China is amazing. Actually, I’ll modify that, Luoyang is amazing. The people are friendly, the women are beautiful and the weather is good. Things are cheap too; I managed to break my own record today by getting dinner for 6 RMB (60p). I also just bought a camping flask for £2 (after getting a 10% discount) and a 2 hour high-speed rail ticket to Xian for £12. Life in Luoyang is good.

My journey to Luoyang began in Pingyao, where the only train I could get was at 01:04. I sat up and waited in the hostel and Bob, the hostel manager, organised a taxi to come and pick me and some other guests up who were getting a late train. I’ve asked in another hostel what these are called and I’m told they’re called tricycles, a tiny, 3-wheeled motorbike with a kind of enclosed area at the back. Me, two other passengers and all our stuff fitted into this tiny space, that only had a tarpaulin-type covering for the sides.

Once we were at the train station, in normal Chinese train-station fashion, we were only let out onto the platform about 5 minutes before the train departed. Naturally, with large numbers of people, this involves a lot of rushing and shouting, but in this case there were only a few of us, so it wasn’t a problem. I still got asked to move my stuff behind the yellow line, however.

Once on the train I found my bed (I was on a hard-sleeper this time) and settled down for the night. After a disturbed night’s sleep, we arrived in Luoyang. I walked around for a bit outside the station and managed to find the information desk in what I thought was the bus station. It wasn’t, but the woman managed to draw me a map of where to go for the bus I needed. I finally found bus number 5 and as I was asking the bus driver whether she went to the stop I needed, a girl who spoke English butted-in and offered to help. She knew where I was going, confirmed that the bus was going in the right direction and we talked for the remainder of the journey.

Once I was at the hostel, I decided that as I was already packed and had most of the day free, that I wanted to go to Nanjiecun. I spoke to the women behind the desk in the hostel, who happily spent about 2 hours helping me plan my trip there. Several hours and a bus-ride later, I was in Zhengzhou, the closest city. Even though the woman in the hostel had actually booked me in to two separate hotels, I decided I needed to get some cash out, as I had been in so much of a rush in Luoyang that I hadn’t been able to get any. I tried about 2 cash machines before deciding that I needed directions to another one and walking into a hotel. The girl behind the desk did not know much English, but we managed to communicate that I needed some cash or an ATM machine and she walked me to the closest one. This was around the corner, it was cold and windy, but she happily did it anyway. When this didn’t work, she walked me to another one (which was next door). Finally, when we found one that worked, I decided that as the rooms we so cheap and she had gone to all this trouble, that I would stay in their hotel. It was opposite the bus station, too.

See the post on ‘Nanjiecun’ for more on what happened the next day!

When I was back in Luoyang, I spent the afternoon exploring the old town. This comes alive at night, with streets that are empty during the day crammed-full of street sellers during the evening. It was a really energising trip, as this was exactly what I hoped a Chinese city would look like. The next day I went to the Longmen caves, which are really a set of statues carved into the wall, but they’re very impressive anyway. The evening, as far as I remember, was spent updating my blog, speaking to someone about Taiwan and getting my visit to Xi’an organised.

Pingyao wasn’t as great as I thought it was going to be. It’s meant to be one of the last remaining, or the most beautiful walled cities in China. Whilst it is pretty (in parts), it’s a massive tourist trap. I spent my two days there cycling around the city (which was actually excellent) and going to some of the sites in the surrounding countryside.

The journey from Beijing was spent on a grotty overnight sleeper, which was the only train left that had any soft sleeper places available. When I boarded, there was actually someone in my bed, but as soon as I opened the compartment door they left and changed to another one. I was the only one in the compartment for a few hours at the end and the lack of cleanliness and a general lack of heat made it a bit of an unpleasant journey.

Once I was in Pingyao, I found my hostel and managed to check-in, despite the un-helpfullness of the receptionist. Two other guests, both sat in the same room, both said that they had had exactly the same problem the day before and offered to help. Not long after, everything was sorted. During the evening, Bob, the hostel owner, offered to organise a trip to the defence tunnels in a nearby castle. Early the next day, both Olaf and I discovered that the trip wasn’t going to go ahead, so I went next door and hired a bicycle for 10 RMB (£1) and cycled around the city walls for the day. The city itself was interesting and this changed again at night, but I would say the best bit (or the most exciting discovery) was what seemed like an abandoned media complex. There’s an international photography festival in Pingyao every year and I can only assume that it is held there. At the moment however, it is an urban-explorer’s dream. This I found at the end of the day, had a few whizzes round on my bicycle and went back to the hostel to return it.

Day two was spent going on an extended sight-seeing tour in the nearby countryside. Instead of going just to the defence tunnels, we were also going to the Wang Family Home, which was a huge site made up from a load of courtyards. It was good, but what I was really there for was the defence tunnels. Olaf, my German friend for the weekend, accompanied me on an English tour, on which we were the only attendees. We got a tour of the top-side castle (more of a walled village) and the network of restored defence tunnels below. The tour was interesting and we left feeling satisfied.

After the bus ride back to the hostel, Olaf and I bumped into some Dutch travellers he had met earlier the same day in another hostel and we had lunch together. They had been across Russia too, but had been to North Korea instead of South. I asked them a load of questions about that and we went our separate ways. I said goodbye to Olaf later the same day and I hung around and waited for my next train to Luoyang.

My journey to Beijing started in Seoul, where I boarded the subway for Incheon. Unlike to journey to Seoul, the journey away from it could be done entirely underground. Once I had got to Incheon, I walked around for a bit to figure out where I was and finally found the ferry terminal. Things were relatively painless; I gave my passport to the woman behind the counter, who printed off the ticket for my reservation. I’d planned things slightly better this time, in that I knew roughly where I was going and what I was doing once I’d got to China.

The journey across the Yellow Sea was also pretty straightforward. The ferry was much bigger and the sea wasn’t as rough, so we set off almost on time. There were three people in my room, which could take a maximum of 4, but one of the people was sleeping on the floor. When I came back to the cabin later on, there were some extra people that I hadn’t seen before and everyone was sitting around the table on the floor. I got my first introduction to Chinese people, along with some Chinese lessons.

When we arrived in Qingdao, the bloke who was sleeping on the floor pointed me in the direction of an ATM machine, where I could get money out for the taxi. After returning to the ferry terminal, the same bloke got in a taxi and told the remaining taxi driver that I wanted a taxi ride to the station for 10 RMB. Once he had departed, the taxi driver instantly upped it to 20 RMB, so I decided to walk away. After deciding that I really did need a taxi, I returned to the taxi rank and managed to haggle the cost down to 15 RMB. That was my first experience of haggling in a currency I had no idea the value of!

Once I’d got to the train station, I found the ticket office and managed to speak to the woman who only did plane bookings, but I think she had access to the train booking system and passed a telephone under the glass, so that I could speak to someone who knew English. The aeroplane woman then put some instructions together, which she passed to another woman, who was working in the train department. I paid for the ticket and then went and found somewhere to eat.

After getting my ticket checked countless times and being metal detected by two security staff simultaneously (which the police woman found funny), I got on my train to Beijing. I sat next to Timmy, who, apparently, I sat in the same restaurant with at lunch. He was the regional manager for a refrigeration company and gave me some advice on where to visit in China. This was my first valuable bit of advice from a real Chinese person.

In Beijing, I found my hostel, which, handily, was listed in the Lonely Planet guide, as my laptop battery had run out and I hadn’t written any instructions. It was lovely. I was the only one there and it was like a hotel; clean, quiet and with friendly staff. As I wrote in my original blog post, it was also a tea house and had a dog and a ceramic bowl with two fish in it. After reading my guide, looking at the map and trying to assimilate all of the information, I went for a walk. The differences with Seoul were already apparent: the people and the buildings looked different and the mood was also different. It was very exciting.

I spent a week in Beijing in the end, as there was a lot to do, it was a good place to get myself organised and I’d had a fairly hectic trip up until then. I spent the time:

• walking around the Jingshan Park and the Forbidden City
• going to the Olympic Park (and getting inside the Bird’s Nest!)
• going to the Summer Palace
• wandering around Hutongs
• seeing Chairman Mao and Tiananmen Square
• haggling with shop owners in the Silk Market
• going to the night market (and eating a deep-fat fried scorpion!)
• visiting the Great Wall.

All of these made for a fantastic visit to Beijing.

I spent a marvellous few days in Seoul, courtesy of Luc, who I know from university. The journey started in Vladivostok, where the ferry I was on was delayed for 8 hours, due to high wind. This was translated as “big wind” by the Koreans I was sharing my compartment with. When I arrived, one of them, who I can’t remember the name of, was in (or on) my bed. Due to the amount of stuff he had, we agreed to swap beds and instead of me going on the bottom, I went on the top. This person turned out to be the most friendly, although he knew Korean, English, Russian and Japanese, so some of the more difficult conversation was not possible. Luckily there was a Japanese traveller in the cabin, who translated from Japanese to English, where either hand gestures or facial expressions were used in return, in case there was an actual reply that was needed, in which case it was translated back again.

The Japanese traveller, Nori, had travelled on his motorbike from Malaysia to London, through Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. He had his bike on the ferry and had just spent the last 6 days on the Trans-Siberian from Moscow, have spent all of it on a hard sleeper. This basically meant that he was lying down for 20 hours a day, something that he didn’t really enjoy. I spoke to Nori, who was at a similar stage in life as I was, although doing different things and with different plans. It helped to have someone who spoke English, as the majority of people in my cabin were Korean and didn’t speak any English at all.

After thinking about how I was going to get from Donghae to Seoul, I realised that I really needed to ask some Koreans how to do it. Luckily, the person that was on my bed posed the question to the rest of the cabin, where people were happy to help. My guide was Kim, who offered to take me to Seoul and gave me a lot of advice in the meantime on what to do afterwards.

When we arrived in Donghae, I was allowed to go in the Korean-only section, as everybody I was with was Korean. We got let off first (before all the tourists) and I helped the friendly Korean man down the gangway with all of the bags of his wife’s clothing he was carrying. We met his wife, who bought Kim and I a can of pre-made coffee, after which we got in a taxi to the bus station.

Whilst we were waiting for the bus, my new Korean friends took me for my first meal in Korea. It was a traditional hot-pot style setup, with no shoes allowed, a type of Korean vodka and a very low table. We ate and discussed our ages (something that I now know is very important) and got on the 3-hour bus ride to Seoul. Kim pointed me in the direction of the metro station and we departed.

The next few days were spent eating, drinking, talking, going to a roller-disco (the first in Seoul), watching Bond (in English!), eating, drinking and going to the theatre. It was excellent. I got to see a side of Seoul that I wouldn’t have got to see otherwise and I met a lot of interesting and friendly people along the way. The whole experience set me up nicely for China, where things are done same-same, but different.