A Family RTW Travel Adventure (2008-2009)

It’s hard for any site as famous as The Great Wall to live up to its reputation.  But I have to admit, it is great.  Truly impressive. But then I suppose you can get a lot done with slave and prisoner labor.

We considered many alternatives for visiting China’s leading tourist attraction. Should we do the “shopping” trip to the Wall at Badaling or perhaps the eight kilometer hike along a section that has not been reconstructed?

Ultimately we decided to take the advice of our friend Ian Pilbeam. We hired a taxi to take us to the Great Wall at Mutianyu.

Good call, Ian.

We hiked along a beautifully restored stretch of the Great Wall while avoiding the Jade Factory tour that was part of the organized outing to the more touristy Badaling section.

As a special bonus, we got to ride a luge from the top of The Wall down a one-mile track, back to the parking area.

For the record, The Wall never did perform its function as an inpenetratable line of defense.

Genghis Khan explained: “The strength of a wall depends on the courage of those who defend it.”

We snatched our hostel’s copy of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor to prepare for our visit to The Forbidden City.

The movie tells the story of Puyi, who became Emperor of China in 1908 at the age of three.  While still very young, he became a symbol and a pawn in revolution and war.  He was forced to abdicate the throne in 1911 when China first became a republic.

Later, he allegedly colluded with the Japanese when they invaded Manchuria in 1937.  After World War II ended he spent ten years in a “re-education camp” before spending his final years in Beijing working as a humble gardner.

The movie can be a bit slow at times, but it is an epic story and it does have a role for the always excellent Peter O’Toole. It also gave us some context for our visit.

The Forbidden City was off-limits to all but the Emperor and his court for 500 years.  It is considered to be the best preserved cluster of ancient buildings in China.

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SpongeBob and Chairman Mao, together at last.

You always take a chance when booking accomodation over the Internet.  Will the place be as advertised?  Are the reviews accurate?  Have I read the message between the lines?

For our arrival in Beijing I had booked us into the Downtown Beijing Backpackers Accommodation, a hostel in a hutong not too far from Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City.

A lucky choice, as it turned out.

Now, you might ask, what the heck’s a hutong?  Before we stayed in one I couldn’t have told you.

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Caroline conceived, shot and edited this video offering her unique take on our overnight train trip from Hong Kong to Beijing.

We had not yet taken a long distance train on our trip, so we were all looking forward to our overnight train to Beijing.

At the same time, we knew we were entering uncharted territory.  China is one of those places we couldn’t figure out how to tackle, so we decided to just plunge in.

Our train left Hung Hom train station at 3:15 pm and was due to arrive at Beijing’s West Train Station 24 hours later.

We booked a “soft sleeper” – four bunks in one compartment.  At first blush, it looked incredibly small, but once we found the storage spaces, it turned out to be quite roomy.  We settled in for the ride.

Shortly after dark, there was a knock on our compartment door.  When we opened the door, a young female train attendant seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see her.

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A Day in Pictures
Hong Kong, SAR, China

Even in the 16th century the Chinese exported far more than they imported, sending growing quantities of silk and tea to Europe with Portuguese traders.

That changed for a time after the British arrived in Hong Kong because the British brought with them one imported good that could not be resisted: Opium.

The British drug trade led to the First and Second Opium Wars – and ultimately a 99-year British “lease” of Hong Kong. The lease ended in 1997, and Hong Kong was returned to Chinese control.

Today, nearly 12 years after the British handover to the Chinese, Hong Kong remains a global economic center.

Hong Kong’s harbor is one of the world’s most scenic – and busiest. Skyscrapers ring the harbor, and nothing seems to slow the pace of construction.

At night, the harbor comes alive, putting on one of the world’s biggest light shows.

And a streetside version of one of our favorites: Hong Kong Idol.

There are more pictures from Hong Kong here.

We have just finished watching The Deep End of the Ocean.

It’s on HBO, one of three channels in English here at our serviced apartment in Bangkok. We watched it fully engaged in the drama and at times with tears in our eyes. But I’m worried about us and here’s why: this is the fourth time we’ve seen this movie.

We’re positively stuck in the doldrums, counting the days until we can move on.

We arrived in Bangkok after a grueling bus trip over bumpy dusty back roads from Siem Reap. (I think the only roads in Cambodia are of the “back” variety.)

Thirty-eight travelers in a vehicle built for 35, plus the driver, plus at least one huge backpack for each person crammed into a retired school bus with no shocks and open windows pulling reluctantly at the thick dirty air whenever we lumbered over 10 mph.

One man sat in a child-sized red plastic chair placed in the aisle near the front door. He got the best breeze since the door stayed open for the entire ride.

All the way back, lumpy duffel bags and unwieldy suitcases took the walkways. In the final row, people sat five across under a tottering roof of stacked packs threatening an avalanche with each slam on the brakes.

Perhaps, after several squeaking hours you might doze: a small mental escape. But whining, invasive honking would pull you back in to the reality of the journey. Hand on the horn, foot on the gas careening toward and then away from bikes, tuk-tuks, oxen, schoolchildren, goats over the powdery red dirt roads.

Nothing could have been more pleasing to see than the “Welcome to Thailand” sign.

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Cambodia was a challenge for us, but a rewarding one. I think we all left with a renewed appreciation for the strength of the human spirit.

Our travel report is here.

Every day that we possibly can, we open our big blue suitcase on wheels and pull out the textbooks.

Caroline has a big, green, shiny English 9 book and an accompanying dense black writing handbook.  A 10-pound U.S. History text, a geometry book, and all the tools to go with it (calculator, protractor, compass, etc) rounds out her list.

Conor’s stack includes a fat, red math book and two huge spiral-bound math manuals, a social studies book covering lands of the eastern hemisphere and its matching workbook, and a language arts book.  (We’re dissecting sentences and learning parts of speech.)

None of this really blends in with world travels: sight-seeing, trekking, photographing, eating strange foods, and moving over and over again to yet another new spot.

But schoolwork has become a necessary framework and, at times, a welcome one.  Even though, like at home, it causes a certain stress, it is a constant thread through our crazy changeable year.

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