The tour guide
Our tour guide in Beijing was Philip, he was 26 years old, single and had a girlfriend who lived far away from him and they only met in the weekend. We didn’t know how far we didn’t want to sound so nosy. Philip was helpful, friendly and spoke good English. He also had a good knowledge of Beijing and tried to explain about his city history as much as he could. He also spent so much time on his handphone while we were on the road either talking or texting someone, so we reckoned that must be his girlfriend he was talking to. We didn’t know what to expect of him the first time we met at the airport, he looked soft spoken and a bit feminine. But after a while he was ok, he was flexible and easy to get along with. He took us places and spent as much time as possible with us. He helped us a lot during our train trip, took us to nice restaurants and answered our questions as much as we could. He was rather impressed with our country and it was apparent that he had a good knowledge of the world as well. With him on our holiday in Beijing was the driver, a lady named Mrs Huang. Mrs Huang didn’t speak English at all so there was no communication between us and her. When we wanted to know something about her Philip became our translator. It was rather difficult to communicate and it was a pity that she didn’t know any English otherwise we might be able to get to know each other better. I guess it’s a good idea if these drivers know a bit of English at least.
We had a different tour guide in Shanghai. She is a young lady, also 26 years old named Estrella. She is rather beautiful with pretty smile. She was also very friendly and helpful. She was waiting for us at the train station early on Wednesday morning 26th March 2008. She was very pleasant and she had a good communication skills. She told us everything about Shanghai and she really could talk and I couldn’t keep up. Two days in Shanghai we knew so much about her.
The Train
We didn’t know what to expect. Before the trip to Beijing we tried to do some research in the internet on how the train will look like and we were impressed with what we saw in the internet. The trains look new, clean and modern. The tickets were brought by the tour agent so we didn’t know what type of cabin was given but they assured us we wont be disappointed, its first class with 4 bed cabin. We arrived at the train station early after we had our early dinner, the journey didn’t start until 7.40pm. The train station was very busy with so many people but we already knew that through the internet and Philip also told us before hand.
The train station is one big place, we were overwhelmed with the area but I think it still looked small with so many people running or waiting around for their trains. We waited for almost 2 hours until its time to go into the train. Its rather difficult to maneuver the area with our 4 luggages, luckily Philip was there to give us a helping hand. We found our cabin based on the number on the ticket, it was a long walk and very tiring. We settled into the cabin and we shared the cabin with one Chinese guy who occupied the upper deck since it’s a 4 bed cabin. I found the cabin was rather small, imagine we had 4 luggages two of them were quite large so we had to make do with the small space that we had. We had a hard time to keep all of them in the cabin. And I shared my bed with a luggage at the end of the bed. So it’s a good idea if you don’t have too many luggages with you because the train didn’t have a separate compartment to store your bulky luggage. But the cabin was clean, the bed is comfy with 2 pillows for each bed, a blanket and a hanger to hang our coats. There was also a small table between the bed near the train window with a stainless steel hot water thermos. And a fresh flower in a small pot made the cabin much nicer.
Our cabin was near a toilet which was very convenient, we were lucky there were two toilets and one was with normal toilet bowl we used to. I was earlier warned from my research on the internet that the toilet can get quiet dirty and smelly at the end of the journey so I was a bit nervous about that. The toilet was small and very similar to the toilets in the airplane with a vacuum flush. It was ok during the night we went to use it a few times but towards morning its getting too dirty. I must warn the readers that the Chinese are people who don’t like to flush their toilets, they just left it there after doing their business which was very gross! So be ware of that issue…
The weather
China is 4 seasons country. Beijing is on the northern side of China meaning it can get more extreme weather than the rest of China. Shanghai can be less severe but still very cold. We went with full expectation and anticipation, basically we know what to expect. Our luggage was much heavier than our previous holidays since we were bringing warm cloths with us. We even bought some leggings and thermal clothing. We went in March so the weather was a bit cold. In fact it was very cold since we were not used to the cold weather since we came from the tropic. On our first day, it was hazy and the weather was around 10 degrees celcius. We also enjoyed the winter scenery where there were still no leaves on the trees and people still walked around in winter cloths. Not so bad although its still very cold for our standard. But we enjoyed it and embraced the cold weather with open arms. We really wanted to experience this kind of weather that is why we went in March, December not a good idea it might be too cold so March was good enough. The next few days were as cold as the first day but the days were much clearer with no haze. We could see miles and miles of the Great Wall and we were lucky to have such a nice weather and clear sky.
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