Tai An

China

August 2006
2 days

Okay, well the train ride here was eventful, to say the least. Without going into too much detail, let's just say that what we thought was going to be a three to four hour journey ended up being seven hours, to get in at 3am, gah. The train was packed, as per the usual on Chinese trains, but we managed to find seats (although I was positioned next to a constantly yawning woman with killer breath, urgh). All was going reasonably smoothly, that was until a fight between a man and a woman broke out in the carriage. An actual physical (and verbal) fight - arms were flailing and blood was even drawn. Naturally all the Chinese people, being the inquisitive souls that they are, were craning their heads to see but not actually doing a thing to stop it; until the train police had to come and break it up. When we asked the Chinese English-speaking person next to us what was going on, he simply said, it happens a lot, too many people in China. How astute. A few minutes later, a man walked down the carriage with blood all over his shirt. He chose that moment to spit on the floor, only it missed the floor and landed on my arm. I was not amused.

Not so long later, I heard a random bang. Looking around it was the man next to me across the aisle. He had a very pissed-off look to him and had just banged his fist on the table. This went on sporadically for a while until the man opposite accidently kicked him when changing positions. All of a sudden Mr Angry was shouting and rasing his arms ready to hit. I was a wee bit concerned as this was happening almost right next to me, and I had nowhere to move to. More shouting and flailing went on, until Mr Angry's brother grabbed him and made him calm down. The friend of the kicker disappeared for a while and then came back with the good old trusty train police. Quite useful they are. Mr Angry got dragged away and rumours circulated the carriage that he had mental problems. That explained it I guess. But we made it to Tai An in one piece, albeit a bit tired, and managed to find (or rather be taken to by a wayward taxi driver) a hotel, and got a room. It wasn't until the next morning that we realised we were the other side of town to where we had actully asked to go. It seems you can't trust anyone.

Anyways, Tai An is rather a pleasant small city, with lots of greenery. We chose to go there to climb the mountain, Tai Shan, which has 6600 steps to the summit. Gah, I was not relishing that. After a nice stroll and wander on Sunday, Monday was the day for the climb. It was really rather fun to start with, the bazillion steps were not too much of an issue, and there was plenty of distarctions such as temples and monks and stuff on the way up. It was only around the 3000th step that I started to lose the will to move a bit, what with the steps getting steeper and steeper. I'm not used to hills, what with having lived too many years in Suffolk. And I dont like going up them. So I was quite glad for the cable car. Now this was a wicked ride. As the Mooman decided to be a bit of a trooper and solder on, I had the cablecar to myself. I went up and up and through extremely thick clouds where I couldn't see a thing, not even the wires for the car (this was only slightly unnerving, really). At the top, the mountains were covered in mist, and I couldnt see much really. I plodded around waiting for Mr Sweaty, and then we made a further climb to the summit. There it was rather quite marvellous. The mist was coming and going and there were more temples, and it looked quite spectacular. Worth the climb (and yes even though I cheated, that was only part of the way; I must have climbed 4000+ steps).

Going down was waaaay easier (duh), and we got a minibus halfway down. In it were a group of students with extremely good English. They befriended us, took us out to dinner (and paid...quite a lavish meal at that) and expected nothing in return. Really. It was all rather fun. I liked Tai An. And that night, I slept like a baby.

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