Beijing Quick Getaway

We took the domestic flight from Shanghai to Beijing with Air China. The airline was decent, however the people we encountered in the plane were much more interesting than the airline’s entertainment system. We love China and everything about it (yes, even the way the people behave). I, however don’t like their attitude of ‘conning’ people as much as they can. I’m not saying everyone in china loves to con but there sure was a lot of them. So to continue about the plane experience, we were 10 minutes away from landing, one middle-aged man stood up, he spoke in Mandarin with full of excitement asking his entire family who was travelling with him to have a look at the window near the toilet. So to our surprise there was a commotion as he was travelling with 3 other people, They ignored the “wear your seatbelts” announcement and stood up to join the man to see the view outside. The air stewardess were frantically asking all of them to sit down but the man and his family laughed at the stewardess warnings. I understand very basic chinese but i don’t understand what was so funny but nonetheless they were amusing to watch. To cut the story short, in the end they managed to sit down in time 3 minutes before the plane landed on the runway.

Finally the plane came to a stop, everybody stood up waiting for their turn to get off the plane, but there was a woman who said excuse me from all the way at the back squeezing thru everybody cause she just cant wait to get off the plane for some reason. The caucasian lady in front of us didn’t understand what she said but the chinese lady continually said in Mandarin very loudly to tell her to move aside because she doesn’t have any cabin bagage therefore she doesnt need to queue (the plane door was not even opened at this stage and we were seated at the back row). so she ended up waiting awkwardly in front of the caucasian lady because nobody can move anyways!

As we got off the plane we were welcomed by the thick smog and smells of burnt tires. We thought it was just the airport smell but little that we know the Pollution Index was at unhealthy and very unhealthy range. I was paranoid so i constantly check the pollution update on http://aqicn.org/. I even bought a few N95 mask from Singapore, just in case, because we heard a lot of horror stories on Beijing’s air pollution,

We stayed at Novotel hotel Beijing Xin Qiao. The hotel’s location was great because it was very near to Wang Fu Jing street and it was near to Tian An Men. We walked to wang fu jing street a couple of times it took us about 15 minutes. There is a railway station just outside of the hotel’s doorstep so it was very convenient to get around. The Beijing railway system is very similar to Singapore MRT system so it was nothing foreign to us.

We visited Wang Fu Jing street on day one and i brought my husband to see the street where they sell pretty much EVERYTHING on a stick..

We had dinner at Da Dong Peking Duck restaurant and it was heavenly delicious! there are so many peking duck restaurants to choose from and this one was the winner for us. It’s not exactly cheap to eat here (prepare to spend about $50 per person) but it’s worth every RMB. The best thing was this restaurant was near to Wang Fu Jing which meant near from our hotel so we took a cab and paid about 8 RMB.

The next day we went to Tiananmen and visited the palace by train it was only about 3 stops away from our hotel. This was my second time visiting the Forbidden City after 10 years. Again i had the same feeling as I first visited in 2004, a sense of PRIDE to be of a Chinese descendant, i would even imitate the Beijing accent and curl the “Rs” eventho I can only say the very basic things like “how much is this”, “give me cheaper price” etc..Oh did i mention the sea of people we have to share our space with? forget personal space, it doesnt apply in China 🙂 Most of the tourists here were local chinese tourists who came from different parts of China, we took the audio sets so it was all explained in English and we were able to roam about the palace at our own pace. We spent a good 3-3.5 hours walking and imagining what life was like back in those days. We didn’t manage to get in to the MAO mausoleum because the entry queue was 2 hours and the queue seems endless so we didn’t bother. (the queue to the mausoleum).

Beijing is NOT complete without a visit to THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. We went to the Mu Tian Yu part of the wall and took the day tour offered by our hotel. We spent about $300 for the 2 of us inclusive of ‘village lunch’ and visited TWO souvenir shops. The shop stops were jade museum and a tea shop. It was a complete waste of time as usual but we just had to endure it as it was part of the package, we did buy some tea from the tea place and learnt afterwards that it was really really too expensive. Again at the great wall, I sensed the “i’m-proud-my-ancestors-were-from-china” “but-thank-God-I-wasn’t-born-there” who were able to build such magnificent structure.

We were back in our hotel in time for dinner so we head straight to HAI DI LAO steamboat restaurant. The food were amazing, the service were amazing, they even gave us plastic cover for our mobile phones and hair tie for my hair. The waiters and waitresses were smiling ear to ear when they greet us and take our orders, We were too ambitious when we ordered the food and didn’t regret one bit.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to visit the SUMMER PALACE so  we have an excuse to visit Beijing again and Xi an too.

I dragged my husband to go shopping, real chinese shopping experience of course not those department stores or branded shops. So we were lost and stumbled upon a wholesale market called Hong Qiao Pearl Market. I really have no idea how we ended up there, we got off some random railway stop and i tried to navigate thru the google maps on my phone and when we were about to give up, we saw this place and decided to stop by and i was one very happy girl! Got a trenchcoat, endless silk scarves, shoes, nail polishes, and .. more shoes.. 😀

Writing this blog makes me want to book an airticket back to China…

Blessings ,

Pris