Oh, It's Love…

May 12 – 16

Time to hit up some more cities after being in HK for a couple of days. I decided that joining a travel agency would be best for going to Beijing. I was much too lazy to explore myself. The combination of simplified Chinese and Beijing-accent Mandarin discouraged me to travel without a guide. Travel agency it is! I ended up going with Hong Thai (康泰旅行社). Their dates worked for me and the prices were very reasonable.

On the day of the trip, we had to meet at the airport at 6:30am for the 8am flight. SO early. I definitely was not used to waking up this early during a vacation. However, getting to the airport early means that we had plenty of time to walk around and shop. A must-go place at the HK airport is the Disney store. The store sells some of the special items that they have at the HK Disneyland. I picked up this adorable Stitch koala-bear looking plush. He’s the best travel buddy and I brought him everywhere with me.

//– WARNING: this post is image heavy –//

I landed at the Beijing Capital International Airport shortly after noon. This airport is gorgeous and absolutely epic. Loved the wooden ceiling decor.

The first place that we visited was the National Centre for the Performing Arts. We were given the opportunity to explore the centre ourselves. They had an exhibition of violin/cellos at the time. They even had a live demo on how to make a violin! We didn’t stay long enough to watch it from beginning to start. I suspect that it’d take several hours to make anyways.

Since my travel tour went on a weekday, the tour guide decided that it’d be best to first see the Tiananmen Square. The place was incredibly empty. We walked around the square and it had a very 到此一遊 feel. I didn’t mind the brief visit either. Having guards everywhere made the visit very tense.

We stopped of for a quick snack at Wangfujing (王井府大街). It’s this super long shopping street. On one side, there are luxury stores and malls. On the other side, there are snack streets and street food stands. To be honest, Beijing street food doesn’t compare to the Taipei street food. I might be biased though, since a lot of the Beijing street food are meat (grilled lamb, grilled beef, buns with meat).

The next day started with a really early morning. It was so early, I don’t even remember where I went! =] All I remembered was what happened after lunch. I sneaked out of lunch early in order to stop by the 7-11. I was SO glad that I did because I found this awesome treasure. Leehom on a bag of Lays! That ladle looks so photoshopped. Angela Zhang was also on the competing flavour. Leehom’s flavour was Dumb & Spicy Hot Pot and Angela’s was some spicy seafood fish flavour. The flavours weren’t that bad. =] Should’ve bought more, but I didn’t want to be hot air (熱氣).

After the super exciting adventures with the Leehom chips, my tour visited the Forbidden City (故宮) and Summer Palace(頤和園). Let me tell you, that day was a whole lotta walking. We walked everywhere. I think we walked for more than 5 hours for the entire day. The Forbidden City was absolutely spectacular. Everything was so epic. Same with the Summer Palace. Our Beijing tour guide was very informative (sometimes I felt like I was in Chinese history class). He explained a lot of the meaning and fengshui related stories about the sites.

BTW, in the picture above of the Forbidden City, the closeup of the person in green was our HK tourguide, Steve! Funny thing is that he wears these brightly coloured shirts from Calvin Klein that says Calvin right across his chest. I must’ve miscalled him Calvin several times.

On the third day, we finally got to climb the Great Wall of China (長城)! epicccccc! The tour guides dropped us off at juyongguan (居庸關). It’s one of the closer passes to Beijing city.

Whoo! Another checkmark off my list of to-do-in-life. =]

The fourth day of my Beijing trip started at some chinese medicine clinic. Alright, it’s the most famous one in Beijing – Tong Ren Tang (同仁堂). I wasn’t very interested though. After the medical stop, we headed over to the Temple of Heaven (天壇) – where the emperor prayed to Heaven for good harvest. Man, that place was packed.

After the temple, we checked out this kungfu show. Awesome thing was the theatre was located on Xingfu Dajie, which roughly translates to Happiness Street. I’m guessing it’s a tourist hotspot because the show was narrated in English. Nonetheless, the kungfu shown was incredible. There was also some aerial ballet too. Gorgeous!

Last day! The tour visited the Beijing Olympic venues. We were allowed into the Bird’s Nest. The stadium is huge! When we visited, Adili Wuxor walking on tight rope, trying to break a world record. He was just chilling out and just walking around really high up there. There was also no safety net afterneath to catch him if he ever falls. Craziness! Within the Olympic Park, we also saw the Water Cube. We weren’t allowed in because they were doing renovations. They’re turning it into a water park!

Anyways, notice that I rarely mentioned anything about food during this trip. To be honest, the food was decent. Since I ordered to have things made vegetarian for me, most of the dishes were quite bland and were honestly just plain veggies. To make up for the mediocreness, the dishes were usually way too large for one person to eat. Guess I shouldn’t have expected amazing food. But at least I appreciated Hong Thai and my tour guide Steve to make sure there’s something I can eat.

Beijing, all in all, was a lot of fun. Seeing all the amazing architecture of Beijing’s past was beyond amazing. As for the Great Wall of China, it really matched up to its motto – One who fails to reach the Great Wall is not a hero. Guess I’m a hero now. =]