The beginning...

A few days after my return to the I-House, and about time I started writing about my travels.
I'll try to go over this quickly, for my sake and yours. :P
Let's start with.....

South Korea!

At first this was supposed to be a trip to South-Korea only, the idea was to head over to the land of cheap things to spend some money and live like queens but soon our imagination started taking us further and further, down through China, into Tibet, perhaps Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Sadly fate would not have it so, we found ourselves begging for more time (at least myself) and visas. But more on that later.

Early on the 4th or 5th of March (didn't write it down...) me and Svanni boarded the Panstar ferry which took us over to Busan, Korea. After some walking around town and almost going swimming with the sharks at the aquarium we hopped on the next train to Seoul.
On the way we saw millions of red crosses scattered around the cities and towns, at first we thought they were pharmacies but apparently they are very religious down there. The people are also somewhat different from the Japanese; much more playful, open and loud. Seoul is a lot like any other big city, a bit more messy and dirty and some of the streets are rather run down.
Some of the things we went to see were the fish market, Jongmyo royal ancestral shrine, markets where we ate some of the local delicacies, seoul N-Tower, we rode a cable car, went to the roots of a nearby popular mountain route.... Svanni wasn't sleeping so well so she kept falling over a lot and once managed to scare some people on the street by falling and running into them. They clutched their purses while I laughed like a maniac. The 8th of March we moved over to China.


China!
 
The flight over to Beijing took about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check-in was postponed for a few minutes due to ... snow! I stood there in jeans, autumn jacket and sneakers, refusing to believe my ears. Actually it was minus 6 degrees when we landed and snow was scattered on the ground.
We left the airport and tried to find a bus downtown, but all that the bus boys would do was shout at us in Chinese and point in random directions. Finally we got some answers and hurried onto one of the buses. During the ride the driver would yell at the top of his lungs, I still don't know what for, at one point we stopped talking because we thought he was telling us to shut up.
At one point he stopped the bus, stood up and yelled some more, this time with more fervor. The people on the bus started yelling as well and started getting off the bus. I didn't want to spend any more time in a closed space with this man so we hurried off the bus as well.

Getting off the bus, we were now completely lost in the middle of Beijing, surrounded by armed guards and police officers. Luckily I noticed a building close by that I recognized so I dragged Svanni over there. When we stopped again I realized we were standing right next to Tiananmen square!
Feeling like a kid in a candy store I ran wildly around, not knowing which site to explore first.
As it was freezing we decided to go find our hostel and then come back later.

As it turned out, our hostel was in a pretty run-down part of town (this would follow us throughout our travels), or at least it looked like that to us, coming from Japan. Actually its a long bustling street with crazy traffic and romantic alleyways. Due to our amazing Chinese skills we finally found the street and took one of the narrow alleyways to find a carpeted door (to keep the cold out) into the Lotus Hostel. We asked about visa for Tibet with high hopes but they told us it could take up to a month because of the meeting of China's officials in Beijing at the time. So we quickly pushed any notion of getting there out of our heads, sadly.
The hostel was nice, we shared a room with two Chinese guys, one of whom spoke flawless English with a British accent. It was good to have someone to talk to - English is apparently not high on their agenda of stuff to learn.

Among other things we went to visit the Forbidden City - a seemingly endless array of halls, the Opera where we got to know the Monkey King a bit better, the Great Wall of China where we climbed the almost vertical steps and slopes up and down, Temple of Heaven - closed, some nice restaurants (we skipped the pigs tail, chicken claws and cartilages...), Summer Palace - it was a frighteningly cold day, Lama palace - beautiful temple, and more.

Actually, when we were going to the Great Wall we were greeted by lots of people trying to sell us tickets for a 'low, low price' - only about 4 times what we thought it was supposed to cost. One of them would not leave us alone, I told his it was outrageously expensive, he told me in turn that there were no buses running that day and this was the only way. His mistake was stopping a young couple to do some translating for him as his English was not so good; the woman obviously felt bad about repeating what he was saying so I looked to the guy who beckoned us to follow him. We did and they helped us find a bus to get there. To show how incredibly nice and helpful the Chinese can be we had six people standing around us at one point, discussing how it would be best to get there. After a few minutes a man passing by overheard their conversation and told us to follow him - he was going the same way.
We sat down and bought tickets - after thanking them - they cost us only a few yuan...

When visiting Tiananmen square our last day in Beijing we were touristing around, minding our own business, when this woman taps me on the shoulder and yells something in Chinese. I though I had dropped something and quickly turn around. She then grabs my arm and points forward, there is a another woman standing there, pointing a camera at us. Understanding, I smiled and turned to keep going. Then I get another hard tap on my shoulder and this woman is smiling at me and speaking Chinese, touching my hair and saying how tall I was. A very weird day indeed.

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I think I will stop here for now, lets do this in small doses.
To be continued....