Goodness Gracious, Great Wall of China

A travel story from Timbo (Tim Ensor) comes to mind as we write this blog. The guts of that story was Timbo and a kayak were trying to make it to some far flung 3^rd world white water haven, only for an airline to attempt to levy an exorbitant fee for carrying a kayak. Noticing that another traveller did not get stung nearly as bad for transporting a windsurfer (must be a union v league thing), Timbo took a 24 hour delay on travel, brought a wind-surfer bag into which he squeezed his kayak and eventually transported his kayak without fees. The moral of the story was when someone tries to screw you, think hard and screw them back.

And so it is, here in China that we have thought hard about how to beat the ‘Great Firewall of China’ which is prohibiting access to our travel blog. Cue a friendly individual in London, who we will only refer to as the ‘Front Man from Melic’ (www.melicband.com) to act as an intermediary in the blogosphere and we’re able to bring you the first updates from our travels. The only cost in binging this to you all was giving the g-mail password to the previously mentioned ‘Front Man from Melic’ – so to that anonymous individual, please don’t look in the e-mail folder entitled ‘Sexy Photos of Mark Hitchcock’.

So the first stop in the journey was Dubai for a 36 hour tiki tour. Two hours after arrival we eventually left the air-conditioned confines of the city when we exited the metro stop not far from our hotel. Cue an instant and intense sweat which, three strides in, almost derailed Mat as he slipped on the pool of sweat that had instantaneously formed between foot and jandal. So freaked out by the heat, we retreated back into the metro to strategise. In the 10 seconds spent in ‘the heat’ we learned that swearing at it and comparing it to other things hadn’t dissipated it, so with our arsenal empty, we decided to embrace it with puce faces, beads of sweat and a slightly wider gate than normal.

The short stop in Dubai ticked all the boxes – seeing the Burj (World’s tallest building), a stop at the Dubai & Emirates mall for air-conditioned shopping for more camera gear and 7 hours at Wild Wadi, a water theme park with slides, tube rides and a wave pool. Dubai was as we expected it would be – a random cashed up oasis in the desert. A fair few stationary cranes on the horizon suggesting the boom had past, but still a place that does not compare to many others and worth a gander.

Caroline in front of the 828m Burj Khalifa.

Kelly Slater knee- boarding it at Wild Wadi.

Some poncy hotel we weren’t allowed into in wearing jandals (honestly).

In our minds, we’ve broken our trip into four major legs – Asia; India & Nepal (which according to Mat’s MSc. in geography is also Asia, but different Asia), Africa; and boozing with friends in Australia. So first stop on the Asian leg was Beijing, a city where we quickly racked up a third word trifecta consisting of: 1) young boy weeing in a rubbish bin in Tiananmen Square; 2) fully nude man on side of street moving quickly (for an old man) towards Caroline with a smile; and 3) wee girl pooing by the walls of the Forbidden City. Ahhhh travelling, you can’t beat it and it only takes a week before things like this become second nature (though not sure either of us will undertake actions 1 and 3 listed above – 2 remains a distinct possibility).

Within Beijing we tackled the major sights which we imagine would be incredibly impressive without the smog. We knew the smog would be bad, but visibility of 150 metres for the whole time we were in Beijing (except on the evening we left) had us searching the manual for the new camera for an at-smog setting. The smog really did take the shine off everything -well almost everything. Despite the smog, Mat’s third love (after Caros and the Tasman Makos) is Olympic Stadiums so checking out the Beijing Bird’s Nest left a massive grin on his face.

Who goes there besides a man in a 1984 Winter Olympic’s t-shirt in front of the 2008 stadium.

Despite modern engineering, it still takes ropes, a hose, a harness and balls to clean large structures.

The Chairman keeping an eye over things outside Tiananmen Square.

Synchronised swimming is not the only synchronised activity in which the Chinese excel.

The Forbidden City, where it is forbidden not to smoke for fear of making it viewable from more than 150m.

View over the Summer Palace in summer. Post-it note to the architect – no such thing as summer in Beijing.

For Caros, Beijing will be remembered for random Chinese slapping her on the back at any opportunity to have a photo with her, usually sponsored by ‘Hello Kitty’ as the peace sign and a cheesy grin appear to the left or right of Caroline. Unfortunately, this rampant stardom has left Caros devoid of inspiration other than ‘Hello Kitty’ in her own photos.

Hello Kitty!

For our final day in Beijing, we took a day trip to the northeast to check out the Great Wall of China. It always feels good in retrospect when you look back on a tour decision as a good one. so as we passed hoards of Chinese 6 abreast trampling over a section of the wall, we were relieved to arrive at a 10km section (a mere 0.11% of the wall’s entire length) that comprised of original and restored elements that we had entirely to ourselves. The wall snakes its way across the landscape in every direction and is certainly a breath-taking sight. Another sight on our travels that reminds you how small and young New Zealand is.

The Great Wall snaking its way towards Beijing.

Caroline informing some locals that Mongolia was no longer on the doorstep, time to go home.

Tripod purchase in Dubai, used for the first time in China.

Over to our Chinese correspondent, Caroline Morten.

From here, we move to west and south through China, hitting Xi’an and Chengdu. Hope this message finds you all well and once we find a way to beat the Facebook firewall, will get some more photos up. A huge thanks to the ‘Front Man from Melic’ for helping us out – you are the Blogmaster.