Forbidden Kung Fu

In Beijing I joined up with a small group tour.  The tour lasted 3 weeks and took us from Beijing to St. Petersburg.  There were 14 other people on the tour, plus the tour leader.  It was a really fun group and I had a great time.  There were lot of well-travelled people on the tour and a few had been to a lot more countries than I have.

Beijing is an interesting city to visit.  There is a lot to see and do.  The pollution in Beijing is really bad,  though.  There was a lot of smog around.

Temple of Heaven

 

Forbidden City

 

The weather was bad when we went to the Great Wall, so we couldn’t see that much of it.

 

I also went to a tourist kung fu acrobatics show.  That was fun to watch.

Chinese Trivia of the Day: The Great Wall is simply called the long wall in Chinese.

Have fun,

Aidan.

Originally published at Aidan Doyle. You can comment here or there.

Mongolia

We took the train from Beijing to the Mongolian border. The trains in Mongolia use a different rail gauge from China, so at the border they take the train into a workshop (and with everyone aboard) jack the carriage up and change the undercarriage and wheels.

We stayed for a couple of days in Ulan Baator and also stayed for a night at a ger (traditional Mongolian tent) camp. The camp was in a really beautiful location and the gers are tourist ones and very comfortable. I was expecting to see lots of desert in Mongolia, but the camp site was in a location that could have been in a European Alpine area.

We also got to see a traditional Mongolian wrestling competition that was being held out in the countryside.

We visited a memorial to Soviet soldiers who died during the war.

We also ran across a Mongolian wedding party.

Ulan Baator has some really nice Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.

And surprisingly Ulan Baator is also home to the International Intellectual Museum (they have lots of puzzles). But their standards aren’t too high because as well as me, they let George W. Bush in when he visited.

Traditional Mongolian Greeting:

Mal sureg targan tavtaiyuu

(I hope your animals are fattening up nicely).

Originally published at Aidan Doyle. You can comment here or there.