New Berlin?

We shared a sleeping compartment to Taishan with two pretty disgusting Chinese men. One snored so deeply all night we each separately fantasised about cutting his face off, and the other hacked and spat into the bucket next to me all morning, and then calmly smoked under the no-smoking sign with the compartment door shut. A 'Chinese bikini' (hoisting the shirt up under the armpits to expose the huge belly) would have completed the look. I opened the compartment door to let the smoke out and he hurriedly put his fag out in his gob-filled bin. I think I embarrassed him because he spent the rest of the journey trying to communicate pleasantries with me, and then forcibly carried some of my bags off the train for me once we arrived. Awkward.

Taishan was a bit of a nightmare for tired souls such as us (the train had left at 1am and arrived around 6am). No taxi would even look at us, and our instructions for the bus were far from clear. We felt well and truly stuck and hostel-less. It took a lot of bleary walking about and asking the tourist office guy for help (similarly vague directions) before we found a street we were happy to give up on. Photocopied Lonely Planet was not much help as the map lines didn't show up. It took several more taxi-attempts before one would deign to take us (driving all of 5 mins to our destination – it was more like paying for directions). Our destination was a YHA place, but instead of putting helpful signs directing you to its entrance, it just left its logo everywhere like a dog pissing out its territory. These logos led us on a merry dance round several confusing sets of buildings before we found someone to ask and point us. We changed our booking from dorm to private room and commenced to sleep all day.

We knew about Taishan because it's in Lonely Planet and because friends of ours went there – but from the reactions of the locals you'd think they'd never seen a Caucasian before in their lives. Again it was stares, giggles, candid cameras, and more giggles if they tried to say hello to us. Weird.

The main focus of our stay was this clever concept of 'hey, it's midnight, let's climb this holy mountain to see what dawn looks like from up there!' The rest of the town is pretty shitty and very much under construction, so I won't bother talking about that. We had the first day to recover from the overnight train, then checked out the next morning and had to hang around all day waiting for night, then the next day to recover all our sleep in. A simple plan.

We equipped ourselves with raincoats (the weather wasn't being kind) and a very clever rechargeable torch which can plug into the wall, and headed out to look for the mountain at around 10.30 (bored of waiting). We're definitely not night owls, so we were already pretty sleepy. We knew we'd arrived at the gate because people had started to try and sell us stuff, so we joined a bunch of Chinese kids with radios blaring out pop songs and ventured into the dark. Every so often you would come across groups of people or drinks vendors emerging like ghosts from the dark. Then temples with incense. A very nice excuse for a stop and a sit-down – the steps were relentless. We began to wonder if a sunrise really was worth all this. It was our third sunrise pilgrimage of the trip and we weren't sure we want to do it ever again. I don't think we even like sunrises. But the temples were pretty all lit up in the dark, and there was a sort of camaraderie spirit. Shortly after the halfway point I definitely thought I was going to die. The steps only seemed to get steeper and more unforgiving. It was like the Inca Trail but with no coca leaves to keep us going.

I actually didn't believe we'd reached the top. I suppose seemed too much to hope for. It was like a refugee camp with tents pitched on the concrete, even more vendors, and guys hiring out these slightly sinister military trench coats. Actually, it turned out this wasn't the top. Not the one we'd been told to aim for anyway, so we climbed another half an hour in the now freezing winds past some pretty temples to find the dawn viewing place. Our torches revealed dozens of Chinese couples huddled against rocks for shelter and we did the same until we realised we should keep moving if we wanted to avoid hypothermia.

I'm ashamed to say our patience failed us when waiting for the sun to actually rise. It was getting quite light, and the usual guys had pitched up to try and sell you a photo of yourself. We decided screw proper sunrise, it was too cold, and confused everyone by leaving. Hordes of people in trenchcoats swarmed up the mountain towards us to make the sunrise point. It felt quite good to be going against the flow. The refugee camp was being packed up and everything was all new in the emerging daylight. A few stragglers trying to get up those last steps tried to practise their English with us, but apart from that our trek back down was almost deserted. A new wave of vendors were setting up, the sun was beginning to establish itself, and overall it was an incredibly peaceful and beautiful walk down (if not murder on the legs). We're glad we left early.

Actually, after a while we were wondering how we didn't notice what a stupidly long way it was. Especially the bit between the mountain entrance and the hostel. How did we miss that? Anyway, I think we'll be happy if we never see another sunrise again. We claimed a room back from the hostel and did some more all-day sleeping.

Next destination: Beijing! Taxis back to the station were even bigger arseholes than on the way since they wouldn't even stop to see what we wanted. So, fearing we were about the miss the train, we had to drag our weary bones complete with heavy bags to the point of collapse half an hour to the station. Grrr. Ok, so we made it, and we also got to Beijing no bother. So let's just acknowledge the general wankerishness of taxi drivers the world over and move on.

When we were volunteering at SSF in Cambodia we met Isabella, who had spent 6 months living in Beijing and said she'd had the best time ever. So it only made sense that we should therefore do the things she did. She very kindly hooked us up with her couchsurfing friends there, so it was that we found ourselves staying with Seen and Jean-Marie. And it was good advice because they were fantastic. We too had the best time in Beijing. The couchsurfing scene there is very active – more like an ex-pats social club. On the first night we went to a film night at a vegan cafe which JM had organised; the next night was all you can eatanddrink Teppanyaki to celebrate Isabella's return to Beijing (so yay! We got to see her again), next night everybody else went to see Fatboy Slim at the Great Wall, but we stayed in with all you can drink hangovers; then on Sunday there was a BBQ and taco night where Paul was taken for Kid Rock and got really into Guitar Hero; and then the last night was some of the best dumplings I've had in China! After that we felt like Beijing regulars. In between this busy social calendar we went sightseeing (Forbidden City, Wall, some lake with annoying massage touts who hit me with their sign) and, of course, the Mongolian embassy.

These guys keep their visa section in a hut at the back of the embassy so you can't actually get into the complex. This is because hundreds of angry wannabe Mongolia tourists would storm the embassy and hold the ambassador under siege if they could. The reason being the queue is very long, the time window very short, and the woman in the hut excruciatingly slow. I hear for many people it takes several days of queuing (and probably missing their train) before they have some success. We were lucky though, got our passports in, and were told to come at 4 the next day. We also had to do some weird dance with the Bank of China to pay for the visas and bring back a receipt, because the embassy wouldn't take the money. Paul only knew this because he read the sign. When we came back at 3.30 the next day (the queue was already getting pretty epic) many people were not aware of this payment quirk and were forced to run to the bank in a panic. 4 came and went, and as 4.30 approached a siege mentality had developed. Pick up of visas was only meant to be between 4 and 5 so people were quite irate. It almost came to blows when the visa lady did eventually turn up and some old man tried to do the Chinese thing of pushing in. Unfortunately for him he tried to push in front of a very scary tattooed Kiwi woman who was having none of it. 5 came and went, and we were so close to the front of the queue! We had visions of the window coming down in from of us and leaving us stuffed (we didn't really have the luxury of coming back). But no, we made it. If nothing else it made us really appreciate our shiny new visas. We went for a bubble tea to celebrate.

Oh yes, we also went to the Great Wall! Well you've got to, haven't you? By now we're too lazy to wrestle camels or whatever to find special no-touristy places, so we went for the second easiest section of the Wall (not so lazy that we'd stomach Badaling!). We were going to Mutianyu and the Internet had told us that there was an actual direct bus at 9am. This was a lie and for the life of us we could not find this bus. So we had to take on the Beijing transport Olympics instead – take a bus to some place, then get a taxi from there. Unfortunately we had no idea which this stop was, but we were pretty sure it wasn't the one that the guy with 'I am a scammer' written all over his face made us get off at. He was very insistant about it to the point of panic, and since we were so helpless and he'd paid off the driver, we had no choice.

So we got off, I negotiated us the price I was expecting to pay anyway and then, lo and behold! Mr. Scam's nasty broken car was parked at the bus stop. No wonder he was so desperate we should get off there. Anyway, we were very annoyed about being so blatantly targetted as victims. We did get there, however, and the guy said he would wait for us, no charge, and take us back again for double our original price. He also followed us into the carpark and tried to offer us tours. I think he had grand plans to make a lot of money out of us, but we had gone and found out about the bus back. When we tried to pay him and get rid of him he put up a huge fight, lying to our faces about there being no bus, putting on a pretty pathetic display. Evenutally we won and he looked like he might get some thugs to beat us up so we legged it. Paul reckons he actually lost money on us because he would have had to spend a bit to get his claws into us in the first place. So ha ha ha – we screwed over the scammer. Serves him right for being such a lying cheat.

The base of the Wall was filled with the usual annoying touts and salesmen (salesmen whiney, touts aggressive) but we escaped them, bought our tickets, and started to climb some million steps upwards (Taishan all over again). It was a gorgeous hot day, and since it was Monday and not the main toursit place, it was actually pretty peaceful. The scenery was lovely and the Wall (once we got there) was pretty spectacular. We did a bit of a hike along it, but the heat got the better of us in the end and we headed back down into the cool conifers. Back at the bottom we had an hour to find the bus stop and met some very friendly Germans who told us the ridiculous and roundabout route they'd had to take to find the outgoing bus in the first place. I must point out that, actually, everyone in Beijing is German. We should be calling it New Berlin or something. At the BBQ (and there were a lot of people there) around 70% of people were German. I'm not complaining – we've recently come to the realisation that the Germans are always really good craic. Just like the whole trip was building up to China, and China building up to Beijing, the amount of Germans we've met around the world was really building up to the New Berlin we discovered in Beijing.

Anyway, eventually it was time to leave China. We'd bought a whole shop full of instant noodles and dried things, and were ready for the Trans-Mongolian. We were sharing our carriage with a lot of Dutch people (not German for a change!) and the scenery out of the window changed from city to Great Wall mountains to flat deserts. It felt like we were really journeying somewhere, and this was the real start of our journey home.

At the border we were obliged to wait 20 years for the guys to change the wheels of the train and do clever things with our passports. By the time we were allowed back onto the the train I was pretty much asleep and kept having to be jolted awake to hand various forms over to Mongolians. There wasn't time to celebrate our arrival into Mongolia. The minute my passport hit the table I was away in the land of Nod, and the train trundled along through the desert.

Things we will miss about China:

Dumplings and steamed buns
All the weird things you can buy in the supermarkets
Actually, food in general
Bubble tea (what's the point of a drink if it doesn't have bits of jelly floating in it?)
Friendly people
Young couples wearing matching clothes (haha, hilarious)
The infrastructure and handy metros
General relief from touts
Shopping centres
Relative cheapness
Relative safety
Hot water everywhere

Things we will not miss about China:

SPITTING
No sense of queuing (and pushing and shoving and unacceptable stranger-on-stranger violence)
Staring
Stealth photographs (I tried to accept that I should just use it as a practise for when I'm a celebrity, but it still just felt too invasive)
spitting
Chinese bikini
Smoke everywhere
Smog
Instant noodles
Firewall
Heiroglyphics
Gangs of noisy Chinese tourists
Disgusting men and male dominance
Blueberry Crisps