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By Soul Solutions on
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
After giving up on getting a clear day, let alone a blue sky we’d planned to go to the wall today. We must have spent enough time at the Department of Perfect Picture Day at the Taoist temple yesterday or something as today was the first clear blue sky we’ve had in Beijing! We set off at 7am and got to Mutianyu right on 8:30, grabbed our cable car ticket and were one of the very first people up the wall.
That meant not only did we get a blue sky but pictures without people!
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By Soul Solutions on
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
This morning we braved the subway again and headed over to Dongyue Temple – a Taoist Temple which is seemingly in the middle of the business district. After switching lines and wandering out of the train station we walked about 700m east till we found what looked like a temple. The person at the gate nodded at my Mandarin name for the temple so we set off inside for 10 yuan ($1.50). I’d found this place on the internet so knew what to expect. It’s not your usual temple – all the statues are a little “different”.
Even the ones just of people didn’t have the standard smiling face.
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By Soul Solutions on
Sunday, 20 May 2012
Today we were up early to head to Beijing. It turned out to be a big day of waiting. We were told it could take 1.5 hours to get to the airport so we left at 7:30am with a cab that was sitting just outside our hotel. The cabbie got us there in 40 mins – there wasn’t much traffic and he seemed to know the back way to get to the airport avoiding all the freeway tolls.
We tried to check in but were too early so had to come back an hour later. We found a chair with power, John played on the computer for an hour and back we went. This time there was a much longer queue. When we checked in there was no gate allocated. So we sat around hoping a gate number would appear. Turns out in that hall it only shows which checkin counters are for your flight. So about 40 minutes before our flight we went to information and they sent us back to the check in queue. After a long wait in the checkin queue I had our gate and more importantly which security gate to go through.
Through security we went only to find our flight has been delayed for 2 hours. 3 hours later we head to Beijing. 45 mins waiting for our bags and an hour to town and we were where where our hotel was supposed to be (see top picture). It looked like a camera store but was the correct address and turned out you go inside and there’s a set of stairs to the rooms etc. Couple of other tourists turned up while we were checking in asking the same questions as us. I’d read a few newer reviews on our hotel recently that left we wondering if our stay would...
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By Soul Solutions on
Saturday, 19 May 2012
This morning we set off for Mt HuaShan. Gave ourselves plenty of time to find a cab and get to the train station. Luckily there was one sitting outside our hotel so that was nice and easy.
Driving around in Xi’an is interesting. They have lights that count down to the change of green/red, seems that everybody kinda ignores that and quite often runs red lights. There’s pedestrian crossings and crossings with the red/green man. Cars, buses and bikes seem to ignore those too so you have to be careful crossing the road. It’s much like crossing the road in Egypt – you have to talk out in front of oncoming traffic and be prepared to stand in the middle of lanes until you get enough of a break to get to the next lane.
The Xi’an North Railway station is a fair way out of town. Our cabby found a fellow cabbie to drag off at each set of lights we went through. On one set, the light went green and our cabby missed 1st gear so the other guy got ahead. Then BANG! A car smashes the other cab, does a 180 spin in front of us and stops a car width to our right. No worries, our path is clear so off we go. Seems you don’t have to stop for accidents here. Lucky he missed 1st of that coulda been us getting our bumper taken off by the other car running the red light.
So we made it to Xi’an North with heaps of time to spare and in one piece. The train station is really massive, new and tidy. Jumped on our train in our allocated seat and off to the mountain we went. It’s a bullet train that can go pretty damn fast be we “only” made it to...
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By Soul Solutions on
Friday, 18 May 2012
Today was our last day volunteering. Many thanks to Tiger who was absolutely tremendous. No request was to trivial or too much trouble for him. He was Mr. FixIt for the water, washing machine etc.
Today we also had to say goodbye to our panda babies from the last week. Erlang and YaYa has provided such amusement with their antics over the last couple of weeks we’ll definitely miss them. Dabao has kept John busy with cleaning and feeding and making sure she gets every last crumb of panda cake.
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By Soul Solutions on
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
Got up early but the pandas weren’t out and about much at all today. Erlang was up near the side fence chilling just before first feed at 8. Today I had yet a different keeper. This one is the usual keeper for YaYa and Erlang. So after 2 days of pretty much being left alone to do everything, Mr. Lee did a lot of the work for me. He was very cute with them, tummy rubbing, doing some strength training etc. He got me to hand feed them the apples I usually throw in which was a bit scary putting my fingers that close to those big teeth. Last session of the day he got me to do some strength training with an apple on a stick making them climb right up high. No wonder these two are such good climbers.
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By Soul Solutions on
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
The pandas weren’t very active this morning. Many weren’t out at all or just sitting a long way from the camera.
Erlang and YaYa were up on the hill mediating.
Others were looking for someone to play with. I had a different keeper today but she was just checking in on me. So I was pretty much left to move, clean, feed and generally just not get my arms ripped off by myself. While it’s nice they trust me to look after their precious pandas I do worry...
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