Xian- Chengdu by overnight sleeper with Baileys Tours

Sorry to friends and family that are following our blogs we have had a hectic week last week, We have had no service on our phone or access to the internet, as we have been living in Monasteries  and staying on a cruise ship, but here goes a bit more information about our last 10 days. We are still having lots of fun!

This overnight train seemed newer than the last hard sleeper we were on. It was another good experience, this time we were placed in a 6 birth sleeper with the rest of our group, so it was better.   We also slept in the middle bunks for a change, some things were the same, the noodles for tea and bedtime at 10pm. We didn’t mind as we were absolutely shattered.  We arrived in Chengdu very early 5pm the following morning..  Outside the station it was crowded, obviously a lot of other people travelling very early.  We left our luggage in the hotel and had our first English breakfast Chinese style at Holly’s Youth hostel. It was a really good change from eating noodles or dumplings.  

We then set off by private bus to visit the Chengdu panda breeding centre. We didn’t really know what to expect, but this experience seeing these large pandas exceeded our expectations.  We got very close to the pandas and were able to watch them eat and play. We also saw the baby pandas in the incubators varying from a couple of weeks old to a couple of months old, they were very cute, as you will see on the photos.

In the  panda breeding centre there was a lake, which had a numerous amount of carp, in fact we have never seen as many in one place before, they were jumping out of the water, and fighting the ducks for the food.  A great day,  well worth the visit.

The following day we got a bus to a monastery called the Baoguo monastery, it was nice to arrive somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of the city and the sound of car horns.  The accommodation in the monastery was pretty basic and what we expected, however the toilets were a bit of a letdown.  The monastery itself was impressive with a very peaceful ambiance, lighted scented candlelights in the middle of the courtyard and a number of very impressive Buddha’s displayed in various temples with kneeling mats so people can go there and pray.  We mentioned that it is peaceful, but not at 4am, early hours of the morning when we heard the first beat of the drum, this was the wakeup call for the monks to meet and start their chanting. We certainly did not need our alarm clocks.  The chanting and the drums go on for about 2 hours before they start their silent prayers, by this time breakfast is ready. 

We packed an overnight bag ready to go to Mount Emei 3,099 meters above sea level, This mountain is a famous Buddhist mountain and has four famous views, the cloud sea, the sunrise, the Buddist light and the saint lamp. Also as part of our tour we were heading off to experience another monastery at the top of the mountain, so we prepared ourselves for a four hour walk on the afternoon, it was very humid with lots of rain.

We were very excited about the experience until we were given a talk during breakfast and handed a bamboo stick which all of the group thought it was help them walk up the mountain. But to everyone’s surprise we were told that this was to be used to defend us when we are passing the monkeys during our walk!  Most of the group sat with their mouth open in surprise and told there was monkey police controlling the area.  The guides did not understand why we were all in fits of laughter.  Nobody ever mentioned to us that we would be fighthing  off the monkeys as they would be after our lunch.

 We finally set off on a bus travelling up hill on a very treacherous road.  It wasn’t long on our first walk where the monkey’s were waiting for us blocking the paths as they were in families of groups of 5 or more. They were much bigger than we thought close up, some at around 35 kgs. We thought they looked quite harmless and were just looking us up and down, scanning our bags for food. We listened to our leaders and all our food and drink were well hidden in our ruck sacks.  Once we got over the initial shock of being so close to the monkeys it turned out to be good fun! and fairly exciting. We managed to get to some good close up photographs  Once we passed the monkeys we got a cable car up to 3,200 metres above sea level. The cable car was pretty erie, we could appreciate the heights we were travelling up too, but the vision was poor due to the low clouds and the mist.

Once arriving at the top there was a massive gold Budha with various heads which stood about 100ft high, it had a very magical feel about it. We were very impressed, it was well worth the long cable car ride. The photos were not so good though because of the mist but we managed to capture the large scale of the budda.

The afternoon was a fairly long four hour walk up hill towards the monastery with fantastic views, consisting of paths, waterfalls, suspension bridges; these views reminded us of the scenes we saw from jungles in Indiana Jones.  After climbing many steps of which our legs were starting to ache, our final walk finished with 1200 steps to climb to the monastery.  A nice surprise! The monastery was similar to the one we had stayed the previous night,  but the toilets were worse, which we didn’t think was possible as these were totally open air and out in the open with no doors!

After a nice breakfast of pancakes and fruit salad the next day we saw the monkeys coming towards the restaurant , one of the large ones had the audacity to open up one of the fridges and try and pinch the water.  The guide soon scared them off with the bamboo stick.  It didn’t stop the babies keep coming back to have another go, but the owners of the restaurant had a couple of little terriers who were fairly confident in protecting their territory.

The following day consisted of a full day walking back down the mountain, we stopped after a couple of hours and the group were given an option, which was to either take a coach back down the mountain or do another 3 hour walk, four of us decided we wanted to do the walk as the views were stunning.  We have never seen as many steps, up and down, so it wasn’t the easiest walk we have ever done but well worth it for the views.

We returned back to the monastery at the bottom of Mount Emi, ready for our early morning chanting, but we had a lovely optional surprise to look forward to and that was some hot springs.  This was a combination of hot pools to sit in all different scents, banana pineapple, cocoa, Aloe Vera, the perfect end to a day after walking so far.  It filled in a couple of hours before going to the restaurant for our local evening  restaurant meal with the group .

The following day we got up fairly early and set off on a long journey by public bus, 7 hours in total, in order to go to the Docks to start our 4 day tour on a cruise ship sailing down the Yangtse River  It should have been a fairly comfortable ride by bus, but the driver beeped his horn every time he passed other traffic and believe us the roads were busy so you can imagine the horn never stopped.  We finally arrived at the Docks to board the cruise ship and once again we were pleasantly surprised by the cruise ship called ‘Victoria Rose’. The rooms were great, really clean and back to western toilets. (not squat toilets of which we have had to experience so many of them). The cruise was a great experience we learned so much about Chinas famous gorges, the city Wushan which had to be built 300 meters above the old town due to the dam being made as they had to raise the water level higher on the Yangtse river, therefore the old town of which 30,000 people lived their much loved town ended up under water. This was sad for the locals especially the older people who did not like change, as they missed their original homes. In he afternoon we were taken on a small sampon ,up three smaller gorges where the views and scenery was outstanding and breathtaking in its own right. We also visited the dam , completed in 2009,which is now  the largest in the world.  It was a great experience last night entering the docks it took four hours in total for the cruise ship to get through the 5 locks.

We are staying overnight in Yichang before departing Monday September 19^th for our next adventure where we will take another over night train to Liuzhou. This time we are staying in a soft sleeper supposed to be more upperclass we will wait and see!

Beijing to X’ian by overnight train with Bailey's Tours .

The train journey.-A different experience, quite exciting once we got on the train, however we had not anticipated that we were going to have a bit of a March consisting of a 15 minute walk to the train station, with 22kg on our back. We then had a half an hour queue in a very crowded railway station, then again everything seems to be crowded in China.  We slept on what you call a ‘hard sleeper’, which is based on small rooms along the corridor consisting of 6 bunks in each, a bit of a tight squeeze, but we managed. It was also cleaner than we imagined so it was a bonus as we were preparing for the worst.  In total the train took 17 hours from Beijing to Xian

Our first impressions of Xian were similar to Beijing, a lot of cars and people.  Xi’an population is 8 million so you can imagine pretty crowded.  The roads were certainly as bad as Beijing, pedestrians don’t have any rights,  Crossing the road here is like playing the game chicken where you hope for the best, as you dodge in and out of the traffic.  Over the last few days it has been getting easier as you have to become fearless.

Xian has plenty of shops and markets, very reasonable prices but you have to barter, which the Chinese people seem to enjoy, they ask you to name your top price. 

Xian main attraction is a wall that is built around the city, 1400 kilometers in perimeter,  it is 600 years old.  You have a choice whether you wish to walk around it, which takes about 3 hours or hire a bike which takes one and a half hours, we did it the easy way and rode around it, it was good fun, it wasn’t tiring as it was flat but bumpy.

One of the main attractions we came to see near Xian was the Terracotta warriors, which was an hour ride on public bus from the hotel.  It is a museum well worth going to see, apparently the biggest archeologist discovery in the 20^th century, where there is still more of it to discover as it is still buried underneath the ground

Setting off again today on another overnight train this time a soft sleeper, supposed to be on the upper class, we will wait and see our next experience.  We are setting off to Chengdu panda breeding centre to see the giant pandas, We are looking forward to our next experience.

Three day sightseeing tour of Beijing with Baileys Tours .

Bailey's Tours checkout Beijing .

Our first impressions of Beijing on arrival was very interesting to say the least, A vast ,yet empty arrival lounge that took a long walk, followed by a train ride to find the baggage collection point.  Also a sense off efficiency was apparent, right from the start from observing not only people but also the infrastructure a lot of new cars, mopeds and many people, with not half as many push bikes as we expected..  We found walking across the road was very scary and debated whether or not the Chinese people had ever heard of the Green Cross Code!

Most takeaway restaurants in the area had a tendency to use a very loud speaker system to try and draw attention to passers by to draw them into their shops.  The noise was incredible.

On arrival we looked around the local area near the hotel for about an hour for a quiet restaurant, as we still had jet lag. We couldn’t find one that appealed so we decided to take a taxi to Hou Hai Lake, as this place was recommended to us by the taxi driver as a good place for bars and restaurants.  Hou Hai  Lake was an eye opener, lively as you might expect for a Saturday night ,very pretty with numerous bars and restaurants situated around the lake . Our guess would be there were approximately 200 bars, 30-40 restaurants.  It was a sight and sound we could say that we have never seen on our travels to date.  Every bar had a singer or a band and when walking past the bars you could hear the three different artists at once singing, it was a sort of karaoke style so and as you can imagine it was very noisy. We never did find the quiet restaurant.  In all an amazing first night and were really pleased we had made the effort ,even after having had only about three hours sleep in the previous 48 hours .

The following day we had our own time as we were not meeting up with the group until 6pm , so we found ourselves ending up in one of the oldest observatories in the world ,which was just around the corner from the hotel;  once again, just what we needed after our trek to get here.

Group Meeting.

We met the other 8 people we will be spending three weeks with and felt much better after doing so. The meeting was led by Michael, our Chinese tour guide and it was very informative and really great to  meet the rest of the group.  We were the only English, five people from the group were Australian, two American and one German and the mix of ages was good too,  We were not the oldest and all were professionals in their own field of work .)

ITINERARY; So not to bore you ,we are listing places visited followed by the odd comment if we felt it was necessary or interesting to do so . Photos will be added to supplement our comments.

Monday 5^th of September;

Tiananmen Square- Not much we can say about this place as it represents so much to the Chinese people and also to the outside world. We can now see how one million people can stand here and we were so impressed with the cleanliness and pride shown by all the Chinese people who were also visiting in many ways their own sacred site.

Forbidden City – Unbelievable! You have to see this place to believe it .Once you enter the first walls you think that is it. However it goes on and on and gets bigger and better. Also it took over 500 years until 1925 before ordinary people could cast their eyes on it .

Hutong home visit and Rickshaw trip.

Hutong means’ alley’ and these homes are entered through on gate ,where you go into what feels like a Victorian back yard. All four homes in the quadrant share one toilet and there are no showers. Each home has a kitchen ,living area and a couple of bedrooms.

A Very humbling experience having food cooked in the home of a Chinese family who have lived in the  ‘Old ‘ town for four generations. The rickshaw was entertaining too and very much needed after tramping

Drum Tower – These are what you call drums !

Evening Kung Fu Show – The standard of acrobatics and physicality and aggression of these wannabe  Bruce Lees was great to see.

Tuesday 6^th of September –

Great Wall of China visit (Jinshanling)-  This was the main reason we came to Beijing , to get a glimpse of the wall. Well we certainly did that as we had a trek up, along and down it and were totally lost for words. What an amazing piece of engineering, so impressive even now and we are really pleased our tour guide brought us to the Jinshanling section as we were he only tourists really there.

Food Market- Another eye opener ! The following local delicacies were all skewered and ready to eat;

Scorpions (These were still wriggling), Cockroaches, Lizards, Starfish and Seahorses!!! Needless to say both of us declined and failed the challenge.  A very colorful market area,  with many other types of recognisable Chinese food.  However the smell of the whole market did resemble the smell you get near the bait section in a fishing tackle shop back in the UK!

Hai Ho Lake – We took some of the group down to the lake after we’d had a meal as we saw on Saturday it was once again very lively and entertaining. A little quieter, but it was a Tuesday night. Another very unique place, as where else in the world do you get a large lake that you can walk around, totally surrounded by hundreds of bars and restaurants?

Transfer from Altinkum to Heathrow , via Bodrum and Brussels with Baileys Tours .

After a delay in Altinkum due to 'Turkish Time' , the driver of the transfer produced a thrilling bare knuckle ride to Bodrum where Viv acted as co-pilot in the front seat passsing him crisps etc on the way. We have now been travelling since 6pm yesterday, Bodrum- Brussels - where the accomodation at 2.00pm this morning was much to be desired and consisted of the hard floor outside pizza hut !(Note Viv was away with the fairies!) and then to Heathrow.

    Heathrow has enabled us to catch up and prepare ourselves for the real start of our trip when we land in Beijing.(I've also managed to buy myself a cover for my kindle-thanks to the generous donations from staff and parents at North and South Cowton School, when I left at the end of July.)

     Everything feels strange at the moment as I've always been at school in September, ever since  I was four years old . I keep thinking about the jobs I would normally be doing and the children I would be preparing things for, but we have many exciting things to do over the next year that will surely take my mind from my previous job.

Another three hours to go before we board the plane to Bejing.

Hopefully we will get some sleep on the plane as it is a 9 hour flight.

Sorry we have no sound recordings where Steve is snoring for England!

China here we come! 

Bailey's Tours Adventure and Travel ; Blog 1 - The Beginning; Our Last day in Turkey !

     Reality is starting to hit us .....


It's 2 .00 pm in sunny Turkey, we  are both starting to get excited by the pool with three of our children who keep trying to encourage us to drink beer with them,We are not feeling guilty when they say,''Have a  last beer with us '' we  have four hours before our transfer takes us to Bodrum,where our epic journey begins . All we have to do now is try and get our two rucksacks on our backs then we are away for one whole year with everything we need , hopefully on our backs !?.

Brussels by 1.00 am ,then Heathrow by 7.30 pm flying off to Beijing at 4.30 pm - China here we come !

P.S..The pool was wonderful!