It's been a month since I got back from Beijing, a sisterhood travel. I believe the whole trip left so many rooms for improvements. Travelling to Beijing with 100% language challenge, approximately 2x cheaper in money exchange Yuan to MYR, the whole trip deserve 3.5 stars of 5.
6 hours in the airplane should have not an issue. But travelling with AirAsia, with its trademark "everyone can fly", 6 hour is definitely like a day in a wet market. HOWEVER, because I was boarded at 6pm, with a few gadgets in hand, and my favorite U-neck pillow, the flight was rather okay.
Our whole idea of being backpackers was being independent. We were 40% walking, 60% train jumping. We traveled from dawn to dusk (okay I'm may be exaggerating) , we went to all places we wanted to, and got ourselves lost many,many times, checked out every Moslim 'canting' we happened to be at, scared Chinese with our direction quests, that part of being a tourist was fun.
Like in the Australia, USA and so many other developed countries, China really comes with the convenience of having Subway. So basically, the subway rolls through the whole Beijing land. 2Yuan per entry = MYR1. One thing that made us sooo confident that we'd be in our hotel by Isya' was that the subway stations are everywhere. There's no such thing you'll get lost, because in whichever direction you go, there will definitely be subway station and public toilet.
Oh, Public toilet. I didn't know that Chinese has got so many water in the bladder. Probably may not because of the bladder problem, probably because China tries to accommodate as many public facilities as possible for its people. BUT, you can't expect to have a nice, comfortable, rosy smell of toilet when it has 'PUBLIC' signage.
Unlike Moslims, we use water to clean what not, they don't. And they always have almost every single living creature on earth as snacks. If you're thinking of the most concentrated ammonium you've ever smelt, try to time it by 10. But some say, it's healthy. Well they look healthy.
We were all the time referring to a small guide book that has even smaller Beijing map in it. Fortunately, my sister's (in the picture) sense of navigation is great. Mine is real bad, I really cannot read maps.
We started with some famous places - tourist attraction.
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| National Center for The Performing Arts |
It is a hemisphere building, surrounded by a water pool. The building is a few stairs high, if you go to the low ground level, basically you are below the pool. The entrance fee = 30Yuan / MYR15 per head.
Like Istana Budaya, this is a place similar to it. On the upper stairs you'll see souvenir shops selling masks, jades, keychains, some arty things and what not.
Bored, we walked out and ran errand in the nearest hutong. One hutong to another, to the next hutong and we found the first Halal canting.
In my opinion, whenever we saw this barbeque-like thing, it must be a Moslim restaurant. Until there was one restaurant proved me wrong. But this canting which I forgotten to take the name, serves delicious chinese food. We oedered a pizza-ish without the stuffing and something like fried minced meat. Oh just delicious. We went this place twice, the second visit we ordered a table full of water dropping food.
Stuffed..... we walked along the hutong. Got lost. Kept walking. The weather at that time was really relaxing as if we were blessed for being there.
We found so many luxurious import cars. One caught our eyes : Brabus. Siti Nurhaliza, you can cry now. Chinese, they simply park their luxury car on the street as if no one would scratch or rob it.
There was another car, Rolls Royce. That was next to awesome.
The next days we went to a few other places like i-dont-remember-what-its-name-market, The Great Wall, The Ming Tomb, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the that-famous-mosque-i-don't-remember.
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| The I-Don't-Remember-Its-Name Market |
This place sells every-thing! From all kind of garments to footwear to belt, all sort of bags, electronic devices etc. Just remember try to bargain ridiculously hard. Once they have you inside of their stores, you won't be able to walk off empty handed. They are more than a pusher. That was what we experienced since we both female and we are petite in size. Bargain starts with 10% of the original prices.
There was one time when my sister and I shocked for overheard a vendor yelled at a Caucasian female tourist because she insisted a very low price. The vendor yelled "You Stupid!". Ignore them.
We went to another market, The Silk Market. Bought dozens of 'I Love Beijing' t-shirts and a few meters of silk. The quality so far, isn't as bad as I was told. But that come with price.
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| The Ming Tomb |
I happened not bump into any tombs here. Irony.
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| Bumped into my brother there. He was attached to Beijing for a few days. |
The Temple of Heaven. Nice place. Spent 2 hours here, it was a large area.
Night walks. Everything seemed heavy at night, after a day walking. We didn't bring along the camera at night. Here are a few snaps on our first night there.
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| Wangfujing Street |
We went to one night market in the Wanhfujing Street. EXOTIC!
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| This man sells alive scorpions and sea horses |
Mosque.
We had to 2 different mosques during our 7-day trip there. This is one of them. The I-Don't-Remember-What-Its name mosque is divided into a few small areas. They separate the gentlemen and ladies area like miles away from each other. ( Exaggeration). The warden was really nice to us, and really took serious of hygiene. Something rarely happen in the China.
Tips to remember ;
- Chinese loooooooooves to spit every-where, all the time.
- For some tourist points like Silk Market, they are used to Malay tourists. Don't get mesmerized by their ability to speak a little Malay. They'll get you fooled. And they will use some good English words to woe you such as; pretty, beautiful. But that are the only words they know.
- Bargain. LOWEST AS POSSIBLE.
- If you ever wanna use public transport, the best transport is subway. During peak hour 8am, 6pm-8pm, you will definitely experience this view ::
- You'll be offered to hop on electrical trishaws. Check the price. The not smart me immediately hopped once being offered. Price I had to pay 300Yuan = RM150, only to stroll on it for about 3 minutes.
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