Wednesday 14 October 2009

Golden Week!

For the 1st to the 7th October we all had a week off for China's national day (60th anniversary of Peoples' Republic) and Golden week. For this break I went to Inner Mongolia with TTC and most of the Beijing TEFL crew so it was great to catch up and see how people are gettin on in their placements. Took a sleeper train up to Beijing for the actual national day celebrations which was cool, although all I really saw were some planes in formation and lots of fireworks. The big evening spectacular in Tiananmen square was closed off to the public, except party officials, and just televised. So we watched a bit of that.

Next day I travelled up to Hohhot in Mongolia with quite a few others and arrived the next morning. Hohhot is a very interesting city with various different peoples, influences and building styles. Our hotel was in the Muslim district so there was a vaguely Middle-Eastern theme to the area, and other areas were quite Russian looking in their architecture. First day we ate lamb and went horse-riding in the vast grasslands, day 2 saw us camel riding and sand trucking in the impressive sand-dune desert and for the third day we visited the newly built museum of Mongolian culture - which was pretty good actually - and an ancient Buddhist Llama temple. It was a good trip and I'm glad I got to visit Mongolia - it was surprisingly different to China in many ways. But so very cold up there compared to what I'm used to.

The journey back to Changsha was pretty grueling. Booking train tickets in China is a total nightmare and the only ticket I could get back from Beijing to Changsha was a hard seat on a 21 hour train... it was an emotional and bizarre experience. Much of it was spent is a delusional, groggy state of semi-consciousness as you could never get comfortable enough to actually sleep.You couldn't really move or walk about either as the aisles and areas between carriages were packed with people who had standing tickets. Totally packed. But I'm back now and it's been really nice to be back in Changsha actually... feels like home.