance, and despite parting on what I thought were good terms Alex stopped speaking to me. It was stay and be miserable, as far as I could see at the time, or come back and be miserable but secure. I know I should have stuck it out, but at the time it just wasn't an option. I had to come home.

I gave up... What a wuss part 3: Harbin

So we got to Harbin and wheeled out of the front entrance. There was a big square and ooh look about 50 kfc's, and thousands of people trying to charge you ridiculous prices to take you somewhere in their car. We wandered around for ages looking for the hostel, me feeling gradually more lost and panicky, wheeling around a massive bag and getting very strange local looks. We found the hostel. It was then that we realised we weren't staying at the hostel. I had stupidly assumed that we were staying there rather than actually looking at the tickets. Yup, I'm an idiot. So they ordered us a cab to take us to the hotel we were ACTUALLY staying at... which turned out to be pretty much opposite the station (the hotel Maxima if I remember rightly) where our passports were taken away again. But this place was different. This place was posh.

Isolated in out little room, we discovered the delight of Chinese TV, mainly the circus acts program which turned into regular viewing of an evening. We spent 2 full days here, one day we just explored and found the river and found some guy who said he was a tourist official in the local government who was going to hook us up with a horse-drawn carriage across the frozen river to the ice festival, and showed us to a very VERY cheap restaurant where we had a nice meal, then we walked back to the hotel. At some point I tried and failed to get some money out... which was worrying as I was relying on that card to get money out throughout the trip. Thinking back, that happened somewhere back in Moscow too... fun fun! Oh well. We also discovered some genius public amenities by the river, next to some flats. It was like a kids playground, but with stuff for grownups, like crosstrainers and pullup bars, loads of them! And some table-tennis tables of course.

Whilst going around the "eurocentre" shopping centre we were spotted from below by what turned out to be a magazine photographer who, obviously bedazzled by Alex, proceeded to take photos of us in front of the freshly opened, or so I gathered, shopping mall. There were several more such small incidents here; Alex really is startlingly tall compared to pretty much everyone in China.

Driving here is worth a mention. I am nearly sure that any given taxi driver in that city could give professional rally drivers a run for their money over any terrain. We experienced skillful control sliding over black ice around corners, much well-judged horn use and a good level of speed.

On the second day, we went to the ice festival over the river. We actually walked across the frozen river. I have never been so cold in my life!! Seriously, my mouth-guard thingey was frozen when we got there, and I actually enjoyed coffee for the first time in my life. In a cafe made of snow!! The ice festival wasn't really a festival when we visited. It was more of a pretty much deserted park with snow sculptures lining the paths and an ice palace under construction somewhere in the middle. Very scenic, very icy... lots of ice... there were some very cool sculptures. Ha. Your frosty reception of the pun is anticipated, and acknowledged. There were Americans somewhere. We took a horse and carriage back across the river and ate a slightly more expensive meal on the way back to the hotel.

That night I woke up and my pulse was like 120 and Alex said I was "radiating cold." I seriously thought I was going to die, I panicked and went downstairs and eventually made them understand about an ambulance, but decided against it as I didn't seem to be actually falling over and choking, so I went upstairs and treated the main symptom; I had a 3am very hot bath, at the suggestion of an Alex. It worked, but still I think this was the incident that scared me the most and was one of the main reasons that I went home again.

One last thing to mention; whilst here we visited 3 shopping malls and didn't buy a thing. The next day involved some more exploring, a crowded and slightly hostile restaurant, and an American doctor who had been traveling for 3 months and seen 32 Chinese cities. Then we got on the sleeper to Beijing which was very slick, with complimentary TV and it didn't kill us with heat, but we were asleep most of the time so we missed some really nice views apparently... but yea. Then we got to Beijing.

I gave up... What a wuss part 2: the train

Sitting in the 4-person sleeping compartment, having perfected leaping up onto the top bunk with ninja-like stealth, both me and Alex were silently contemplating who/what we were going to be sharing a room with. First to my mind was a couple of shaven-headed Russian Mafia goons with a bag o'knives. Second to pop up were a couple of blonde Swedish girls. At this point a couple of blonde Swedish girls walked in, realised it was the wrong compartment and moved to the one next door. Weeeeelll, we though, that would have been too good to be true really. Then a couple of Danish girls walked in and it was the right compartment so... there you go.

Not that anything happened... there was normal talking about stuff, and they ate lots of mackerel in tomato sauce, and we listened to eachothers music (they rejected talking heads!! And Alex dismissed them as "the worst kind of 80s rubbish" or something... I died a little inside) but mostly it was just too insanely hot to sleep. Surreal that it was about -30 degrees outside and what felt like about 40 inside, seriously at times it was hard to breathe. But we survived! We even went to the buffet car, where there was a very VERY English chap, the sort you only find abroad, who seemed to speak every language and was very shy and basically the stereotypical sweet old man. The food, however, was garlic. The upside was that I recovered from the death in Moscow, but also spent 7 days on a train doing nothing apart from occasionally buying sausages from the locals. Oh and my birthday happened. I got a card from Alex.

During this train journey I discovered pineapple juice, realised the cups I bought along were woefully inadequate, stole all of Alex's gameboy advance games, discovered an unfortunately coloured piece of mound on my sheet, spent an interesting period wandering around the border trying to spot the train being fitted with a new undercarriage, bought a knife and fork (now rusty) and used Alex as a bureau de change on legs. We also talked and realised that we both wanted nearly opposite things from the trip... which was interesting... and found out that one of our roommates was from Iceland! SUCH a cool place. I read most of Jonathan strange and Alex read some of war and peace (what with being in Russia and all), and we all kept visits to the toilet to an absolute minimum. We used a small amount of time to learn the bare minimum Chinese to not quite get by, and realised that we won't have any way on navigating ourselves once we were away from western script signs.

There was a period where we were passing through some beautiful scenery just before and after going past an absolutely massive lake. That was nice. The rest was either empty or we were asleep. But it was very nice. All small-villagey and windy. And the massive lake was all frozen, there was a car out there doing doughnuts at one point.

So after the week on the train we arrived in Harbin.