madteckhead’s blog

woah! well we’ve got an excuse for our slackness I promise!!!! China’s internet has been atrocious! but I’m happy to report that we’re having a fun time in Beijing, nathan is well on the way to having this Russian visa, and we’re on track to arrive in Germany at the beginning of march! oh there’s a long way to go but I definitely feel the hump passing us by. we’ve been laying low in Beijing. I got a 24hr vomiting bug the first day which is never a good start. we hit the techy markets and Nathan got his long awaited new phone-and-a-half (I’ll let him regail you with stories of it’s glory later) and we found a great book shop and stocked up for the mammoth train rides ahead (oh yeah and tian’men square and mao’s mausoleum… we’ll be off to the wall and the forbiden city in good time too).
well with nathan’s fandangled new phone we should be able to up date you in more detail soon. but for now this little update with have to suffice. we love the comments so keep them coming. and check out our friend’s tim and jodi who also have their trip on this site cause we’ll be meeting up with them in St Petersburg!
much love
Ellie

In the end we had to come almost all the way back to Chengdu in order to catch the train north again. The bus ride was an adventure in itself. We just made it to the bus station in time and felt ourselves quite lucky to get seats together but and hour or so into the trip we hear a bang and theres glass raining down on us. The window, brittle from the extreem cold had just exploded in on us! I was the first to get a cut and then kinda lost it freaking out about the whole situation. Nathan managed to get us both off the bus and shook most of the glass off our clothes and belongings. Our window was the o nly one affected and the driver seemed to be ancitous to keep going so we were hurried back on the the bus where they had made a vague attempt to clear our seat of glass. This was when nathan got his first cut and let it be known that he was not very impressed with being hurried back on the bus. We finally maded a stop where the driver and his lackys “fixed” the window with some cardboard and we swaped seats. We were not very impressed and proceeded to take it out on anyone who attempted to light up a cigarette for the rest of the trip. Appart from that the trip was farly uneventful. We managed to procure tickets for the train to Xian that night and so ended another long day of travel.

ellie

We headed for JiuZhaiGou, desperately in need of mother natures warming embrace. We risked the fact that the National park was a 10 hour trip through high mountain ranges, and that we might have to take the same road back before continuing north (effectively a +1000km detour trip), and lastly we were not even sure the park would be open as it is off season here, and many of the mineral lakes freeze over. Our gamble paid off and we found ourselves in a valley between high snow covered mountains peaks. Where the valley forks off into two is the entrance to the national park, this was about 3km from our hotel. Which we wouldn’t have found without the help of our new friends David & Angle, who we shared our time in the park with and a delightful sample of vegetarian Chinese food on our last night. We spent two days in the park and it can only be described as winter wonderland. Many Tibetan tribes still live in the park and we were lucky enough to have traditional Tibetan tea (which they have for breakfast and is actually quite thick) in a very colorful Tibetan home. Our timing was quite fortunate as many of the hotels were closed being the off season (only 4 were open), and the park was effectively empty. The prices were also good as we got a 4 star hotel for AU$28!!! Our time in JiuZhaiGou wouldn’t have been the same without the amazing company that we found, thanks David & Angel for making our stay a pleasure we hope you come visit Australia some time.Nathan