Journey to the other half of Korea

Qingdao Ferry Terminal [Enlarge]

We spent most of our first day back in Beijing resting and uploading our photographs of North Korea to Flickr. We have taken hundreds. But not as many as some of our comrades—one of them took over a thousand pictures at the Arirang mass games alone! It was good to finally get the photos copied onto our laptop, as it's been a bit of a worry not having a backup of these expensive and completely irreplaceable memories.

The next stage on our round the world trip was a sleeper train ride from Beijing to the beer brewing capital of China, Qingdao (pronounced 'Ching-dao', to rhyme with 'now'), followed by the overnight ferry across the Yellow Sea to South Korea.

The train didn't start from Beijing until 22:50 so we paid for an extra half day to secure ourselves a late checkout from the hotel. Then, as late as possible without having to pay for a full extra day, we set out on a slow walk to the railway station. We had a very good club sandwich in the almost deserted restaurant of the Howard Johnson Paragon Hotel, near the station. The restaurant was in an atrium at the centre of the hotel, almost unlit, with a glass roof between us and the sky. It felt a bit like having a meal at the bottom of a mine shaft. We killed the rest of the waiting time in one of the station's soft-seat lounges, where the helpful staff kept an eye on us to make sure we didn't miss our train announcement, and Tom and Jerry cartoons played out endlessly on flat screen TVs.

We boarded the train amid the usual Chinese riot. We found our compartment, stowed our stuff, said a few hellos to our Chinese companions (who immediately fell asleep) and then settled down for the night. Still completely knackered from our DPRK trip we slept through until 06:30 in the morning which gave us just the right amount of time to sort ourselves out ready for an on-time arrival into Sifang station on the outskirts of Qingdao. We disembarked and went to find a taxi. One invaluable tip we've picked up is always to print off a map of where you're going in Chinese script, if at all possible. Luckily we had found one such map on the Weidong Ferry website, and we handed our map to the driver, showing the location of the Weidong ticket office. He seemed to know where he was going, and we got to the office just before 08:00. We had booked our berth over the phone from Shanghai, weeks and weeks ago. At 08:30 the office opened and we swapped our reference number and a wad of banknotes for two tickets. All that remained was to find a way to kill the seven hours until boarding time.

We had originally planned to do some sightseeing in Qingdao during this time, as it has lots of places for tourists to see. But we were so tired that we couldn't be bothered to do anything but set up camp in a corner of the terminal and sit it out.

It was our second wedding anniversary! On this day in 2005 we spent the day in a beautiful country house with our friends and family. Last year we were in London at the Royal Albert Hall, and riding on the Millennium Wheel. Today, we spent the day sitting in the departure hall at Qingdao ferry terminal surrounded by hundreds of crates of cargo being exported to Korea. And a Chinese acrobatic troupe, complete with see-saws! It will go down as one of our stranger anniversaries.

While Isla minded the bags, Glenn went for a wander down the street to see if there was anything interesting within range of the terminal. (There wasn't.) Glenn hadn't been gone long when a young Chinese man approached Isla. "Where are you from?" he asked. "England," said Isla. The man proudly showed off his jacket, which had a Union Flag on the front and ENGLAND written across the back. And then he grinned and said "James Bond!", and walked off. There was no answer to that. By the way, we are now carrying three bags, plus a plastic shopping bag, until we get a chance to mail home all our North Korean propaganda! Also, we're still carrying that damned terracotta warrior! Our travelling light philosophy is briefly on hold, and we hate it.

We finally boarded at about half past three, and then set sail at 17:35, about an hour late. Our 'Royal Class Cabin' was the equivalent of a 3-star hotel room and perfect for the overnight crossing. It wasn't cheap at 1150 yuan each (GBP 76 / USD 150), but hell, it was our anniversary—and the alternative was open bunks or mattresses on the floor of a fifty-berth dormitory. We could have booked the President Suite, but that seemed a bit extreme.

We were the only westerners among the few hundred on board, and we were objects of great curiosity. The voyage was uneventful, and we spent most of it in the cabin, as there was absolutely nothing of interest on the ship, despite what the website said. We couldn't even buy a can of Coke and a bar of chocolate, as the only shop on board was a tiny duty free shop selling nothing but booze and fags. It is obvious that the Weidong Ferry does not get many tourists.

Every half hour or so there was an announcement in Korean and Chinese, which we had no ability to comprehend. We could have been sinking and we wouldn't have known. But credit to our new, we've seen it all, laid back personas, we weren't bothered by not having a clue what was going on. We are used to it now.

Korean cars being exported [Enlarge]

We disembarked in Incheon port (pronounced In-chon) at 10:30 this morning. Incheon is about an hour's ride on the subway from Seoul, the capital of South Korea. At the exit to the ferry terminal was a tourist information booth where we got directions to the nearest ATM and subway station. As usual, we hadn't bothered changing money before arriving, since developed countries always have plenty of ATMs.

We walked out of the port, wondering what our twenty-first country would have in store for us. It should be one of the easier ones, we thought, as South Korea has a reputation for being one of the most high-tech countries in the world. We went into a nearby supermarket, as directed by the tourist information lady, where we had a choice from several ATMs. At which point each machine in turn barfed at us and told us in broken English that it only accepted Korean cards, and so could we please stop contaminating it with nasty foreign ones. Bugger. Oh, and our phone didn't work either. It is a worthless piece of plastic here, as the Korean system is completely different to the rest of the world's. We spent the next half hour or so trying ATM after ATM throughout Incheon, before giving up and exchanging a few American dollars that we found at the bottom of our wallet for just enough Korean won to get us to Seoul. With the exceptions of Laos and North Korea, every country we have visited has had bog-standard, any card welcome, ATMs. Still, at least we could get to Seoul, and with the help of a friendly local we boarded the subway. After a short walk to our pre-booked hotel, we checked in and contemplated where we'd landed, and what we'd landed ourselves in.

Days 149-151
Beijing to Seoul

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

The Dandong extension

Dandong waterfront [Enlarge]

A good sleep and comfort food for breakfast yesterday (bacon sandwiches!) put us in a good mood that even the torrential rain couldn't dent. A couple of people were sick from the meal on the train the day before, and didn't join us. We're glad we gave the restaurant car a miss.

This was the beginning of our post North Korea rehabilitation and deprogramming. We met Brooklyn and the rest of our group at 09:30 and went outside to the bus. Just outside the hotel was a slightly shifty man. He should really have been wearing a grubby raincoat that he could open to reveal a selection of dodgy wares pinned inside. What was he touting? North Korean money. It is illegal to take any won out of North Korea. The customs checks had been pretty arbitrary so we would almost certainly have got away with taking some out, but since all transactions were done in hard currency, we never got a chance to get hold of any won. We've managed to keep a low denomination note from every country we've been to so far, so we wanted one or two from the DPRK if possible. This guy was asking 10 yuan for 150 won which was fairly close to the official exchange rate, but significantly below the black market rate, which is presumably where his profit margin is. That, or the notes are fake. If they are fake, they're certainly convincing, and given that the won is worth so little, it would surely be cheaper for him to buy the real thing than print his own? We shelled out for a clear plastic bag containing a one hundred won and a fifty.

The One Metre Hop [Enlarge]

About thirty minutes' drive out of town we visited the one metre hop, known in China as yi bu kua (the literal translation is 'one step across'). Here the Yalu River is so narrow that you can allegedly hop, step or jump across to North Korea. It looked a little too wide for that, but you could certainly wade quite easily. How far you would get after your paddle is debatable. For a start, you'd only find yourself on a North Korean island still in the middle of the river. Secondly, we could clearly see a couple of KPA soldiers hiding in the bushes. When we started pointing cameras at them they ran away. A few years ago apparently an Italian journalist jumped over and was immediately captured by the soldiers. He was interrogated for a day or two and then released.

Then we popped next door to the eastern end of the Great Wall, reconstructed from the ground up a few years ago. We climbed up to the highest point, but there was so much low cloud and drizzle that there wasn't much of a view. The worst of the rain had stopped by now though.

Although we had been to plenty of souvenir stops in the DPRK, we didn't get a chance to buy the most sought-after North Korean souvenir of all: a Kim Il-sung badge. These little pin badges are worn by almost every adult in the country. They are not for sale anywhere in the DPRK. People are 'given them' by the government. Replacements are not available. Someone in group B had asked their guide what happens if someone loses their badge. The predictable reply was, "They don't lose it". Simon from Koryo Tours had told us that the souvenir shop in Dandong is the place to get authentic Kim badges. Sadly, we weren't too impressed with them. They were clearly extremely low quality Chinese fakes, and didn't even have the same design as the real things. We decided to hang on and wait to see if there were any better ones on offer elsewhere.

Korean War museum [Enlarge]

Next we went to the Korean War Museum, or rather the museum of the "War to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea", which is the name of the war in China. At the height of the cold war it suited China to prop up communist North Korea, so that it could act as a buffer between China and South Korea.

After lunch we managed to find a working ATM, replenished our empty wallet and repaid our footballing debt. We had tried and failed to get cash last night from two ATMs, and we were seriously worried that maybe some North Korean anti capitalist pig jamming technology at the DMZ had fried our ATM card (yes, that's how we think now, in fact one member of our group is actually considering replacing his mobile phone in case the Koreans bugged it while it was in their possession). But rather boringly the problem turned out to be a minor network outage with the bank concerned.

We took a short cruise on the river. The contrast between the opposing waterfronts was incredible: on one side, the buzzing high-rise city of Dandong; on the other, a semi-rural scene of people washing in the river and fishing from the mud banks. The Koreans are not ignorant of the difference, and lots of them regularly cross the river—the price for the border guards not noticing them is as little as a packet of good-quality cigarettes. They can then work, sell produce or scavenge for food before returning to their own side again after dark. We also walked out to the end of the broken bridge, where we could look over to the other bridge by which we had left North Korea on the train. It doubles as a road bridge, and while we were there a reasonable flow of traffic was passing in both directions (almost all of it trucks and vans). Meanwhile on the broken bridge a woman was selling more souvenirs, including Kim badges. They were the same tat as we had seen before and it became clear that we are not going to find any authentic badges for sale. We got a good deal on one of the fakes.

Sinuiju river bank [Enlarge]

By early evening, it was time to board our final train back to Beijing, which arrived at 08:30 this morning. We have completely lost track of time this week, and so we both forgot that today is Glenn's birthday! We took a taxi back to Koryo's office to pick up all the stuff that was prohibited in the DPRK, checked in to our hotel and began a long rest. The week in North Korea has probably been the most memorable week of our lives, but it has been no relaxing holiday! Now we have to learn to think for ourselves again. In a few days we are heading to South Korea. We can't wait to see the other side of the world's last divided nation.

Day 147
Dandong to Beijing

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Return to the free world

Pyongyang station [Enlarge]

We should have had a lie in this morning as we were not due to leave the hotel until 09:30. But Sod's Law came into play and we got a wake up call meant for someone else… at half past six. We got up, showered, dressed, packed up our bags and took them down to our last ever Yanggakdo Hotel breakfast. We certainly won't be eating eggs for a while—we've eaten more than our average annual consumption of eggs in one week. We had been told to be on the bus at 09:30, ready to go. The entire group managed better than that, and was on board and waiting for the driver at 09:15. This unusual burst of punctuality was due partly to the group's continual improvement in doing what is asked of it, but mostly because everyone was now desperate to get out of here. Our train back to China wouldn't wait for us, and staying here for several days while we found another way out of the country would drive us mad. Not to mention the 500 US dollars per day fine which would be levied on each of us for overstaying our visa.

Before the coach left the hotel, Mr Lee had some things to distribute. First of all he handed out the DVDs made by our cameraman. He has been following us all week, and we saw a sneak preview of his results in the duck barbecue restaurant last night. It looked really good. Then Mr Lee gave someone a large plastic bag containing all the mobile phones for both groups. The bag had a customs seal on it, which would be checked by the border guards on the way out. Consequences for opening the bag before then were not mentioned, but they really didn't need to be. Finally Mr Lee made us check three times that we had our passports and all our belongings with us. Then we set off for the train station.

Pyongyang to Dandong carriage [Enlarge]

When we had booked the tour, we decided to take the one day 'Dandong extension'—a brief stopover in Dandong, the Chinese city on the DPRK's northern border. Roughly half of us had chosen to do this (all of our group and two members of group B), and we were all placed together in a North Korean train carriage. The rest of group B are staying on the train overnight, and going all the way to Beijing in one go. Their carriage was Chinese. The style was the same (four berth compartments), but the Chinese carriage was newer and had heating!

A lot of shunting was going to be necessary. A long train would leave Pyongyang. Most of the carriages (full of North Koreans) would only go as far as Sinuiju, the Korean city which faces Dandong across the Yalu River. Our carriage and group B's Chinese carriage would be unhitched and taken across the bridge into China. Our carriage would be left there, and group B's carriage would be connected up to a Chinese train going from Dandong to Beijing.

We shared a compartment with two Australian ladies with whom we have become good friends during week. Between them they have got decades of amazing independent travel stories to tell. One of them first travelled to China in 1979, when the only way in was on an organised tour and many people had never seen a westerner—sounds strangely familiar!

The final parting word from the guides was a reminder not to take any photographs from the train as we travelled through the DPRK countryside. If anyone on or off the train sees us take a photo they are duty bound to report it to the authorities. The customs officials will find out and people's photos will be gone through and 'edited'. Then Mr Lee, Mrs Lee and the two group B guides waved us off. They were still smiling as we chugged slowly away, but the second we were out of sight they must have collapsed in an exhausted heap on the platform. All the guides worked so unbelievably hard this week to meet our requests wherever possible. They must think that Westerners are a bunch of spoiled, lazy, scruffy, rude, disobedient, rich, arrogant dickheads. But not once do they let it show. We'd like to think that they will get a couple of days off, but we know that won't happen. They will be straight back to the office to prepare for the next group. And when summer comes and it's busy on the farms, they will join the other office workers from Pyongyang who have to go and do a turn helping out doing hard manual labour. Our lives are incomparably easy compared to theirs, and they are amongst the elite in the DPRK—the trusted few who are allowed to travel around the country and interact with foreigners.

The train made steady progress out of Pyongyang and the dreary grey landscape of the city turned into the dreary brown of the countryside. There wasn't much to photograph anyway. It looked like all the other rural areas we had seen, and a lot like many of the rural bits of China, and even India, that had slipped past the windows of other trains we have taken. All the sensitive stuff is pretty well hidden. After a while a railway employee from the restaurant car came round touting for business. We had a look, but the restaurant car was thick with cigarette smoke, and on seeing the state of the kitchen we lost our appetite anyway. Mindful of the story we'd read about Indian railway kitchens, and of the fact that we had two long train journeys ahead of us, all day today and overnight tomorrow, we slipped off back to the compartment. We don't ever want to get sick, but we especially don't want to get sick now. The duck barbecue last night had laid low one member of our group (we did suggest at the time that using the same chopsticks to eat the cooked duck as she was using to handle the raw duck was a bad idea). She spent the first hour of the trip in the squalid train toilet, and the rest of the time on her bunk, sleeping it off.

A man came round and handed out three forms to each person: a DPRK departure card, a customs declaration card and a health screening card. We filled in the first two okay, but the health card was only written in Chinese and Korean. Luckily two of the group could read enough Chinese to get us by. At 15:20 we stopped at Sinuiju station, on the DPRK side of the border. The passports and cards were collected up and taken away. Then the customs officials came round. We had to leave the compartment and come back in to be interviewed individually. Some people had their bags searched, some people had their photos reviewed on their cameras, and yes, some people lost photos. But we survived the experience unscathed. The guard wasn't even bothered about our oil painting, for which we had carefully asked for a receipt to prove that it was regular art and not socialist realist art, the export of which is banned.

At the same time as our border formalities were going on, the North Koreans in the other carriages must have been getting their papers checked. There is no concept of free movement in the DPRK—you need permission from both the head of your work group and the local government to even travel to the next village. Going to a border town must require an even greater level of checks and balances to make sure you don't have any crazy ideas like escaping. All of a sudden the station sprang into life as the Koreans were released from the train. They began to file past our window along the platform. They were all weighed down by some very heavy looking luggage. The older women in particular looked like they were permanently bent at 90 degrees from a lifetime of carrying heavy loads on their backs. After things had calmed down, we were told that we could get off the train and stand on the platform if we liked. "But stay near the train!" It was cold outside, and so after a quick bit of fresh air we retreated back to the slightly warmer carriage. Some people who were brave enough to stay outside managed to have a conversation of sorts with the DPRK wrestling team, who were travelling to Beijing for a tournament.

Bombed bridge separating North Korea from China [Enlarge]

Three hours and five minutes after we had stopped, our passports rematerialised. We were approximately as cold as we had been when we were stuck at Niš in Serbia, but far less bored thanks to the Aussies' travel tales. These two make our round the world trip look like a package holiday. Almost immediately, the train began to move again. As we rolled slowly across the Yalu River on a utilitarian box girder bridge, we could see the famous 'half bridge' that was bombed by the Americans during the Korean War and now stands as a strange kind of monument, jutting out pointlessly into the middle of the river. The Chinese half is intact, but the Korean half is gone apart from a few concrete pillars.

Chinese immigration was relatively painless, but still took over an hour. The officials were smiley. They said "Hello", we said "Ni hao". Obviously North Korean customs checks are so thorough that the Chinese don't feel the need to do any more checking. We were finally released from the train and met our new guide on the platform, in the form of the small but voluble Brooklyn. He led us out to the waiting coach which whisked us across town to the Zhong Lian Hotel.

It wasn't the Sheraton, but it sure felt like it. We could buy overpriced ice creams in the foyer, we could access our email in the Business Centre, and if we wanted to we could go outside, into the street, and walk anywhere we wanted. You cannot believe how weird, how exhilarating and how scary that feels unless you have experienced the DPRK. We checked into our room then went down to the hotel's restaurant for dinner. That meal was good! At the end of our tour of China, barely a week ago, we would have been happy never to have a sumptuous Chinese banquet ever again. But after seven guilt-ridden days of eating meals which were generally very poor quality, but which were so relatively extravagant that no North Korean (apart from one) would even be able to imagine them, this delicious and high quality food was so welcome.

Talking of guilt, there is plenty of information on the web about the food shortages in the DPRK, and the consensus seems to be that this year is going to be another really tough one after the floods of 2006. We used to get annoyed if our local supermarket ran out of frozen peas. But most people in North Korea (or at least the non-elites outside Pyongyang) are surviving on 200 g (7 oz) of rice or grain per day, and hardly anything else. These are people we've seen in the street, people we've driven past, always smiling and looking cheerful. They live in a country that tries to depict itself as modern, advanced, and superior. A country which preaches Juche (self-reliance) but is hooked on international aid to meet its most basic needs. Standing on the riverside in Dandong this evening we could take our pick of 24 hour convenience stores and buy anything we wanted for a small amount of money. Then we could jump in a taxi and drive through the neon-lit streets to a bar or restaurant serving any dish from almost anywhere in the world and eat until we were full. But five hundred metres away on the opposite bank of the river, so dark that you could be forgiven for not realising there's even a city over there, people were coming home from work to their cold, dark apartments, and going to bed with their hunger barely touched by their starvation rations. You will surely never find a contrast as stark as this anywhere in the world.

All our photos from today are here. You can see everywhere we go in Google Earth by going to our progress map, then clicking the Google Earth tab.

Day 146
Pyongyang to Dandong

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

DPRK final preparations

Koryo Tours office [Enlarge]

Even before our round the world trip began, we were thinking that it would be cool to visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), a.k.a. North Korea. But we had no idea whether we would ever actually do it—we knew that getting in is a non-trivial task. However, once we got into the swing of things early in 2007 and it became clear that we were heading towards north east Asia, we decided we had to give it a go.

Our visit has been planned and booked since early February (we booked it from our hotel room in Delhi). But we didn't mention it on the blog because it might not have happened after all and we didn't want to worry people (for 'people' read 'parents'). Oh, and we like springing surprises!

So, why the hell would we want to visit the DPRK? Surely it is just that weird place full of starving people run by a cognac-slurping madman whose dead father is still the president? Well actually we suspect there's a lot more to the place than that and we want to see it for ourselves rather than accept wholesale what we're told about it in the media. We've wanted to visit since Glenn stumbled across this article on the BBC website way back in 2003 (when he should have been working). It sounds like a fascinating place.

Only about 1,500 western tourists go there every year, a figure that has been likened to the number visiting a British seaside resort on a damp, grey winter's day. There are few places on earth as un-touristy as the DPRK. Surely a place as strange as this cannot last forever, and we want to visit before it opens up.

Let's get a few things straight before we go on.

• We do not support the regime in the DPRK.
• We are not communists.
• We don't want the DPRK to have nuclear weapons.
• We wish that the DPRK people were free.

However, the country is what it is, and we're curious to see it. Yes, our hard currency will be going straight to the government, but let's face it, the price of a week's holiday won't buy many nukes or bottles of vintage cognac. The USA has a turbulent relationship with the DPRK, but our British Government maintains normal diplomatic relations with the country and encourages tourism in the hope that it will show the people that Westerners are not all evil imperialists intent on destroying them, which is the story they are fed every day of their lives.

Right, now we've got that out of the way, let's get on with the story.

The only way to visit the DPRK is on an organised tour, accompanied by tour guides assigned by the Korean International Tourist Company, the only tour company in the country, and naturally, government-run. You can travel to the DPRK on your own, but you will still be assigned two guides and a driver, so you will simply be on an organised tour of one person. Which will be expensive.

We found a company called Koryo Tours, based in Beijing and run by British staff. They have been taking tourists to the DPRK since 1993. They had a selection of tours available for this year, including several in April and May, during the famous Arirang Mass Games, held to celebrate the 95th birthday of the Great Leader and eternal president, the late Kim Il-sung. From what we had read about these amazing games, we desperately wanted to see them. But they are not confirmed until just before they happen (the last ones were in 2005 because they were cancelled last year due to widespread flooding). So we just had to book the tour and hope for the best. We decided that if we were going to go to the DPRK, we might as well pick a time that would see us be there on the actual birthday itself. This is why we have occasionally had to rush a little over the past few months (for example missing out Cambodia), because we knew we had to be in Beijing for the departure on 12th April. Our tour will take in all the highlights of the DPRK over seven action-packed days, culminating in an overnight train ride back from Pyongyang to Beijing.

Our preparations started as soon as we booked. We had to get an employer's letter to prove that we're not journalists or photographers. For unemployed people like us that means a letter from our most recent employers. Then we had to send off passport numbers, photos and scans so that the process of acquiring a visa could begin well in advance. Koryo Tours warned us that they would not know until the day before we were due to leave (i.e. today) whether we had successfully got the visa, so we tried not to get too excited about it.

Around five weeks ago we had an email confirming that the Mass Games are going ahead. Another email followed five days later to say that the tour was now full, and we would be accompanied by 38 other people! Instructions were detailed. We will need a torch, an alarm clock, gifts for our guides (cigarettes, instant coffee, moisturiser cream, chocolate etc.—everyday stuff that's hard or impossible for them to get over there), plenty of spending money in small denominations of Euro, US Dollar or Chinese Yuan (there are of course no ATMs in the DPRK, and anyway it is illegal for foreigners to use the local currency), enough batteries and memory cards for our camera, warm clothes, including a tie for Glenn when visiting Kim Il-sung in his mausoleum, plus anything and everything else necessary for a week in a country where you can't easily buy anything that you've forgotten. So as soon as our tour of China finished, we had to race ahead with sorting ourselves and our bags out.

National Queuing Day [Enlarge]

We also had to attend a final briefing at Koryo's Beijing office. We decided to take the subway. Beijing subway is one of the more challenging public transport methods we have used so far because there are no automatic ticket machines with English translations. You have to buy a ticket from a kiosk, which entails being able to say where you want to go using the right tones (which is completely impossible). We eventually managed to get a ticket to the place we wanted, which involved a change at Dongsishitiao station. As we arrived on the platform to wait for the outbound train, we saw a bizarre sight. The morning commuters were queuing up in orderly lines on the platform! Even in London [capital city of the world's number one nation of queuers, where we joke that queuing will be added to the 2012 Olympics as it is our national sport] no one queues for the tube. But in Beijing, the 11th of every month is Queue Practice Day, part of the preparations for the 2008 Olympics. It's causing such a stir that there was even a TV film crew there, filming the queuers. Feeling humbled by such a fantastic demonstration of queuing technique we obligingly joined the back of the line. But it was all for nothing, because as the next train rolled into the station all good manners disintegrated. The carriages were packed and it was every commuter for themselves. Chinese push-and-shove normality was restored.

We were one of the first ones to arrive at Koryo's office and Simon, one of their four members of staff (and the man who would be accompanying us to the DPRK) suggested we wait in the games room where we could play pool or bar billiards. Their bar billiards table is the only one in Beijing! One by one the other members of our tour group began to arrive. They were as varied a group as you could imagine. Young, old, male, female, couples, friends and lone travellers. You have to be pretty keen to visit North Korea to sign up for a trip there. It's not cheap, it's not always going to be comfortable and there are some very strict rules to be followed. We chatted to some of the other travellers before the briefing started and tried to get a feel for why everyone else wanted to visit. Mostly the reasons were similar to ours, but there were also one or two students doing strange degrees for which this would give them an angle; and yes, a few weirdos too.

When 10:00 came Simon got us all into the meeting room and talked through all the things we needed to know. Basically, a trip to the DPRK is serious. When out and about, you cannot stray away from your guides at all, ever. When safely back at the hotel, you can go for a short walk outside for a breath of fresh air (this is only possible because they built the main tourist hotel on an island in the middle of the river to prevent tourists from escaping). You must do what the guides tell you at all times. You must not take photographs unless they say you can, and never from a moving vehicle. You must not photograph anything vaguely military. You must show respect for the country, and particularly the leadership. You will be required to bow to the statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang, and to his dead body. No mobile phones, laptops, radios, DVDs, tripods, GPS receivers, clothes with political slogans or books about the DPRK. If you have problems with any of this, do not go. Simon reiterated that the DPRK is a very safe country—possibly the safest place in the world for a tourist to visit, since there is virtually no crime and little traffic to run you over! He added that if we break any of the above rules, we will not get into trouble—our guides will. We (and they) will be watched at all times and misbehaviour on our part will have serious consequences for them and possibly for their families.

This is not going to be a typical package holiday.

After paying our visa fee and handing in a signed form confirming one last time that we are not professional photographers or journalists, and indemnifying Koryo Tours for any loss, injury, death, etc., we headed off to buy a last few things (including a tie). Tomorrow morning we will fly from Beijing to Pyongyang and begin a tour of our second country on Mr Bush's Axis of Evil list.

We are posting details of our trip on this personal blog with permission from Koryo Tours.

Ending our tour of China

Temple of Heaven [Enlarge]

After visiting the Great Wall at Badaling we took in one of the nearby Ming tombs, then the emperors' Summer Palace. Next day, the last day of our pre-booked tour, we did all the usual tourist stuff in Beijing: the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven. Our Beijing photos are here.

Beijing feels much more Chinese than Shanghai. It is less cosmopolitan, and rougher around the edges. Some things are the same though, like the ridiculously congested traffic and the construction sites everywhere for example.

Having seen Ho Chi Minh in Hà Nội, we would very much have liked to add Chairman Mao Zedong to our tally of pickled communist leaders (the only other available ones being Vladimir Lenin in Moscow and Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang). But we discovered that Mao is closed for pre-Olympic renovations and he won't be back on display until 20th September. Who knows where we'll be by then!

Beijing Roast Duck [Enlarge]

In addition to the tourist attractions we also had a sumptuous dinner of traditional Peking roast duck at the "Original, century-old Qianmen Quan Ju De restaurant". The duck is carved at your table by a knife-wielding chef, and served for self assembly with pancakes, sweet noodle sauce and shredded Chinese onion. On the way to the bathrooms, the corridor was lined with photos of the numerous world leaders and other dignitaries who had dined there before us.

We followed dinner with a memorable, but probably not to be repeated, evening at the Peking Opera. This is a strange artform, even stranger than Western opera. It involves a lot of loud, high-pitched shrieking, some skilful fight scenes, and some very bad English translations on the dot-matrix displays either side of the stage.

We were treated to two separate operas. The plot of the first one was as follows: a young man woos a young lady (whose family keeps chickens) by dropping a jade bracelet on her doorstep so that she will find it. She finds it. A matchmaker is employed. The girl hides the bracelet from the matchmaker. The matchmaker finds the bracelet. The matchmaker gives an embroidered slipper to the man. The end.

In the second opera, the white snake fairy's husband has disappeared. She and her sister go looking for him. He has been kidnapped by a monk. The white snake fairy's army of sea creatures does battle with the monk's army. The end.

One exchange went like this:

White snake fairy: Please do me a favor and give back my husband.

Monk: Buddha is just to every body. Bai Suzhen, don't be fond of dream. Only if the Changjang River can flow backwards, you could meet Xu Xian. How could we let the demon live on the earth? I have to safeguard the kind people.

Fairy: I have cured sickness and saved patients for many times. The people of Jiangnan all speak highly of me. Everybody knows who is an evil man. And who makes us separate from each other.

Monk: Don't you know I have Black dragon Buddhist monk's staff? I'll never let you flaunt your superiority.

Fairy: We have not enough digressions to say.

It continued, but you get the idea. According to the programme, the monk's army won, but to be honest we couldn't tell that there had even been a victory, let alone who the victor was. It was all good fun though.

Mao picture, Tiananmen Square [Enlarge]

So, that's China. We have not even scratched the surface of this huge, complex country, in terms of the number of places we've seen. The last couple of weeks have been quite touristy and we are keen to get back to a more 'normal' existence. However, it's going to be another two weeks before we can do that: where we're going next, the normality meter is going to take a dive. This country is the reason why we had to get a double-entry Chinese visa—pretty much the only way in or out is via China, so we will be back in Beijing again in a fortnight.

We're going to the weirdest, most unknown, least visited country in the world. The last true Stalinist dictatorship. A place where the people know almost nothing of the outside world—only that people from other countries are all so envious of their blissful existence that they need to spend 31.3 percent of their GDP maintaining the world's fourth largest army to keep out the millions of people who are just desperate to enter. Yes, on Thursday we are going to North Korea!

World's biggest shopportunity?

Jade shop [Enlarge]

We flew from Xi'an to Beijing, the last stop on our organised tour of China. Our tour concludes with two guided days in Beijing. We will then spend a few days here on our own before moving on. Our guide met us at the airport. Her name is Lily and she looked a bit stressed when we met her. What was wrong? The previous day, our flight had been moved back by a couple of hours and nobody at TravelChinaGuide had thought to tell her. She had been standing at the exit gate for around two and a half hours wondering where her charges were. When she had called her office, nobody there claimed to know what was going on either. We were lucky that she hadn't given up and gone home. She and our new driver took us to our hotel, the lovely Holiday Inn Central Plaza Beijing. Probably the best hotel of our trip so far and certainly the best breakfast we have ever had in a hotel anywhere in the world.

Next morning we were collected bright and early by Lily. She is a former English teacher who has given up her previous career in favour of being a tour guide. She has been guiding for only a year, and plans to stop once the Olympics are over. She doesn't really like guiding, and is only in it because the money is much better than it is in teaching, and with the Olympics coming next year it's only going to get better. Lily was quite open that she was only in it for the money. Then, en route to our first sight, the Great Wall of China at Badaling, she steered the conversation around to Chinese characters, got out a piece of paper and a big black marker, and launched into a pre-rehearsed spiel. We immediately smelled a rat.

"Do you know how to write 'China' in Chinese characters?" she said.

"Yes!" we said, and Glenn got out his note pad and wrote the symbols zhōng and guó, meaning 'middle kingdom', the Chinese term for China.

Ha! She had never had that happen before. Nevertheless, she soldiered on. "Do you know how the second symbol of China, 'kingdom' is made up?"

"Yes! The bit inside the box means 'jade' (symbolising wealth). Then you put a box around it to make a region full of wealth, i.e. a 'kingdom' or 'country'."

[Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that, but this is a common explanation of the derivation. If you're really interested in the full version, see this entry in the excellent online dictionary at www.zhongwen.com.]

Lily was impressed but was not going to be put off just because these students had been reading ahead in the text book a little.

"Right, so jade is very important in China. The king could not rule the country without his jade seal. So, before we go to the Great Wall, we want to take you to see a jade factory." Bingo! Shopportunity alarm!

We looked at one another. Glenn said that we would rather not, as we didn't want to buy anything, because we were travelling around the world, etc etc.

"That's okay, you don't have to buy anything, just look." Then she insisted that we would be really missing out on a valuable opportunity to understand so much about Chinese culture if we didn't go.

Glenn decided to be cheeky to the teacher. "Okay," he said, "we know that you're getting commission for taking us there. We will go in if you give us half the commission."

Lily laughed and turned red! This had obviously never happened to her before. She admitted that it was true, she is on commission; and then she agreed to our terms. She told us that just by taking us to the shopportunity she gets 30 yuan (GBP 1.94 / USD 3.88), and the driver gets his expressway road toll refunded. Then if we buy anything she gets more commission. No wonder they squeeze at least one shopportunity per day into the schedule. She agreed to give us 15 yuan if we went. So we went, we saw, we used the loo and as forewarned, we bought nothing.

Actually this was a very interesting shopportunity. It has to be the biggest one of its kind in the world. The car park was full of coaches and there were literally thousands of tourists milling around the huge showroom, in which you could buy any tacky souvenir you could imagine. It didn't even have to be made of jade. We didn't get any of the promised cultural education though. Every visitor was given a badge with a number on it, which was registered at the door by the visitor's guide for commission purposes. This shop should stand as a monument to cashing in on tourism on a mass scale. We wondered if such places exist in our own country, to snare the passing foreign tourist coaches? Maybe they do—we would probably never know.

When we got back to the car, we decided not to mention the 15 yuan straight away. We would see whether Lily was a woman of her word. Her phone rang. When she had finished taking the call, she turned round to us and said, "That was the shop. They say we only stayed for 29 minutes, and unfortunately we needed to stay 30 minutes to get the commission. So I can't pay you anything, sorry." We weren't amused and we showed it. We think she realised that she had possibly just blown any chances of getting a tip from us, because she went quiet for a while.

But this lady was not going to give up that easily. When we arrived at the Badaling section of the Great Wall (which is about 70 kilometres from Beijing), we parked up outside a 'Hotel and Coffee Shop'. The second we got out of the car, a man with a walkie talkie accosted Lily and asked her something in Chinese. She answered: "Yingwen" and he relayed that back though his walkie-talkie. Obviously they were preparing another 'cultural experience' for the Walking Wallets. We knew that Yingwen means 'English', and so Glenn took a wild guess and asked Lily why the man had asked what language we spoke. She just laughed enigmatically, and said "I think you can speak Mandarin!". Little did she know, that we had just been incredibly lucky with the symbols earlier to get ones that we had read about in our fantastic little book, I Can Read That: A Traveler's Introduction to Chinese Characters. She handed us the tickets to enter the Great Wall and told us we should meet her inside the hotel's coffee shop at 12:30. Presumably this is where the shopportunity staff would pounce. We said that we had a better idea—we would meet her back outside, at the car at 12:30. From now on the Walking Wallets are on strike.

Badaling Great Wall [Enlarge]

Not much to say about the Great Wall of China really. It's a wall. Admittedly it is very impressive as it stretches away into the distance. Maybe we've been spoiled by seeing so many of the wonders of the world in such a short space of time, but it just wasn't all that amazing. It has been heavily restored in certain sections (including Badaling) to show what it would have looked like when it was built, so it's not even original. We would have enjoyed it more were it not for the overcrowding. China has over a billion inhabitants, and it seemed that they were all visiting the Great Wall on the same day as us. We asked Lily later if this was a particularly bad day, and she said not really, it's usually about the same. We suppose we can't exactly complain, when we were spoiling it for everyone else just as much as they were for us, but we just weren't expecting it to be such a zoo.

We walked back to our meeting point and arrived there about ten minutes before the agreed time. We were pleased to see Lily and the driver waiting outside for us. Maybe she will now start behaving like a tour guide first and commercial rep second.

Day 133
Xi'an to Beijing

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

The eastern end of the Silk Road

Terracotta Warriors museum [Enlarge]

Up to now we've had guides in their early twenties that make us feel very old so we were glad to meet 34 year old Julia. We were even more glad when we discovered that she spoke excellent English, was very knowledgeable and interesting, and was a thoroughly nice person. The head office of Marco Polo Travel (the company behind TravelChinaGuide) is in Xi'an and we couldn't help wondering if they'd sent us their best guide to make up for Peter. The first day's only itinerary item was to be taken straight to the hotel.

The main tourist attraction in Xi'an is the Terracotta Warriors, and that's where we headed at 08:30 the next morning. The warriors are slightly larger-than-life clay figures constructed to guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the emperor who unified China for the first time. The theory of why they were buried here in the first place is that it was believed that if the Qin Dynasty emperors were attacked, the buried warriors would come to life to defend the kingdom. Unfortunately for the dynasty, the belief was proved to be unfounded. A peasant uprising in 206 BC, four years after Qin Shi Huang's death brought the dynasty to an end and the terracotta warriors were smashed to pieces and buried. It took over 2,000 years for them to re-emerge. In 1974 some farmers were digging a well and discovered some strange pieces of terracotta. The national archaeology authorities got to hear about the finds and they moved in. To date more than 7,000 pottery soldiers and horses have been found. We, like most people, had seen photos of the warriors before, but they really have to be seen to be appreciated. The process of restoring them is far from finished and they will keep a lot of archaeologists employed for a very long time. We spent all morning marvelling over the scale of the place and the amazing craftsmanship of the clay carvings.

Back in Xi'an city we enjoyed a Cantonese meal in a local restaurant and then went to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. This is a 64.5 metre-high tower which stands in the grounds of the Da Ci'en Temple, surrounded by peonies, China's national flower. Luckily for us the peonies are just starting to bloom here in Xi'an so we are here at just the right time. After the pagoda we visited the Provincial Museum. Julia's local knowledge was invaluable in showing us around the exhibitions charting Xi'an's history as the first capital city of unified China and its importance as the starting point of the Silk Road. We found a map showing the old silk routes and Julia translated the names of Constantinople (İstanbul), Aleppo and Damascus, places we visited back in December and January. She was interested to hear about the similarities we'd noticed in Chinese and Islamic architecture.

Duck dumpling [Enlarge]

Our day was rounded off with a Tang Dynasty Music and Dance Show and a dumpling banquet. We're more than ever convinced that the Chinese actually want to kill off tourists with the mad quantities of food they expect us to eat. We lost count of exactly how many dumplings they served. They were very delicious and the comedic waitresses added to the fun. As each plate was set down they talked us through its contents: "this one look like duck, is duck; this one look like pig, is pork". When we complained that we couldn't even begin to eat the umpteenth course (a soup containing lots of stuff plus eight tiny dumplings), the waitress said that it would be extremely bad luck not to try to find the "small baby dumplings" and practically force-fed us.

Julia made the next morning's shopportunity optional so we exercised our option and skipped it. We started our day at the very civilised hour of 10:30—our first lie in for what seems like weeks. We went to Xi'an's rectangular city wall which is still complete, although the city has long since expanded outside its confines. We rented a couple of bicycles and rode the 13.7 kilometres around the top of the wall. It was good to get some exercise and work off some of those dumplings. Finally we visited the city mosque—the first one we've been to since Damascus at the other end of the Silk Road. As well as sending silk west, the Silk Road brought a substantial Muslim population east. It was friday and there were quite a few worshippers enjoying the sunshine in the courtyards. This was a very different experience from mosques in the Middle East. We kept our shoes on and Isla and Julia did not have to cover their heads. The architecture was traditional Chinese so the call to prayer came from under a tiled roof, rather than the top of a minaret.

Lunch was in a Sichuan restaurant in the same building as TravelChinaGuide's offices and half way through the meal the agent who had handled our booking came down to speak to us. As promised in the phone call we had received in Suzhou, he had followed up on our comments about Peter. He handed us a written letter of apology from Peter and explained that Peter was no longer working as a tour guide for them and their managers would be deciding what to do with him. Bloody hell! We didn't think our complaint was quite that serious. Now we had poor Peter's blood on our hands. Then the agent pulled out a bag and presented us with a 30 cm tall statue of a terracotta warrior in recompense. We felt guilty and sorry for Peter. When we'd sent our email it was intended to point out what was wrong with the tour in general and the itinerary that Peter was having to work with, not just his failings—now it seemed like he was being made a scapegoat. Yet again the differences between the British and Chinese way of doing things was made clear. In the UK he would have been given a bit more training or maybe some supervision. In China, he was summarily relieved of his duties. Sitting in the airport after lunch, waiting for our flight to Beijing we had time to reflect. We hope that Peter won't lose his job, and will be given whatever training he needs to bring his English up to a decent standard. On balance we still think we made the right decision in complaining. We paid a lot of money for this tour and it hasn't been up to scratch. Now we have the small matter of what to do with a one-foot tall warrior for the remainder of our round the world trip.

Finally we have a confession to make. Thus far we had prided ourselves on being travellers rather than backpackers. One distinction is that we carry small messenger bags rather than huge backpacks. It's a small difference, but to us it's important. However, when we collected Isla's bag from the luggage carousel at Xi'an airport the strap was broken—it's a miracle it's lasted this long as it's the bag we always check in on planes. We tried and failed to get it repaired in Xi'an, so in the couple of hours we had in the airport waiting for our flight to Beijing, we bought a replacement bag. It's the same tiny size as the first bag, but yes, it's a backpack. Isla finds it much more comfortable to carry though, so we guess that's the most important thing. Now that we've taken the first step on the slippery slope to backpacker-dom how long will it be before we stop washing and get dreadlocks? You'll have to keep reading to see!

Day 131
Hangzhou to Xi'an

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Hangzhou

Hangzhou pond [Enlarge]

There is a saying in China: Shang you tian tang, xia you Su Hang or 'Heaven has paradise, earth has Suzhou and Hangzhou'. Having seen beautiful Suzhou, we were looking forward to Hangzhou. But first we had another long train ride. It's not very far in a straight line between Suzhou and Hangzhou, but the train between the two goes the long way round via Shanghai. As a final demonstration of her thoughtfulness and consideration, Jing had been on the internet at home to find out the name of the stop before Hangzhou so that we would know when to get off the train.

This time it was a day train, and we were the only Westerners in our soft seat carriage. The other passengers were all Chinese people who were constantly eating, going to the loo, or going up to the end of the carriage for a crafty smoke out of the window. They couldn't sit still. The man opposite us had brought with him a plastic container full of pork ribs. As he only had about six teeth in his head he had to suck the meat off the bones. It took him a very long time and the sound effects were repulsive. We were glad when we arrived at Hangzhou and could escape. China is not even remotely comparable to India in terms of filth, but the men do enjoy a good slurp when they eat—especially when they eat noodles—and it is the national hobby to hack up and spit out big green balls of phlegm on the pavement. Anyway, we had the promised delights of Hangzhou to see us through the journey, which took five hours.

On the station platform we met Lily. She was about the same age as our last guide Jing, and very bubbly. Her English wasn't quite as good as Jing's, but it was good enough. She took us out of the station to the car and we met our driver, Mr Pan. He was also extremely friendly, much better than the others who hadn't seemed bothered about saying hello or interacting with us at all. He spoke a few words of English and was keen to learn more. When his vocabulary failed him he employed sound effects and gestures to communicate his meaning. We drove from the western railway station to a hotel near the central station for lunch. In the car, Mr Pan reached onto the dashboard and handed a leaflet to Lily, and asked her to ask us what it said. It was written in English and he had been handed it on the street, or by a passenger—we didn't catch which. It was a Jehovah's Witnesses pamphlet! We would have thought they'd have more luck bringing The Truth to China if they re-wrote their literature in the local language. Anyway, lunch was good and Isla got the opportunity to impress Lily with her chopstick skills by successfully picking up and eating a slippery peanut. Okay, so it wasn't impressive enough to elicit a round of applause, or even a single word of praise, but at least Lily didn't call for the knives and forks to be brought over.

There is a light-hearted competition between Suzhou and Hangzhou for which is the more beautiful. Lily conceded that Suzhou is beautiful, but stressed that its beauty is man-made whereas Hangzhou's is natural. For us it is a close run thing. Both towns have lovely wide tree lined streets and a general air of well-kemptness. Our first stop was the West Lake. This is Hangzhou's main attraction and covers an area of 8.9 square kilometres—that makes it bigger than Macau! We walked through a beautiful lakeside garden to the boat jetty to take a scenic tour of the lake. The sun was shining and the setting was lovely. Lily pointed out the the six harmonies pagoda, visible through the trees. Then she got out a one yuan note and showed us that the picture on the back of the note is exactly the scene we were looking at. She also told us about Hangzhou's three strangely-named sights: the Long Bridge, which is short, at six metres; the broken bridge, which is completely intact; and the solitary hill, which is (you guessed it) right next to another one. Each of these inaccuracies does have a little story to explain it, and they kind of make sense when you hear them.

The view from the top of the six harmonies pagoda was great—it was 102 steps up to the door and 227 to the top floor of the tower, so we were glad the climb was worthwhile—and the surrounding grounds were full of blooming peonies (China's national flower). We returned to our hotel with Mr Pan's recommendations for an evening walk scribbled on a local map that Lily had given us, but in the end we were so sleepy after our early start, and with the deficit caused by two overnight trains in the past week that we went to bed early and slept well.

We had a plane to Xi'an in the afternoon and so we only had time to visit one more site in the morning: the Lingyin Temple. Lily told us that without a visit to Lingyin Temple our visit to Hangzhou would be incomplete. She was right. The temple complex has many different sights to attract visitors. The first thing we saw was the Fei Lai Feng (Peak flown from Afar), covered in Buddhist rock carvings. The name is said to come from a legend which states that an Indian monk named Huili arrived in the valley 1,600 years ago and was surprised to see a limestone peak so dissimilar from the sandstone ones in the rest of the valley. He believed that the peak had flown over from India because its shape, although unique in China, is common in India. Around the peak are said to be 338 different carvings including many of The Buddha in various poses and incarnations. We didn't count them, but there were definitely a lot. After looking around some of the the carvings we climbed up to the temple itself. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the halls, so to see the amazing statues inside you will have to visit yourself, but it's well worthwhile!

Huge lunch for two [Enlarge]

We had another massive lunch at the hotel. See photo—we took this shot after we had eaten so much that we were full! It looks as though we haven't touched the food, and there is still enough left over to feed a family. We will need to have a few days of eating nothing after this tour is over. Lily and Mr Pan took us to Hangzhou's very modern airport and we said goodbye to Mr Pan in the car park, and Lily at the security check gate. Chinese airport security was very laid back, and there were no queues. We sat back and watched the locals pushing and shoving to be first out of the departure gate. Then when they had finished we sauntered over and were the last ones out and onto the bus—which made us the first ones off the bus and on to the plane! The Hainan Airways flight was very full, not just with people but also with ridiculously oversized hand-luggage. Eventually everything was fitted in and we were ready to go. Next stop Xi'an, home of the famous terracotta warriors!

Day 130
Suzhou to Hangzhou

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Suzhou and Zhouzhuang

The Humble Administrator's Garden [Enlarge]

On the fifth overnight train of our round-the-world trip, this time from Huangshan in Anhui Province to Suzhou in Jiangsu province, our companions in the compartment were Chinese and we were not able to communicate with them. Aside from the language difficulties, they made it particularly hard by immediately falling asleep the moment the train started moving! The Chinese have an incredible ability to fall asleep on demand whenever they find themselves on public transport, day or night. They—and us—were woken up very early in the morning by the conductor, because they needed to get off at Nanjing. [Today's fact of the day: Beijing just means 'North Capital', and Nanjing is the opposite 'South Capital'—Nanjing was the capital of China until The third Emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhou Di, moved it up north to Beijing in 1420.]

We were in turn woken up fifteen minutes before the train reached Suzhou, and when we arrived we headed out of the station's main exit to meet our new guide. But nobody was there. We stood by the exit for a few minutes and eventually a 24-year old woman ran over to us, flustered and full of apologies. This was our guide Jing, and we immediately liked her. She had been standing right next to our carriage when we got off the train, but somehow we had missed her and she had missed us. She had spent the next few minutes panicking about whether we had arrived in Suzhou or not. The staff told her that two foreigners had got out of our carriage and had headed towards the exit, so she ran after us. There was no need for her to apologise, it was just that our previous two guides had met us at the station exit so we weren't even looking for her on the platform.

We checked into our hotel and quickly had a shower and sent an email to our contact at TravelChinaGuide using the free in-room internet. We were not overly dramatic, but just outlined why we were unhappy with the tour so far, and said that we hoped their service would improve for the rest of our trip. There's not much point in complaining when the holiday is over. We added that things already seemed much better in Suzhou.

After breakfast we headed into town. While we had been having our shower and a quick, but very good breakfast, it had begun to rain. Jing borrowed two large umbrellas from the hotel reception and we set off in the car to our first stop: the traditional Chinese garden belonging to the Master of the Nets. Suzhou is famous for its gardens. The Master of the Nets is the smallest, but like the Yu garden in Shanghai it is carefully and cleverly designed to appear much larger than it is. Suzhou is inland from Shanghai and a little cooler, so the fruit tree blossom that had already finished flowering in Shanghai was in full swing here, as were the camellias and wisteria. The garden has a big pond flowing all the way through it, full of happy and well-nourished carp, if size is anything to go by. The rain was still falling steadily, but it wasn't a problem—if anything, it improved the garden. The dark sky made the pond appear slate grey and sent beautiful ripples across the surface, and the wet foliage looked fresh, lush and green. The rain had also kept the crowds away!

Silk winding machine [Enlarge]

Lunch was due to be at a silk factory. This was, of course, another shopportunity, but for a change it was actually very interesting. To qualify as a genuine shopportunity according to our own definition, the attraction has to be a factory, or to be disguised either as a museum, or a "watch the local people do their craft" type place—a place of education and cultural exchange. Then there must be a shop, the bigger the better, at which you can do some financial exchange too. Usually, the shop part dominates, but in this case the shop was preceded by demonstrations using real clunking, whirring machines, which showed how they cultivate the silkworms, persuade them to build high-quality cocoons, boil them (ouch), unravel their silk, spin it, dye it and weave it. It was an amazing place.

One of our complaints to TravelChinaGuide had been that the guides were never allowed to eat with us. So at lunch in the factory's restaurant we practically insisted that Jing eat with us and explain how to eat Chinese style. It probably caused her all sorts of problems (presumably her own lunch was sitting uneaten somewhere else in the restaurant, and the driver was eating alone), but she handled it admirably and we got all the answers we needed. It turns out that you can pretty much do anything you want, but if you're doing things properly, you don't use the plate for eating from—it's for scraps, bones and prawn shells. You use your rice bowl as an edible plate, moving food from the serving dishes a piece at a time onto the pile of rice, then picking them up with some rice using the chopsticks. We were pleased to find out that we were holding the chopsticks properly and using them fairly well, for foreigners. Our moment of triumph came when we managed to eat a prawn, still in its shell, and return the shell to the scraps plate, using just our chopsticks. It was one of the proudest moments of our trip.

Tulips [Enlarge]

Jing took us to see Suzhou's largest garden after lunch, this time belonging to the emperor's Humble Administrator. It is huge, but still retains the traditional style of having separate 'rooms'. The banks of planting are in pots so they can be changed seasonally. For our visit it was tulips: thousands of them. Glenn got right down amongst them to take some artistic shots and Jing was keen to see the results. "How do you make the background all blurry like that?!" she asked. She loves taking pictures and had her own camera with her, so Glenn gave her a quick lesson on selective focus and filling the frame and with Isla holding the umbrellas (the rain had stopped) she set off on a photographic expedition.

As we were walking over a bridge, Jing's phone rang and for some reason we had a feeling it was TravelChinaGuide's head office. Our hunch was right, and after a bit of discussion the phone was passed to Glenn. It was a senior lady. She made it clear that the company was not used to receiving complaints and would treat the fact that we were less than 100% happy as a very serious matter. She assured us that we would get experienced guides in future, who would speak excellent English, and all of our points would be addressed. She also promised to give us a full response when we get to Xi'an, where they are based. We feared for Peter. Our email had been in the tone of "It's not the end of the world, but we're a bit unhappy with this, this and this; we're just telling you so that you can tweak some things for the rest of the trip". But we had triggered a major investigation and it sounded like Peter was in a whole lot of trouble.

Jing dodged the question when we asked her what the TravelChinaGuide manager had said to her before she'd passed the phone over to Glenn, but in case she'd been worried by it we tried our best to reassure her about how happy we were with our experience of Suzhou. She was a perfect guide, actually. She is friendly and chatty and had a convincing-sounding answer to any question we put to her. Most importantly she understood all our questions! She had mastered the art of letting us feel like we were taking things at our own pace, but making sure that we arrived at the right place at the right time. Or maybe the itinerary in Suzhou was just better. She must have been bemused by our fascination with the silk making machines. She's probably never had anyone stare at the sorting chute where empty cocoons magically go up the conveyer belt (against the flow) to be discarded while ones which still have silk on them fall down the belt to be unwound some more. Or say "wow, that's so cool", without a hint of irony, in reference to the insanely clever contraption which finds the end of the thread and starts unwinding it. Most people probably pass through the factory with a "yes, that's very nice, but when do I get to the shopping part?" and any guide would prefer tourists like that—the guides get commission on every purchase—but Jing sussed that we weren't interested and steered us around the shop. We were finished for the day and for a change dinner wasn't included, so on the way back to the hotel Jing gave us a recommendation of a dumpling restaurant, marked where it was on our map and wrote the name in Chinese in case we needed to ask for directions.

Zhouzhuang canal [Enlarge]

Next morning we drove to the nearby town of Zhouzhuang. By the way, 'zh' in pinyin is pronounced something like a 'j', at least in a South-East China accent—so Suzhou is Soo-Jo and Zhouzhuang is Jo-Jooang. In a northern accent they sometimes sound more like Soo-dzo and Dzo-Dzooang. Zhouzhuang is China's number one (and unfortunately most touristy) water town, a similar idea to Venice. In fact the most famous Venetian of all, Marco Polo, visited the area and proclaimed Suzhou to be "Noble, large and handsome."

By the time we arrived at Zhouzhuang we were no longer in our tour car. Instead we were in a hastily commandeered taxi, because our driver had been arrested and taken away at a police checkpoint en route! He had forgotten to pay his road tax—or rather he had paid it (he insisted) but didn't have the receipt. His wife was due to meet him at the police station with the receipt. That's what we were told, anyway, but we didn't see him again for the remainder of our stay.

Zhouzhuang reminded us of Lacock, a National Trust village not far from where we used to live. The traditional buildings are carefully preserved so that a visitor can see a village as it would have looked several hundred years ago, but it is still a real place where people actually live. Here the opportunities to part the unwary tourist from their money are rife. We were seeing the same silk scarves and ties, the same writing sets, the same jade writing seals, at every shop in every town. In between the shops were reconstructions of traditional houses and rooms, including a Chinese medicine shop and a classroom for Confucian scholars. An interesting moment was when we ventured into a quiet courtyard where an elderly couple were working away on two pottery wheels. They were making the traditional roof tiles used on every roof in Zhouzhuang. One consequence of ensuring that heritage towns and villages like Zhouzhuang are maintained in authentic style is that traditional building and craft techniques are not lost.

Jing told us that our train the next morning would be at 07:30 and we arranged to meet in the hotel reception at 06:30 (yikes!). A new driver took us back to the hotel and we had an early night. We never give a tip unless the service has been excellent, and in Jing's case it was. So we prepared an envelope for her and included a note to say that if she ever comes to the UK she is very welcome to come and stay with us and we will show her around our part of the world.

Day 127
Huangshan to Suzhou

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Marched up and down Yellow Mountain

Huangshan [Enlarge]

Our driver collected us from the hotel at the pre-arranged time and delivered us to Shanghai's old station at about 21:10, to catch our overnight train to Huangshan, one of China's most scenic areas. The main purpose of our visit was to go up Huangshan Mountain, which gives the city its name. Mae met us at the station and gave us our tickets. We sat down with her in the waiting room set aside for 'soft-sleeper' passengers (first class: bedding included, pretty cheap, comfortable but not overly luxurious). When the train was announced Mae led us up the escalator to the platform and delivered us to our compartment. Her contract fulfilled, she said her goodbyes and we thanked her.

Having swapped compartments with a couple of Koreans who wanted to be with their friend, we found ourselves sharing with an Australian couple from Sydney (the soft-sleeper compartments are four-berth). The Aussies are well travelled, but this was their first experience of a night train. We got on really well with them from the start, and swapped travel tales, recommendations and horror stories until the wee small hours.

Next morning, we didn't realise we'd arrived at Huangshan station at first. From our window we could only see scrub land. Eventually when a member of staff stuck his head into the compartment and shouted "Huangshan!!!", we looked out the other side of the train and realised there was a platform there! Good job Huangshan was the end of the line. Outside the station we found our new guide, Peter. Like many English-speaking Chinese, he has chosen an English name to use with Westerners. We followed him at a swift walk to the car and drove out of Huangshan city into the countryside.

The journey to the bottom of Huangshan Mountain took about an hour. Peter didn't really say much during the journey, but he told us that Huang Shan simply means 'Yellow Mountain' and it was named in honour of a visit by Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor).

The mountain is only accessible by cable car, as there are no roads to the village at the top. At the cable car station Peter showed us a long queue of people which he called the 'common way' to get up the mountain. The queue was so long that he said the people at the back were going to have to wait at least a couple of hours to get to the cable car. You can pay 15 yuan extra (GBP 0.99 / USD 1.94) to queue-jump as a VIP. The cable cars arrive every seven to ten minutes, and the VIPs get a nice comfy waiting room during this time, then are let on to the cable car first. Any remaining spaces are filled by the common people. The trouble is, enough people buy VIP tickets to pretty much fill each cable car, so there are very few spaces left for the commoners. Luckily our tour price included the VIP supplement and we got straight onto the first cable car to arrive.

Huangshan porter [Enlarge]

Only the paying tourists get to use the cable car to the top. Everything else—hotel furniture, TVs, food, drink and construction materials for the ongoing building programme—is carried up to the village by a never-ending line of porters. These guys spend their working lives hauling massive loads up and down the 800 vertical metre, 6.5 kilometre long track to the top. We asked Peter what the porters earn. He reckoned about 70 yuan per day (GBP 4.60 / USD 9.06), plus the occasional tip from guilt-ravaged tourists. For the umpteenth time since we left home, we felt very lucky to be us.

It was still morning, and we had a day's sightseeing ahead. But our first stop was to drop off the bags at the hotel. We had naturally assumed that the hotels would all be reasonably close to each other at the top of the cable car, but we were wrong. We set off on a hike carrying our bags, which though tiny, are densely packed with stuff and therefore quite heavy. We expected the hotel to materialise just around every corner, but it was only after three exhausting kilometres of hiking up and down steep slopes in the hot, thin air, that we reached the other side of the mountain and the Xihai Hotel. We have no idea why our itinerary made no mention of the fact that we would need to do this trek—if we had known, we could have easily left most of our stuff with the driver at the bottom of the mountain, as we were only staying at the top for one night. We couldn't communicate the fact that we were a bit annoyed to Peter because his English was very poor. Glenn asked him what would have happened if we had turned up with large suitcases, as most people on this kind of tour do. Peter didn't understand. Glenn phrased the query in several different ways, speaking slowly and clearly, using simple words. Peter just smiled and nodded and strode off ahead. We were hot, tired and cross by the time we arrived at the Xihai Hotel. We told Peter that we needed half an hour to have a shower.

Unfortunately, our disappointment continued. The hotels at the top of Huangshan have a captive and plentiful supply of customers, and thus they are not very good. The Xihai is OK, especially compared to many places we've stayed on this trip, but it certainly isn't four-star, as claimed by the tour company. When we returned to the lobby at 11:45 Peter sent us straight into the hotel's restaurant to have lunch. It wasn't great—the meat was mostly bones and gristle—and just like Mae did in Shanghai, Peter disappeared leaving us sat there wondering about what we were eating, and which implements to use for what purpose. We were feeling pretty grouchy and let down by the time we finished, as this tour is costing us a lot of money and we didn't feel that we were getting anything approaching good value.

After lunch, we began our walking tour of the mountain area. Without our heavy bags weighing us down, the thousands of steep steps were much easier. Peter kept rushing off ahead of us like he was on a mission, and we didn't seem to be able to communicate to him that we'd actually like to slow down a bit and see the place. Not that there was much point in him walking with us as he didn't have much information in English to impart.

Us, hot and bothered [Enlarge]

Huangshan was absolutely beautiful, and we were blessed with perfect sunshine. It rains on 275 days a year, and even on the dry days you are usually in cloud, so we were lucky indeed. In spite of the general bad feeling, we couldn't help but enjoy the scenery. As we arrived at our final destination for the day, Peter proudly told us that this was the best place to see sunset. The only problem was, he had hurried through the itinerary so much that sunset was still three hours away! Had we taken our time going from point to point, looking around, enjoying the amazing views, we would have arrived at the perfect time to watch the sun dip below the peaks, and the mountains turn golden in the fading light. Then we would have strolled back to our hotel in the last of the daylight and arrived just in time for dinner. Instead, we missed sunset and just went back to the hotel to have another shower and pick half-heartedly at some more bony, gristly food.

Luckily we didn't set the alarm for sunrise because the next morning the whole mountaintop was shrouded in clouds. We set out with our bags again to trudge the three kilometres back to the cable car. After 2.5 km there was a fork in the path and Peter told us that the left hand fork would take us to the Beginning To Believe Peak, the last scenic spot on our itinerary. It was a long way up another steep hill to the peak. We told him we were not willing to carry our bags up any more steps than we had to and we would just have to miss the peak. The whole itinerary had been very badly planned.

Back at the base of the mountain Peter seemed to be feeling a bit remorseful about how our time in Huangshan had turned out. He had lifted one of our bags at the cable car station and couldn't believe how heavy it was—it's not just full of spare t-shirts, we have everything in there for a round the world trip. He is quite junior and his inexperience and overconfidence had led him to believe that being a tour guide is easy.

We drove back to the city of Huangshan and had a look around the old part, where wooden buildings lean out across the pavement, their latticed balconies almost touching. After lunch Peter took us to Huangshan Museum, where we looked around two shabby and poorly lit rooms of badly displayed writing implements and paintings. We could have forgiven the state of the museum had it not been for the fact that downstairs, in the shop, no expense had been spared. This was an enormous, glitzy shopportunity (our name for such places), with complimentary tea, and big calculators on the tables. Sadly for them we weren't in a buying mood.

And that concluded our tour of Huangshan. Stuck for what to do next Peter took us to a coffee shop and, with our agreement, left us there. He said he would return at 18:00. It was 14:30. The Starbucks-style coffee shop was expensive and we were unwilling to shell out on more than one drink each. So after sitting with our empty cups in front of us for as long as we thought we could get away with, and taking a surprise and very welcome phone call from Isla's parents at home, we went for a brief wander in the immediate vicinity until 17:45. We're very accomplished at killing time in one-horse towns.

Peter took us for dinner, and then to the station to sit in the waiting room for the remaining two hours until our train arrived. It seemed there was no soft-seat waiting room at Huangshan, and Peter deposited us in the large, grubby, standard waiting room. Rather than waiting with us as Mae had done in Shanghai, he said goodbye, shook Glenn's hand and left. We were the only westerners in the place and we were the object of some interest. For only the second time of our entire trip, we felt seriously uncomfortable (the other was being in Syria the day they topped Saddam). We sat still and had staring matches with the locals, and we discussed whether we should contact TravelChinaGuide to complain about our so far very disappointing tour. Within minutes our minds were made up, as Peter came back clutching a tatty piece of paper. He had forgotten to ask us for our feedback (on which his salary depends). He had also forgotten to bring the proper form! He handed the tatty paper to Glenn and said "please just write something". Glenn told him we would not be writing anything now, but that we would be contacting TravelChinaGuide, as we were not happy with our tour. We felt a bit sorry for Peter, because although some of the problems were of his making, and his English is unacceptably poor for someone making his living as an English-speaking tour guide, he was having to work with a very badly designed itinerary.

Just as we were contemplating moving outside to wait, we spotted a group of tourists whom we recognised from the train from Shanghai the previous day. Were we glad to see them! We went over to say hello and ended up joining them. They are from Malaysia and Singapore, but are temporarily living and working in Shanghai. We were just giving them the address of this blog when one of their group came into the waiting room to tell them that he had found the soft seat lounge. So there was one after all! Peter had let us down again. We all decamped and immediately felt more comfortable. To be fair, in the cold light of day we're sure all the staring was just down to curiosity—most tourists fly in and out and never go to downtown Huangshan, and the locals are genuinely not used to seeing Europeans. But by this time we were in a pretty bad mood and had not been up to doing any inter-racial bridge building.

The day finished on a high note, as we whiled away the last hour or so before the train arrived by playing cards with our new friends. We also got some good tips for places to see in Malaysia and Indonesia. Our train to our next destination, Suzhou, arrived on time as always and we boarded it feeling much better.

Our photos from Huangshan are here.

Day 125
Shanghai to Huangshan

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.