BOGOF

It took a while for me to get off to sleep that night, I don’t seem to be able to sleep that well on trains. And it doesn’t help when the same old fogies that told us to be quiet at 9:30pm start having a loud chat amongst themselves at 3:45am!! I was absolutely livid and huffed, puffed and coughed loudly to let them know that I was awake and not enjoying the middle-of-the-night chit-chat. Eventually they quietened down enough for me to get back off to sleep. But then we were woken by the ticket lady thumping on our beds to give us our paper ticket back (they give you a plastic one to keep on the train, for some reason). So we were pretty much up and ready for when we pulled into the station nice and early.

We had gotten a shock when we alighted from the train from Hong Kong in Shanghai to find it rather chilly. Certainly not what we had been used to for the past…well…4 months really, on and off. So when we stepped out of the carriage and onto the platform in Beijing we were not shocked to find it even colder, but a little bit pissed off. Our new companion, Haven, had waited for us to get off the train so that she could show us where the metro station was. She was also meeting her classmate outside so we could all jump on the train together and we wouldn’t be left to fend for ourselves in the madness of Beijing city centre.

Tim, Haven and James outside Beijing Railway Station

Her classmate (who has no English name) met us in the square outside the station and we all bundled into the metro. We were only going two stops and they were going the long way round so we said our goodbyes on the train and jumped off at our stop. We had exchanged emails and agreed to meet up later that day or the next for a drink or something (sound familiar?). And then we had to find the hotel. As Google is banned in China my Google Maps app on my phone was having trouble identifying any roads in Beijing so this lead to us following a labyrinth of tiny roads before coming to a stand-still where we dumped the bags and regrouped. I sped off up and down the street to see if I could see a road name and triangulate where exactly we were. But I couldn’t. Most of them were all in Chinese or were not listed in the directions to the hotel. I managed to find the Leo Hostel (which I thought might be ours, but our one was the Beijing Leo Courtyard) and they pointed me in the right direction. We weren’t far away from it but it had taken almost an hour to find the flippin place thanks to China vs Google.

It seemed like a nice place, but I had heard some sketchy reviews of the place. We were given a choice of two rooms, neither of which really grabbed us, until they showed us a third , which we jumped at the opportunity to stay in. It had two rooms and within each room there were two single beds. Two TVs, two heaters, two desks, everything but two bathrooms, but that didn’t matter, we would have a room each for our tour of Beijing!

Looks nice, don't it!

Or so we hoped. The larger room that I was to be stationed in had a broken heater/AC unit, and it was cold, oh so cold. We managed to work the other one out from a lot of button-pushing and guess-work, so we had one room with heat at least. Also, in my room there were no functioning plug sockets, even though there was the much larger TV in there. Odd. So unless we got the heater fixed it looked like we would be having a sleeping room and a storage/living room. And then there was the bathroom. Cold, dark, not really clean, and with a big sign by the toilet that advised us under no circumstances to put anything in the toilet…all rubbish “etc” was to be put in the small waste paper bin. Oh dear…

So in an effort to get a good feeling from Beijing after a shaky start we headed out near Tiananmen Square and wandered down a pedestrianized shopping road. It was nice, not a single person came up to us and bothered us to buy any tat. Beijing was starting to look better already. With the chilly daylight fading we headed back to Tiananmen Square to have a mooch round.

We weren't that lazy that we had to get the tram!

It was quite a strange place as it looks spectacular, but it is of course tinged with sadness due to the tragic events in 1989. We had walked round for about 5 minutes before I caught the eye of a young Chinese girl who struck up a conversation with us. Not this again! So with an “offness” that she must have noted she left us alone after she had asked if we wanted to go somewhere for a coffee. At least they were mixing it up a bit. Maybe the next one will be a milkshake. The sun was setting, through the smog, and there is a flag ceremony at sunrise and sunset, so we waited around to see it. But it never happened as the sun had only set behind a building and not set properly, and we were cold so we made our way back to the Leo Courtyard.

Tiananmen Square at sunset

We were still pretty beat from the train ride so we just grabbed a bite to eat from the restaurant in the hotel; pizza for me and a Chinese for James. We were accompanied by one of the hotel cats who took an immediate interest in my pizza when it arrived. It seemed like it could be a lively place at night if the other guests were around, but that would have to wait for another night.