The Happy Couple

In a bid to save money we eschewed the hostel's Great Wall tour and their advice on how to get there, and decided to follow the directions we had found online. A metro ride across town and we'd be able to get the last tourist bus leaving to Mùtiányú, which we had read was less touristy than Bādálĭng where everyone goes and is reportedly crawling with vendors and touts. When we arrived at the bus stop a man there told us there was no bus except on Saturdays and Sundays; if we had bothered to read what the Lonely Planet said about Mùtiányú we would have known this, but determined to make the plan work we fell back on the advice the hostel had given us, by jumping back on the very cheap, modern, and efficient metro and catching a different bus on the other side of the city. This approach meant changing to a minibus at the end of the bus route, which we were slightly apprehensive about. Some way from the last stop, a man got on the bus and pointed to us and said that we were at our destination and we should get off now to get to Mùtiányú. He managed to fluster us a bit, but we were sure enough to stay on the bus. After we pulled off from the stop I checked with the driver that we were still going to our destination. It was just a minibus driver trying his luck.

When we got to the end of the bus route it all went very smoothly. Minibuses were waiting to whisk us off to the Wall and they were only asking for about half of what we expected to pay, and we didn't even have to barter to get that price. The driver must have been desperate for work because he offered to wait for us and do the return trip too; he wouldn't even take half the money before we set off up the Wall.

Joanne just a little sweaty

The climb up to the Wall

It was a bit of a hike up the wall, but with the heat and the humidity we were sweating profusely; the fact we hadn't done any proper exercise for ages probably contributed to the difficulty we felt. At the top the view was superb.

Slightly exhausted

Even though the Wall had been restored it was still very impressive, and we had chosen well because we were not hassled too much and it wasn't jam-packed with other tourists as Bādálĭng would have been. We walked from one end of the restored section to the other, up and down some very steep stairs, until we got to a sign indicating that we should go no further. Beyond it was quite overgrown but other than that the wall actually looked in pretty good condition. There was an offshoot at right-angles to either side at this point and these bits of the wall were in a similar over-grown condition. It didn't seem like they would actually have had to do all that much restoration to get it in the tourist-friendly state it this section now was. I stood there thinking to myself “Wow! I'm on the Great Wall of China. I'm really here!”

The view from the Wall

No entry

There were disallowed exits all the way along

Joanne touching it in Chinese style

Unrestored bit of Wall

Even here they have to watch the people

Fantastic!

When will this end?

Mystery of the Plain of Jars solved! (It was the Chinese)

Even here they have time for detail

Last steep bit (honest)

We had refused the cable car on the way up because we really needed to save money after Japan, and our hostel wasn't really as cheap as we should have been aiming for in China, but there was a toboggan option for the descent and I couldn't resist. It was quite expensive, but it was definitely money well spent. Unfortunately there was a slow guy with a child going pillion in front of me, which ruined my high-speed descent, so I just stopped completely until Joanne caught up with me then set off again at full speed. There were officials posted at all the sharp corners telling me to slow down, but I ignored them and, since the rules at the top had said no photographs, I took a video of part of the descent. At the bottom I capped it all off by haggling a great deal on an army-style bag with the Mao motto Serve the People in Chinese on it, under the red star.

The Night Market

A stall at the Night Market

Beijing Duck

The really fatty stuff

Back at the hostel we asked if they knew somewhere for Peking Duck, since we thought we should try it while we were there, and were directed along the Night Market. There were more food stalls here, looking a bit better than the ones on Snack Street, although they still had the collection of alternative foods. We found our place and went in for duck. It was a bit above our budget, but we felt we had to. The menu had all sorts of horrible sounding things on it; I'm sure they're all really nice, but we were quite happy to stick with our side of vegetables and Beijing duck, which is of course what they call it. It wasn't really Joanne's or my sort of thing. It all seems to be about the fat; the meat is cut into three types: breast fat, lean breast, and mixed fat and lean, which I think is leg meat.

Vegetable side

There are little rice pancakes to wrap it in, and sugar, a choice of three sauces, cucumber, and spring onions to vary the contents of the parcel with. The fatty stuff is just really really fatty and I thought it was disgusting when I tried a few pieces without any accompaniments. By the end of the duck we were both totally full, although it hadn't looked all that much when it arrived, but it was a rich, sickly full, rather than a stuffed full. I could see the point of it, and I understood what they were doing, and why some people would like it, but it just wasn't my kind of food – but at least I'd have real Peking Duck.

Back at the hostel an American guy we were chatting to, told us he was leaving for Shanghai the next day, to see the total solar eclipse there. The what?. We knew nothing about it, but it sounded like an excellent plan. Shanghai was our next planned destination, but it would mean leaving Beijing a day earlier than we had planned, which we weren't too bothered about as we felt we had already had an excellent two days of tourism. So that was the new plan: Shanghai for the eclipse the day before Joanne's birthday!

written by

The Happy Couple on July 20, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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Cute!

We left our noisy hostel and got the train to Nara. We had actually received one Couchsurfing reply from a girl in Nara, but it was just to say she could no longer host people, however her boyfriend was running a hostel next door, and would we like to book in. At first we had resisted, hoping for another response but, of course, there were none so we emailed back to say we would like to stay. It was the going rate for a dorm room at ¥2500 per person, which was really too much for us, since this was half of our daily budget.

Arriving in Nara, we soon realised the directions were terrible again. We had no faith that we were going the right direction at all and had to make a couple of guesses, but we did end up in the right place. It wasn't really a hostel at all, just someone's house; a very moody American's house it seemed. He did none of the usual checking in stuff like checking our passports to take down details and getting us to sign a book. It was presumably all unofficial, untaxed, and I suspect the whole Couchsurfing profile was just a scam, designed to reel people in without going through any of the official channels. Still, our room was nice although Joanne complained that the kitchen and toilets were the dirtiest we had seen in Japan and not up to the standard of a hostel.

Two buildings of the temple

More of the temple

We had arrived quite late, so most of the tourist sites were closed or would be soon. There was a temple quite close to the “hostel” called Kōfuku-ji, so we left to make sure we at least saw something that day. The main attractions of the temple were two pagodas, dating from 1143 and 1426. The older one is a five storey pagoda, and is the second tallest in Japan. It was OK, but the Japanese style just doesn't do it for me. It's not particularly pretty, intricate, or ornate. It's wood and it's brown. Just behind the Pagoda, though, were a few deer wandering around, obviously very tame. There are loads of deer, which were considered messengers of the gods and are now national treasures. We had read in the Lonely Planet that you can buy deer biscuits to feed to them, but the shop was on tomorrow's route.

Tame deer

Deer hassling a man

Me stroking a deer

Lovely sake cup (filled with lovely sake)

Joanne had picked up a tourist map of Nara, and spotted an advert for a sake brewery which sold sake ice cream. It sounded like a local speciality to me so we had to seek it out. Unfortunately Japanese directions struck again and we spent quite a lot of time seeking it out. Eventually Joanne spotted it on the map nowhere near where we had been looking because it was supposed to be “west then on the left” from a temple, when it was actually South East. By the time we realised it was already closed, but we had discovered a nice little drinking place with some Japanese people sitting outside. We had a couple of nice draft beers and a couple a nice sakes, which were served in a lovely decorated square cup. I quite liked Nara. We decided the key to Japan was to avoid the big cities like Tokyo and Kyoto and concentrate on the small places, which seem to be prettier.

Drinking sake

We weaved our way home to discover three Americans, one of whom was Japanese-American. The Japanese-American, Yu, was married to Kim; originally they had got married so he could stay in the country because, despite living nearly his whole life in America, was not a citizen, and when his dad had decided to move back to Japan, he would have had to leave too. Kim and Yu had since had a proper wedding, having got the legal convenience stuff out of the way several years earlier. They were also on a year-long round-the-world honeymoon. The last American, Moses, had joined them for a holiday in the middle of their trip; something, we explained, that we had been hoping at least one of our friends would do, but it didn't look like it was going to happen.

Latching on to their Japanese language advantage, we agreed to out with them for Okonomiyaki, since the Quebecois in Kyoto had raved about the stuff. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed and we went to the supermarket for food instead. Somehow we came out with two litres of sake and the Americans with loads of beer. When we returned a German girl called Julia had also joined the collective, and we all sat down to eat and drink. Really it was too much drink and Kim and Yu went to bed before it was all finished, however Moses, Julia, and the two of us were silly enough to go to the 7-11, which seems to sell alcohol 24 hours, and buy more of it. The dreaded Strong Zero strikes again!

Plastic food

Marauding deer in front of the gate to Daibutsu-den

We slept in late, when we really shouldn't have. We had several things we planned to see before getting the train to Kawaguchi-ko near Mount Fuji. We decided to forget the rest and just go for the big-hitter: Tōdai-ji a temple whose grounds contained Daibutsu-den hall, the largest wooden building in the world. On the way I remembered to take some photos of the awful plastic representations of the food restaurants have outside. I think it's meant to entice you in, but it always looks horrible. The temple was absolutely crawling with deer and children.

It seems to be a popular place for school outings. The hall was indeed very impressive, and the deer, although cute, were at times a bit on the precocious side. I saw a couple of stags nudging people with their antlers when they saw that they had deer biscuits. It looked like all of the deer's anltlers had been blunted, and a good thing too! I bought a pack of biscuits too, and took great pleasure in feeding them to the eager deer. Joanne is not an animal lover so she wasn't interested, but I persuaded her to feed one for a photo opportunity.

It's big

On the way back to pick up our bags from the hostel we passed an okonomiyaki place, which was advertised in English as “Japanese pizza”. It was nothing of the sort, but it was very tasty. It's a batter mixed with meat, vegetables, and sauce and cooked on a griddle, more like a savoury pancake. It's then served on a griddle sunk into your table. Apparently cheaper places leave you to mix and cook it yourself, but ours was delivered mostly cooked; okonomiyaki means “cook what you like”.

My okonomiyaki

Joanne's okonomiyaki

At the station we asked to book seats for Kawaguchi-ko, but we were told that it wasn't possible because we were too late. We hadn't really considered that the trains might stop so early because Mount Fuji is such a tourist destination, we thought. We were told that to get there we would have to go to Mishima, change for Gotemba, then change again there. But we had missed the last train so we would have to get a bus. We weren't happy about getting a bus since we had paid for our rail pass, but we had also booked accommodation so we needed to get there. When trying to confirm the instructions she seemed to change her story and told us we would have to stay the night in Gotemba and get the bus in the morning. This was very confusing: why would we want to get the bus in the morning when we could get a train? We decided the only two options we had were to go back to and ask to stay another night or go onto Kyoto. We decided on Kyoto, since it would mean an earlier start the next day as it's closer to Mount Fuji. We didn't think we'd have any problem booking accommodation since it wasn't the weekend. However when Joanne called our hostel in Kawaguchi-ko and asked for our booking to be moved, but they were fully booked the next night.