The great wall and all that jazz

(yep, that's me on the Great Wall)

What can you say about the Great Wall, really? Didn't they kind of say it all when they named it "Great"? I decided to take a tour offered by my hostel that would go to the "secret" wall- a part hopefully not covered in tourists and crawling in souvenir stalls. They delivered on the promise and we arrived at a beautiful section of the wall not far from the most touristy bit (with the cable car up and slide down) that was only partially restored and beautifully empty. It also turned out to be a fantastic day with relatively clear skies (only a mild pollution haze) and you could see quite a way in every direction.

It was a fun trip, I spiny most of the day hiking with a pair of British sisters who are English teachers not far from Beijing and in the city for the holiday. There is not much to say except that we climbed up, walked for a bit, took pictures walked back and climbed down. Climbed the Great Wall- check.

Travel in big cities (and any major tourist destination) often feels like a rather endless series of checklists: Great Wall- check, Summer Palace- check, Temple of Heaven- check, Chinese acrobats- check, etc. I feel like I try not to just "do" the checklist, for a lot of reasons. One, I can't really afford it; if I did everything listed in the Lonely Planet, I would be completely broke by now. I think, also that the best times I've had on this trip have been when I got off the checklist- usually with couhsurfers and PCVs. For me it is somehow easier to skip some of the attractions if I have someone to walk around town with- and when I do see things, it doesn't feel quite so listy since I'm sharing it with someone.

Anyway, checked off a lot of things from the list in Beijing. . . Up next, something that has been on my list for a long time: Terra-cotta warriors in Xi'an!

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Blocked

I had heard that there were a few websites (most importantly for me- facebook) that were blocked in china. I also heard that there were ways to get around the blocking. So far I haven't been able to do that since I don't know how to get a proxy server on my iPod. I imagine I'll be able to use someone computer over the next few days to get to all the banned sites. Shh. I won't tell if you won't.

When I arrived in Beijing I found two more important sites blocked- blogger and wikipedia. Blogger is a problem for obvious reasons- while I have been using e-mail publishing on my blog since I got my iPod (because I can draft a post when offline) I still had to log on to actually publish the post and this is not possible here. I thought the fact that wikipedia was blocked especially ironic since they have this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

I presume that they are listed, but I don't know since I can't open the page to check it out. If not someone should update it. :-).

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When in Rome . . .

(me with my bike in a park in Beijing)

Or rather when in China, do as the Chinese do. . .

After spending my first day in Beijing walking and finding that the crowds were terrible and the distances long, I took the advice of the guidebook and rented a bike from my hostel for the day. Although there are still plenty of bikes on the Beijing streets, cars are more and more common, making traffic pretty horrible and becoming more dangerous for the bikers. Now, I haven't ridden a bike in years and between that and in general being a bit out of shape, I started out slow. Of course I couldn't really start out too slow since I had to get through the traffic in central Beijing around Tienanmen square right off the bat- surviving that, I made my way along some of the bike roads and hutongs (alleys) north to the drum and bell towers. I had fun exploring Beijing this way, but it was very stressful and there were several times that I had to dismount in order to get through big crowds and not run over small children or grandmothers. I managed to make it back to my hostel in the afternoon without getting hit by a bus and without hitting any pedestrians (at least not hard). I was sore and tired and happy to be in one piece.

While it is certainly faster than walking, I don't really see myself as a "bike" person. My friends Chris and Courtney are taking a several month bike trip through the middle east right now and while I love reading about their trip and it seems like they are having a great time, I just don't know if I could do it. I saw a lot of the people in Beijing zipping around on little motor bikes and scooters and I think that maybe I could do THAT. I am faced with the problem of transportation for when I get back to Denver in a few months. I would love to live without a car, but a few hinges make that hard- first as I plan on subbing for at least a few months, I will need flexibility that buses and biking just cant offer. Second, I'll be getting back in winter and a bike (or even a scooter) wouldn't be a reliable option for at least a few months. I guess I'll figure that all out when the time comes. . .

The ger life

(Caitlin and I outside "Dublin Round")

One of he quintessential things to in Mongolia is to stay in a ger (yurt). The easiest way to do this is to pay for a tour that takes you to an "authentic" ger camp. But since I'm not generally for the easy way, I didn't do this. Instead I found a PCV that lives in a real life ger. In case you don't know, a ger is a Mongolian felt tent- usually used by the nomadic herdsman. In modern day Mongolia, many people live in more permanent abodes: apartments, brick houses etc., but many people still live in movable gers and many also live in semi-permanent gers in neighborhoods of towns and cities. Caitlin's ger is like this- she lives in the yard of a Mongolian family's house. Her ger- Dublin Round (probably the best ger in Mongolia)- is pretty great. It is about 12 feet across with furniture all around the edges and a wood (or coal or dung) stove in the middle of the circle that vents out the hole in the roof. She has no running water and has to go a few times a week to the end of her street to fill up a large plastic container for her water needs. She does have electricity and even Internet. Imagine, Internet in a felt tent!

A word on . . .

Couchsurfing. This is why I love couchsurfing- when you stay with someone, you get a slice of their life, whether it is meeting some Hare Krishna or spending the afternoon in the jacuzzi of the guest house of the president of Mongolia. Sure there are temples and museums, but could you ever get an experience like his staying in a hostel? I didn't think so- just sayin. . .

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I found the foreigners

(waiting for the train on the Mongolian border)

I found the foreigners- they are in second class. For the trip to Ulaanbaator, there were no third class seats available for the days I wanted to travel so I had to pay the extra money to be confined in a small compartment with three other people and loud rude foreigners next door. . .
In fact, the whole car is made up of foreigners. It seems that there is one normal train a day that crosses the border and in fact for several hours on either side of the border, it is disconnected and all alone (it is very weird to see your train car sitting by itself on the tracks, not connected to anything). And there are no third class seats because there is no third class- or first class for that matter. Just our lonely second class. For the border stop (long!) all of us forieners got off the train and sat chatting on the platform- it reminded me a bit of the people I met in waiting in the Amsterdam airport.

It feels weird to be leaving Russia. I don't think I'm ready, I just feel like I'm starting to understand things a bit and remember words that were lodged in the back of my brain. In Mongolia and China I will back at square one, not understanding anything people say, only worse off than in Russia because I've never studied Mongolian or Chinese.

I am really excited about Mongolia and I wish that I had planned a little bit longer there. I am planing on staying with a few Peace Corps Volunteers, which I think will be awesome as always. I have also started to map out my time in China, which is a challenge because it is just so much that it is hard to decided where to even start. I feel like I almost have to just open my guide book at random and visit where ever my finger lands, but of course that would be a bit silly. Really that is all that I have been doing so far and it has seemed to work out ok . . . Anyway, the trip goes on!

Lake baikal

Fall may not be the obvious time to come to a place like Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world- its too cold to swim (although I gather that even in the summer the water is pretty frigid) but not yet cold enough to drive on the frozen lake and ice fish. But I think that this was actually a great time to come- it's not too cold yet to not want to go outside, but there aren't a million tourists crowding the beach. And the foliage is turning. I love the fall and the changing of leaves. I think it is one of natures coolest shows and riding around the lake on the old Cirkumbaikal railway I was captured by the golden hues of the changing birches. I stayed for one night in a tiny village called Old Angasolka. I was the only foreigner in the village for the night and it was exactly what I wanted. There is one guy who speaks English ok and his girlfriend a little. I talked with him for a long time about Russia, America, Albania, brain-drain, development and tourism. He showed me some great pictures that were taken on boating, biking and climbing trips around the region, plus a funny video that included skiing an skating on the frozen lake and some crazy ice swimming (with a mad dash to the sauna). It makes me want to come back in the summer and even more to come back in the winter. One thing that is really great about Baikal, especially compared to the horribly done development of some aspects of tourism in Albania, is how simple and conciensiously the tourism here has been developed. There are twice weekly tourist trains that go along the old railroad stopping many times along the way- on this route there are no big hotels, only scattered campsites and small settlements of camps and guesthouses. The big hotels are concentrated in a few towns, or more in the city of Irkutsk a few hours away, making the lakeside quiet and peaceful. And since this is the most inhabited part of the lake I imagine that the rest of the lake is even more quiet and peaceful.