Oops--I'm behind a couple of days!

The Drum Tower in Xian

Jade and Jarrah at the Bell Tower

This is our second day in Beijing so I've got some catching up to do! Firstly to our afternoon in Xian. Thankfully Jade's tummy problems resolved themselves so we left the hotel at 12 to go and see the Drum and Bell Towers which were right nearby. There's nothing terribly special to write about these sights. They were interesting to walk through and see and look lovely in photos so I'll just leave them at that. We headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and get our taxi to the train station which we'd booked for 6pm. We then discovered that Xian (and probably China) don't have a taxi booking system so it was up to the bellboy to try and flag one down for us. One came to drop other guests off and he tried to get them to take us to the station but the driver refused--shades of our problems in Chengdu. Another came--same problem. So he took us out to the middle of the main street and tried to flag one down then. Other people were also there and no one was taking turns so we watched a couple of taxis come and take other people. Then he tried to get us one but they refused. What is it with the train station??? Or is it us??? Finally the bellboy suggested we offer to pay 20Y--about double the metered fare. Finally we got a taxi but not without pushing another group who'd been there after us out of the way. We got in the taxi with them complaining loudly that we'd pushed them aside. I didn't see any unfairness in what we'd done so didn't really see what they were complaining about.

Arriving at the Xian train station

The train to Beijing was BEAUTIFUL. Much cleaner, newer and nicer than the previous one we'd taken. We had our own cabin again and this train was an express so no jerking and stopping during the night. Before we left Xian one person came around offering a morning coffee service so Paul and I each booked a coffee which was going to be delivered to our cabin at 6:30. How lovely!

The sign on the side of the train carriage--as you can see we travelled to Beijing West Station

We arrived in Beijing about 7:15 in the morning (Thursday 8th) and made our way through the crowds to get a taxi. We were absolutely determined not to be waylaid by a gypsy cab again. We discovered that the queue to get a taxi was very long--but orderly. We joined the end and waited 1.5 hours, slowly working our way to the front. A few people tried to cut in on us and I yelled at them in Chinese and told them to go to the back and that we'd been waiting 1.5 hours. They appeared shocked and immediately left the line and went to the back. I don't think that would happen in other cultures as easily. When it came our time for the taxi the one we headed for pulled away from us and left, we went for the next one--same thing. Then we went for the third one along and grabbed him just as he also started to pull away from us. I'm getting a complex about this whole taxi thing. Do they have a problem with Westerners or what is it????? Anyway, once in the cab things were fine. I showed him the address of our hostel in characters which I'd obtained via email from the hostel itself. The driver found the place in a small narrow hutong with no problems.

The Shanglin Hostel seemed OK on first inspection. (I'd booked it from a website.) It was an old style courtyard place, nicely decorated. Once in our room (4 bed with ensuite) however we saw how basic the level was. The heating still left us feeling cold, there were few powerpoints and the bedlinen seemed a bit grubby. The plug for my laptop fell out of the powerpoint and I couldn't get it to stay in reliably. The TV reception was poor. There were signs in the toilet instructing us to place our used toilet paper in a bin next to the toilet and not in the toilet. We've stayed in lots of hostels but this one just didn't give us the basic level of comfort we were looking for. We went out for a walk in the cold wind to check out our surroundings, had lunch in a local noodle soup place and then came back. We planned to eat dinner in the hostel restaurant but at 6 when we went down was told that it was closed because they had few guests. (I don't think they had any others.) We walked back out into our local hutong area which is very interesting and lively with lots of shops and people and happened into a backpackers type hostel which had a fantastic restaurant. At dinner we decided to check out a room and we found it much better than where we were. We went back to the Shanglin Hostel and asked for a refund for all but 1 night (we'd paid for 5). Thankfully they agreed and we then booked into the new hostel where we are now.