Back In Melbourne

Ok, so I arrived back home yesterday and it's definitely good to be back. Wasn't sure I was going to make it at one point. To get to Beijing Airport I had to take a taxi ride to a shuttle bus. Driving in an orderly fashion is not one of the Chinese strong points. My driver for some reason was in a big hurry. Early on he had us driving in the middle of two lanes, both of which were lanes that were going in the wrong direction. Staring down two oncoming cars for a couple of moments, the driver managed to get back in the correct lane with a little time to spare. Good of him. Then as we were driving in the correct lane, a bloody big bus swerved to avoid something in it's way and suddenly was taking up our full lane. So a big swerve and a couple of choice words from me and again we were back on track. Then I think adrenalin caused my driver to decide that the red light we were approaching was only a little bit red so he gunned it through the lights and once again, we were facing down two oncoming cars. At this point I decided our luck couldn't hold and surely this was when the crash would happen yet somehow we just missed both of them and executed a nice turn before anyone hit us. It felt very good to get out of that car.

Then I found out the shuttle bus was going to take two hours to get to the airport which would have been scraping it a bit fine. Some dude I thought was an official for the bus company said in really bad english that a taxi could do it in one hour. The taxi just turned out to be his car. So then mental car ride number two began. To his credit, the guy got us through peak hour traffic, fast, without so much as a scratch. He used the bike lane often (I was so sure he was going to knock down a cyclist), he cut off other cars constantly, he honked his horn like a maniac and he got me to the airport in just over an hour which for peak hour was a top effort.

The rest of the travel home was incident free.

So one more thing before I finish this blog. Wanted to mention my visit to see Chairman Mao's body. He died 31 years ago and although he wanted to be cremated, they embalmed him and now he spends his days in a Mausoleum which obviously has to be called The MAOsoleum where you can view him. The whole thing felt very surreal. In Tiananmen Square I found a large queue of people I thought might be queueing to see him and joined it. Lasted about a minute before some official told me to get out of the queue. Couldn't figure out why straight away but then slowly pieced together that you have to check your backpack including camera into a bag check area over the road. Once that was done I was back in the queue with a bunch of jostling Chinese people. Couldn't see any other tourists. We were then ordered to line up in two lines. There were police and guards everywhere making sure we stood within the special queueing area. We were then ordered to move forward where we walked through some gates while still outside and then around a corner in what felt like military formation, all the while being scrutinised by many guards who barked the odd order which I think was mostly about no cameras etc. Once inside a sign in English said to be quiet and remove your hat. We passed through a couple of rooms and then reached the viewing room. Inside a big glass case, a good 10 or more metres away, was Chairman Mao, lying down and covered in what seemed to be a red flag with the communist hammer and sickle on it. Basically you could only see his head and since the crowd was forced to move along quietly and quickly, I doubt I saw more than about 20 seconds worth. Not long enough to see whether the embalmer had found time to remove that massive mole from near his mouth that he really should have had sliced off before he got into politics. He just looked like an oldish, balding man to me. Then it was all over. We were then in the souvenir area where the guards weren't so interested in hurrying us along. :)
I wish I could have got a photo. There are various rumours suggesting that either the body is decomposing or that it's just a waxwork. I've also heard that sometimes it's the real body and sometimes a fake for when they do restoration work on him. Perhaps he's like Michael Jackson and every once in a while, parts of his face just slide off or something. I also found myself wondering what the other people who were viewing him with me thought of the experience. Were they just satisfying some sort of morbid curiosity like I was? Were they looking at a man they believed was a great leader who helped their country become what it is today? Or perhaps they were quietly wishing he'd rot in hell for all of the deaths he caused in his time at the helm. Not a clue.

Ok, I reckon that must bring this long final blog entry of my holiday to a close. It's great to be back and I look forward to catching up with everyone over the next couple of weeks or so. I guess I now have to go and get myself a job. Yikes!

General China Thoughts

So my tour finished on Sunday and everyone on what was an awesome tour group got straight out of Beijing and went home, leaving me to fend for myself until Wednesday night when my plane flies me to Australia. Just one day left until I get on that plane. Can't wait.
Today I did something I've been fired up to do since I arrived here. I went to see the Mausoleum where Chairman Mao's body rests. I was going to describe it now but perhaps I'll wait until I'm back in Australia to do that.
Instead I'll mention some other things I found interesting about China.
1. The funny stares. I think I mentioned this in my last blog entry but since I can't remember and can't access my blog to read it, I'll mention it briefly here. We kept getting many stares and in some cases laughs and giggles when people saw the 12 westerners walking around in a group. Even yesterday I was just sitting down in some shade outside a big temple resting when some dude who was there with his girlfriend and some other dude, asked if he could have a photo taken of me and him. I didn't mind. I'll never understand this photo thing but it's happened lots to people on the tour.
2. Babies bums. For some reason, young kids who have only just figured out how to walk, get put in clothes with pants that have a whole in the back that shows their bum. I thought it was kind of cute at first but then when some of our group saw a kid backing out one of his best on some nice tiles in the middle of a busy walkway in a train station, I think we all realised that's there are certain drawbacks to this no-nappies idea.
3. One morning, three of us from the tour (Ellisa, Lucy and I) went for a walk in Xi'an at 6.45am to find the main square and the tai-chi that happens there. It was great. So many mostly elderly people out and about before the heat of the day had kicked in. Some did tai-chi, others danced, others did gentle stretching and one crazy old guy was hitting a tennis ball attached to an elastic band and a brick and jogging around a bit hoping that one of us might take his picture. It was an aspect to the people I hadn't seen until then and made me respect that they are so dedicated to their health. I just can't imagine so many people getting up for public exercise in the morning in Australia for instance.
4. The Great Wall was well worth a look and one of the highlights of the trip. Oddly none of the guide books or our own tour guide mentioned that it was built to keep the rabbits out. They tend to go for the reason of keeping the Mongolians out which they so obviously stole from that South Park episode. A cable car took us up to the area where we started walking and after a while it got real steep. Felt a bit like the Inca Trail but without the altitude problems. The most dangerous part of the wall is the path from the cable car to the bus where vendors on both sides of the path try to sell you tourist rubbish you don't want and yell "hello!!" at you in almost accusing voices.
5. Lastly, the tour group was a really good one. We all got along really well which made the whole thing so much more fun. Made some great friends, some of whom I'm going to miss very much.

Finally, cos I've got the time , I've typed out exactly what was on a sign at the start of the great wall. While it's a definitely a Great Wall, they failed to hire a Great Translator.

"Welcome you to visit Mutianyu Great Wall. For your and others' security. Please pay attention to the following items.
1. Please don't carve arbitrarily on the Great Wall. Protect one brick and one stone consciously.
2. For your personal safety. Please don't climb the crenelated wall.
3. Please walk carefully on abrupt slope and dangerous way. Don't run and pushes to pash violently and the laugh and frolic.
4. Please pay attention to your safety in the rain and snow weather.
5. Old people and children must have been accompanied and leaded by their family members when climbing the Great Wall.
6. The fire is forbidden here. Please don't take tinder.
7. ( this was just police contact details so I'm not typing this out)"

Of all the many many examples of bad English I've seen since I've been in China, the one at the Great Wall takes the cake for me. Especially number 3 with the urging not to pash violently. Gold!

Hanging out to get back to Melbourne now and see if I can get back on the merry-go-round of daily life again after getting right out of it for 5 months. So many things I want to do when i get back. And yes, porridge with brown sugar faces in it and coffee scrolls both feature heavily.

In Beijing

I am now in Beijing which is the last stop on our tour. I can't seem to get to read my own blog website at the moment as it seems to be blocked everywhere I go. So I can't read any comments. Somehow it still lets me write a new blog entry though.
I haven't got much time so I'll just say for now that I'm having a great time and am currently in a great mood cos last night I bought a cool watch with a picture of Chairman Mao on it and he's waving his arm to the people as the second hands moves. It's so tacky it's cool!
The tour group is a lot of fun and we've so far seen the Forbidden City (packed with tourists), the Three Gorges Dam, Shanghai, spent two nights on trains and one on a boat plus lots of other stuff. We've been constantly stared at by the Chinese who obviously still find the sight of Westerners quite interesting (some stare blatantly, others walk past us and chuckle to themselves). A few of us have been asked to be in their photos which is kind of weird.
Gotta go. This is costing me too much. Most things are cheap here in China but use of the internet at this hotel is not one of them. Will write more when I get back from holiday in about a weeks time which I'm very much looking forward to.

Off to China

I've gotta leave for Heathrow airport from my brothers place in one hour and yet I'm wasting time on the internet while I drink my coffee.
China is starting out on the back foot with me. In total, over two days I have spent 3 hours and 45 mins in queues in order to get a Chinese visa. When even Londoners are taking photos of the queue, it's clear that's pretty poor form. That said, I'm very confident the place will win me over quick once I get there and start looking around.
I'm very unsure what to expect though. I can't speak or read Chinese so that could be tricky. I'm guessing they don't speak much Spanish either. And what about all the bad things I hear about the place? Can I ask my tour guide his thoughts on their terrible track record on human rights abuses, torture, the Falun Gong etc and get a decent answer? It should be a very interesting place anyway.
Leaving London is sad. I've quite enjoyed my time here and won't see Luke and Theresa until maybe next June at the earliest. My mention in a previous blog entry about Mars Bar Icecreams was taken as a hint to buy more by L & T so between the three of us we've polished off another six-pack of them in the last couple of days. Oh, so good! Might have to start writing letters when I'm back home to get them going again in Australia. Hell, I'm be sitting at home with no job so I've gotta do something with my time!
Alright, now I've really gotta try to cram all of my stuff back into my backpack. This is gonna be tough.

In España

Capital city Madrid was first up. A somewhat typical big city, the thing you do in Madrid is visit the Royal Palace and see museums and big art galleries. The Royal Palace is amazing. They let you walk through about 25 of the roughly 3000 rooms that are there. Decorated with tapestries, old and impressive paintings and extremely detailed frescoes on the ceilings, there is heaps to look at and it oozes richness like ummm, a toads back oozes poison. My favourite room was the one where "the king would perform the daily ceremony of getting dressed". Way to turn everything into a ceremony! I bet the Royal Flossing Of The Teeth ceremony would have been a right royal cracker as well!

My favourite city in Spain is now Cordoba. South of Madrid (in the REGION of Andalucia), on the day I arrived it was still 39 degrees at 7.50pm. The city centre has narrow streets and heaps of plazas where, once the sun goes down and the city cools, everyone emerges to sit around and cool off and look at fountains and stuff. I had a hostel room to myself in Cordoba and took to the traditional afternoon siesta like I was born to do it! To be in a place that views a sleep in the afternoon as a good idea rather than mocking it and calling it a "nanna nap" or "grandpa nap" was a joy. The highlight of Cordoba is The Mezquita which was originally the site of a Christian Cathedral in about the 6th century AD. Then the Arabs took over the city and knocked it down and built a MMM (Massive Muslim Mosque) about a hundred years or so later. Then the Christians in about the 13th century won the city back and converted the Mosque to a Cathedral so it´s got elements of both religions in it and is amazing to look at. This was King Ferdinand III´s doing. Commonly known to his mates as Ferdo or The Ferdmeister, his name seems to pop up heaps in this area of Spain so he must have been pretty busy with all his conquering and other kingly duties.
Now I´m in Granada where The Alhambra is. Rumoured to have been named after an EP that Canadian band The Tea Party released a few years back (I may be wrong about that), it is an area containing, once again, a combination of Muslim and Christian buildings/churches and gardens. Before going, everyone was telling me how wonderful it is, building it up again and again so that when I finally saw it yesterday I was slightly disappointed. It was really nice but too much build up meant it suffered a little. That said, it´s pretty impressive. Gardens full of hedges, flowers and running water are relaxing to sit in and the Muslim buildings converted into Catholic churches with elements of both religions make for a very busy camera.
I´ve got a couple more days here before it´s back to London. Actually, I´ll back in Melbourne in less than a month now. Just in time for the Grand Final!