Traveling to Beijing

(Hi, this is Mya. The pancakes here are amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

After 7 days in Dandong we headed off for our adventure in Beijing. We got up early to met Leif and Korima in the Korean district. The 8 of us boarded taxi's and headed off to the bus station. With my notebook in hand I carefully jotted down every important piece of information. I started writing notes in my notebook from the moment we got to China ~ this notebook is quickly becoming a very cool reference book for the Banek's, complete with names of highly recommended restaurants (with their names written in English, Pinyin, and the Chinese characters), attractions, phrases, bus tickets, and more. We bought our bus tickets through one of the employees at the school that is bilingual and is our go-to person for helping us navigate our way through this brand new country of ours.

We boarded a huge Greyhound style bus and spent the next 3.5 hours really enjoying our ride. The bus was very spacious and was air conditioned. The only negative was that they showed a horribly graphic movie on the screen for all to watch and streamed the sound through all the speakers. We put headphones on all the mini-Banek's in an attempt to distract them from what was on the screen. After arriving in Shenyang we walked about three blocks to the HUGE train station in Shenyang.

Bus station in Shenyang

The scale of these cities is beyond anything we Americans can comprehend.

Train station in Shenyang 

For example, they call Dandong a very small rural town with a population that is approaching 1 million people. Shenyang has roughly 8.5 million people; it's actually overwhelming to see so many people everywhere. It causes me to wonder, how are there still so many people with the one child regulation that was in place for so many years?

The most difficult part of the trip was buying tickets to Beijing. If Korima hadn't had been there we would not have been able to get tickets. Apparently, the woman at the ticket counter was explaining that there were no more "seated" seats left but only standing seats were available. Here you can still buy tickets on a "full" train....who knew? We were able to board the train and find a spot where all 8 of us could huddle together. The 5 hour train ride was not so bad because we had enough room to alternate between standing and sitting on our suitcases, the AC was on and working, and we had entertainment provided by a drunk police man who was misbehaving on a pretty grand scale. He filled two 1.5L bottles full of beer and during the duration of the train ride he played his hand held radio at full blast, constantly spit on the floor, went into the boy's bathroom and smoked, and broke his phone by slamming it down on the floor. Several times the train police came over to talk with him about his behavior, his response was to hand them each 100rmb in an attempt to pay them off (they didn't take the money but rather scolded him for misbehaving in front of Westerners). Each time they came over they video taped their conversation with him.

Train officer video taping the drunken man

He finally fell asleep around hour 4.

We arrived in Beijing around 6:30pm local time and boy was it beautiful! Beijing at dusk is amazing. We arrived to blue sky, lush trees, and music in the street. We walked to the Sanlitun Youth Hostel, an eclectic, international pearl of a place. We immediately fell in love and knew that we were going to love Beijing. We booked a 6-bed dorm room complete with three bunk beds, 6 lockers, and one desk. Communal showers and restrooms completed the package. So far, we've met people from Sweden, Scotland, Columbia, Denmark, and Japan.

 Next post: The Forbidden City.