We got up early and headed to the street to head to the train station. Before I could get a Didi ordered, I heard somebody offering ride share to the people standing at the bus stop across the street. I hailed over to him, and we worked out 50 yuan for the trip. That was 25 less than I offered yesterday's driver, so I was, again, happy we didn't use him. We found our waiting area with plenty of time to walk around and get a cup of tea. The only place with black tea that I could find was McDonald's, but it was good. When we got on the train, I dumped pictures onto my external hard drive and was able to throw some into Lightroom so they could be uploaded when I got wi-fi. Then I sat back and enjoyed the ride. I finished my Peking duck and nibbled some dried fruit I had bought in the hutong. They had a little ticker running in the front of the coach. I'll bet you'll never guess what I thought this one said at first!
It was a high-speed train. If I remember correctly, the fastest it registered (that it told us) was 310 km/hr, which is slower than the bullet train I took in Japan, which moved in the 400s. But, we got to Xi'an without incident. I also learned how to pronounce the town. I had been saying "Shi-on". Turns out, it's closer to "See-on".
We didn't bother trying for Didi, and just grabbed a taxi to the hotel. Just after turning the corner, we were greeted by kites flying.
Lots of skyscrapers in the new part of the city.
Soon, our driver pointed out the wall to the old town, where we were staying.
We drove along the wall for a while before turning in.
There were lots of people in traditional dress
And we drove past the Bell Tower
It's a nice hotel, as expected from a Holiday Inn Express, but situated a few doors down an alley. I was a little concerned when the driver dropped us off in front of a 7-11 until they let me know to go around the corner for the hotel. We got checked in and took a few minutes to rest before getting ready for our dinner show.
Everything you could need is down this little alley, from this barber
to this bakery.
The only problem was that I forgot that once I was using wi-fi in the hotel instead of my T-mobile signal on my phone, I would, in fact, be subject to the Great Firewall, and the Google on my tablet wouldn't work. We were staying at a Holiday Inn, and that is a chain that tends to require you to sign onto the wi-fi from a browser page. The only browser I had was Google, and Google is blocked in China. So, no internet on the tablet, meaning no uploading pictures to the cloud via Lightroom. I downloaded the UC browser onto my phone with hopes that I could transfer it to the tablet somehow. It didn't finish downloading until it was time to go to dinner, so I didn't get to try it.
There were some nice blow-ups in traffic circles just before and after the wall.
We had hot pot. Believe it or not, this was the first time either of us had had hot pot, so we weren't sure what to expect or what to do, but the staff were great, walking us through it and making sure we didn't take any of our food out before it was properly cooked. We had one lady that was specifically assigned to babysit us. She kept watching us and bringing us various pieces of western style silverware and laughing with us (AT us a little, maybe). I asked her if most westerners were as clueless as us, and she said, "Yes, please." So...
After dinner, we went downstairs to the theater, where we watched a live performance of a portrayal of a princess who was documenting the experiences of her mother, the great Empress Wu. Empress Wu Zetian or Wu Zhao was the only undisputed female ruler in the history of China. It was an excellent show. I practiced taking action shots while standing in the back. I think I got a few good ones among the many trash ones.
The musicians
This is an example of what most of my shots look like. I got the shot just after they landed, or just as they turned their backs, or covered their faces, etc.
One of my favorite dances was with these sleeves
We hailed a rickshaw in the rain to come home from the show. He got lost and we didn't know where we were going.
I did get a nice shot of the Bell Tower one of the many times we passed it, though!
Ultimately, we finally made it home, and the driver chose not to charge us. I tried to Alipay him something, but he wouldn't take it. And the baker gave us a free pastry when we bought some. It was an amazing night. I think I'm going to really like Xi'an!
We got up nice and early and headed to the street. My Didi app worked and I ordered a Didi, but it didn't come. So, we hailed yet another taxi. He agreed to take us to the wall at the metered cost. After we were a few blocks away, he told us that Mutianyu was in a traffic controlled area and required a two-way trip, so metering would not work. He offered 1000 yuan round trip. Considering the bus to the wall and only coming back to the Eagle's Nest would have been 300 yuan each and we would have been limited in time available, plus we were kind of captive, we agreed to it. I feel confident that he gets a kick-back for a few restaurants and other things because he kept trying to get us to agree to lunch at some fish restaurant, shop at specific stores, etc. But we did get to the wall. We stopped to get our tickets. We asked for the toboggan tickets, and they told us that you can only toboggan if you're under 60 years old. I had heard that they let you go and don't check age, so I asked them to sell it to us anyway, and they did sell us the toboggan/sled tickets. We were there early enough that it wasn't very busy, but there was already a line for the chair lift up.
A nice statue at the end of the line
This is the chair lift up
if this is the way you want to come down.
We made it up and walked around the wall for a bit. I got several good shots, but I'm limiting myself to two since I've been there a few times before.
After we finished walking along the wall, we stood in line for the toboggan for about an hour or so. When we finally made it to the sleds, we were carded. They didn't let us ride and sent us around to the chair lifts to go back down. There was no line for the chair lifts. I was irritated, and the cabbie trying to get us to change our plans to things we didn't want to do didn't help. He tried to tell us that the restaurant we were going to have Peking duck at was just a tourist trap and that it didn't taste good, though he didn't know what restaurant that was. We told him we were going to have it in the hutong, and there are several places that sell Peking duck in the hutong. He still tried to convince us to go shopping and do the fish restaurant. I did finally convince him that we didn't want any of those things, but I offered him the opportunity to take us to the train station in the morning. He agreed to do it for 200 yuan, which was ridiculous. He gave lots of excuses why we should pay him 200 yuan, including that he lived far away, but taxi fare should be about 50 yuan. I offered him 75. He wouldn't take it and was upset that we didn't do any of the other stuff he wanted. I did take pictures when we drove past the drum tower.
I'm pretty sure he drove the long way around trying to talk us into the other stuff. I got over my irritability when we got out of the cab and headed to the hutong where we got a really delicious Peking duck. No explanation of the melding of the different foods, so it was a good thing I've done it before with a tourist explanation. I was able to explain to my companion that Chinese food tries to balance warm energy with cool energy, like the yin and yang. The proteins are warm energy while the raw vegetables are cool energy, and we put things in the pancake to balance the energies. It was delicious!
There was so much we couldn't eat it all, but we carried it with us around the hutong. We went into some of the artisan shops. Most in our area were silversmiths making jewelry. I loved this dragon.
Here are the silversmiths at work
This is their finished products.
This guy was hawking for a food place. There were hawkers everywhere.
There was even a "cop in a box" with the phone number if you need him. Please do NOT break the glass! There were cops marching around, too, just like last night.
I got way too much dried fruit for the trains to Xi'an and Hong Kong, but they were delicious, too. After walking around, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for going to to the train station in the morning.
Our ride to the train station was right on time. No need to worry like we did. And the trip to the train station that early in the morning wasn't bad. Hardly any traffic on the road. Something we hadn't seen in Ulaanbaatar. So, we loaded everything up, rode to the train station, and tried to go in through the front doors. All front doors were locked. We tried them all. Then we noticed that some people were going behind the building, so like lemmings, we joined the pack. It paid off. That's how you get in the Ulaanbaatar train station, at least in the morning. They have a little coffee shop and a waiting room, but really nothing that tells you what the train is that's coming up. When a local train came in, I asked a man with his son, and he told me that that wasn't our train to Beijing. While waiting, we met a guy from Australia who was also taking the Trans Siberian Railroad to Beijing. He was on his way home to Sicily when the war with Iran broke out and his travels were disrupted because his flight (and all flights going that way) was cancelled. So, he was making the best of it and slow traveling by land, trying to go around the danger areas.
Once the train pulled in, the porters helped us get settled into our car. It was clearly our train.
We got the soft sleeper, which sleeps two. It reminded me of the trains I rode in Europe in the 1980s. Little rooms, not just rows upon rows of seats.
The room was a little different, too. Instead of having two seats across from each other that would pull out for the bed, it was bunk beds with a table and a comfy chair on the other side.
Our bathroom had a toilet and sink and even had an open shower in case we wanted to wash up. We stored our luggage in there, though.
After taking my meds and eating some of the left-over KFC, we wandered the train and went to the dining car for some tea and coffee. The dining car is interesting. In Mongolia, you get the Mongolian dining car. Once we hit the Chinese border, the dining car will be detached and replaced with a Chinese dining car. The Mongolian dining car was very ornate! It even had a horsehead fiddle hanging on the wall.
The scenery was nice with housing appearing to be more permanent buildings than gers.
We entered the Gobi Desert around 3:00 or 3:30 in the afternoon. It had more vegetation than I had seen anywhere else in Mongolia!
I missed the "Welcome to the Gobi Desert" sign, but I did get this one warning of the scorpions with a scorpion statue.
There are some stops where you have time to get off, and we took advantage of that. Of course, I didn't want to take the time to put my shoes on in case I would run out of time. Our longest stop was here, at Sahn-Shand, which means Good Spring in English.
Me in my sock feet outside the station
It's a long train.
Our last stop in Mongolia was Zamyn Uud, where immigration came in to make sure I had a visa for China before letting me continue. Mongolian customs also boarded and checked out our car to make sure we weren't taking out anything that shouldn't be taken out. Zamyn Uud means "road's gate" or "gateway", which is very appropriate because this is the crossing where people going the other direction enter Mongolia. They have the letters in both English letters and Mongolian cyrillics on the station.
And there is the "Welcome to Mongolia" sign over the arched doorway.
Next stop, China. So, I packed up all cameras because the first stop in China (Erenhot - Erlian in Mongolian), we have to get off and go through immigration and customs. Our porter told us we could leave our snacks on the train. We pulled into the station around 9:00 p.m. We took all our bags except the ones with snacks and headed for the immigration room. There was a guy separating US citizens from all others, so I went to a little room and told him what my itinerary was and showed him my visa. I obviously was mispronouncing Xi'an because he didn't have a clue where I was going after leaving Beijing until I showed him my itinerary in my phone. Then he let me skip the line and put me right in immigration. Immigration looked at my visa, asked the same questions the other guy did, and then asked for another form of ID, so I gave him my drivers license, which is an enhanced drivers license. He went back and forth a few times and finally had me put my fingerprints on the pad and took my picture. Nobody had any concern about my China visa being in an expired passport, so everything I read that said so long as the name, birthdate, and other vitals were the same on both passports, the visa is still good even though the passport it's in is expired was right. Immediately after the immigration section, customs has their x-ray machines for all bags, so I put my camera bag, CPAP, and my carryon through the machine and went out to the room where they said to have a seat. I thought once all of the people made it through, we would get back on the train and be on our merry way. How wrong I was!
We all sat in this little room with bathrooms in the back, a room we weren't allowed in to the right, a little shop in the front, and desks in the center front. A guy came in and opened the shop for a while and people bought noodles and ice cream. I kept thinking we would get back on the train soon, and I'd have the noodles I had in my bag. By the time I actually got hungry, the shop was closed. Little kids were running around the room, being well-behaved, but active - having races and other things. One of the Chinese authorities kept telling them to sit. You can't expect toddlers to sit in a room full of people and be quite for a few hours, lady! It's just not going to happen! Thankfully, she left after a bit and the other babysitters that remained let the kids be kids.
We never did find out why we had to stay in the train station at Erenhot for three hours, but I looked it up for this blog. Apparently, we came in on wide, Russian-sized rails used in Russia and Mongolia. China uses standard-sized rails. So, the during time we were sitting in the room, the train was raised and the wheels were switched to the smaller, standard-sized wheels that fit the smaller, standard-sized rails. This would have been a sight to see! Apparently, the train goes into a shed and hydraulic lifts lift the train about two meters off the ground so the wheelbases (or bogies) can be removed. These are then rolled away and the new wheelbases are rolled in and attached to the car before the train is lowered back to the track and a safety check is conducted. Apparently this can be done while passengers are on the train. I can't find anything to tell me why we weren't allowed to be on it while it happened. The best I can figure is that they maybe started the process while we were clearing immigration and customs. I guess I'm just going to have to take it backward to see if they let us stay on going the other direction.
They finally let us back on the train around 1:30 a.m. I promptly fell asleep without dinner. Fortunately for my companion, there was electricity in the room, so I was able to plug in my CPAP.
I woke up early and took my meds and dumped pictures. When my companion got up, we headed to the dining car, which was now the Chinese car. It's a bit more simple than the Mongolian one.
The breakfast was fairly decent. I don't remember what it was, just that I ate it and paid with WeChat Pay. The scenery was beautiful. Very dramatic mountains. I believe these would be the Jundu Mountains. I asked the porter, but I guess he was tired of me asking questions. I wrote down his answer, which sounded like "shandoma". Looking it up phonetically, it appears he told me they were just f((*ing mountains. (Shan meaning mountain, and doma being the F bomb.) I knew I liked our porter! Though he could have been referring to the mountain we were on as Mother Mountain. There are apparently several of those in China in various ranges, and the translation would still likely be accurate. Anyway, the scenery was lovely, even those f*))ing mountains!
We ultimately pulled into Beijing and disembarked at the main train station.
I couldn't get my Didi app to work right, though I tried. Didi is the Chinese equivalent of Uber. Anyway, we caught a taxi to the hotel. When we got there, my WeChat Pay didn't work. Thankfully, my companion had some yuan left over from when she paid for her breakfast on the train in Mongolian tugrik and got Chinese yuan for change. We walked down the little side street in the hutong and found our hotel, which didn't look at all like the picture online and didn't have the ground floor room that I asked for, but it's okay. It did have a cat on the front steps, looking like a younger Grandkitty.
We almost weren't able to stay there because they didn't take credit cards and yet again, my WeChat Pay didn't work. This time, though, it told me I needed a Chinese credit card and that it wouldn't accept the US credit card that I had already attached. Well, bully you! Luckily, I had also downloaded and set up AliPay, and I was able to make that one work. It just had to be authenticated while in country. It took me about an hour to get it all set up and get us in.
After we checked in, we took a walk down part of the hutong. A hutong is a traditional neighborhood where cars may not drive. There are many artisans and shops in the area. Lots of statuary in this one.
Many of the streets were barely wide enough for a scooter to go through.
We watched a vendor make this corn cob out of sugar for this little boy. I thought about getting one, but my sugar level would have gone through the roof!
We had some dumplings and got some kind of meat on a stick. They were delicious, but didn't sit well, so I didn't eat much. We did stop on the way and picked up some fruit and a soda pop. We had some options for going to the wall the next day, but decided grabbing a Didi would be our best option, so up to bed we went and slept fairly well.
