Beijing: July 30th - August 2nd
note - I appologize for the perhaps erratic writing at times... it was a lot to process, and I hope this post makes some sense...
DAY 1
8am
Darren (coworker) and I took a 2,900 Won (about 3 bucks) taxi to Building 63, and after about 15 minutes, boarded the airport shuttle which cost 13,000Won (about 14 bucks or so). The ride took, about 40 minutes or so. Got to the airport around 7:15am, checked our bags, and I changed my Won (300,000 - about 300 bucks) to the Chinese Currency which turned out to be 2,200 and some change while Darren got his reentry Visa (which I already had taken care of).
Then, I had a immunity booster from Smoothie King, since I feel like I'm catching a cold, while Darren got his money exchanged. Our flight was delayed about an hour to an hour and a half, so we left around 11:20, instead of 9:40am.
We arrived in Beijing around 12:30pm. Luckily, it turned out that the only 3 other guys from the tour group were on our same flight, so we all left at the same time. As we waited for our carryon luggage, I went to the bathroom to pee and after I washed my hands, the friendly bathroom cleaning guy offered me some paper to dry my hands, but that suddenly turned ackward when, after I said "Xie xie" (thanks), he raised his hand with a coin in it. I was like mmmm.. I don't have any change... So yeah, that was weird.
Our tour leader, who goes by the English name of Wendy, took us to the Temple of the Heavens, which was really nice, but way way *way* too crowded. There were a few very many beautiful wooden temples. I bought some very touristy playing cards which were very cheap, and have some cool Chinese pictures on them :p We were done about 3:10pm
Getting giddy, waiting at the airport:
A guy with some weird brandings on his back at the entrance to the temple of Heaven: (?)
A view of the "long corridor" and the Temple in the background:
Some random guy singing Beijing style Opera, very cool:
A closeup, with some women that were fanning him, people loved him:
Yours trully, with one of the temples behind me:
The Temple of Heaven:
Just to give you an idea of what was around at every second:
Then, we went to a really nice Tea House, where we tried lots of different types of teas, and then bought our favorite, which for me is Oolong Tea, which I'm probably misspelling.
Here's a cool random statue just outside of the tea house:
Afterwards, we went to the Chinese Acrobats Show, which was quite amazing. That was from 5:15pm to 6:15pm, and they did some pretty crazy stunts. Really good stuff. Pictures (and video?) to come soon.
A view of the theatre from the outside (we'd also see the Opera here a few nights later):
A cool balancing act :
Another cool balancing act, where there were two guys to each lion, and just some cool stunts:
Now it's 9:50pm and we're at our *very* nice 4-star Best Western Hotel. The only thing that kinds super sucks is the fact that the pool and gym are apparently out of order?? Psh I say!
Oh well, maybe next time.
DAY 2
On the second day we went to a Jade Factory on our way to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. It had been raining pretty hard since we had left our hotel early that morning.
Hardcore rain bike riding:
Beautiful jade eagle sculpture:
I had a great breakfast at the hotel, with bacon, eggs, and other good stuff. I was upset at having to leave so quickly from the Jade Factory, but things were overpriced there anyways, so probably for the best.
The Chang Tombs (the ones we visited), were beautiful, with huge wooden buildings, but with *way* too many tourists (A reocurring theme throughout the trip). I also bought a couple of cool posters here at a discounted price, it seemed, and a shirt.
Entering the Tombs:
An Emperor Statue:
A shot of the Emperor's silk robes:
Approaching the center building:
I really liked this shot, as we were leaving the main wooden building:
After reviewing some of these pictures, I can't help but be reminded of the immense beauty of this place. I wish I could have taken pictures that would do better justice to this place, but it's hard to do. Just the size of these buildings and the surroudings were quite breathtaking, and the drizzling rain didn't hurt the atmosphere either.
So it finally stopped raining in the afternoon, after we stopped at a tourist arts and crafts store which had ridiculously priced items.
Here's an amazingly detailed jade sculpture of some horses... I beleive this was around 30 thousand dollars:
After having lunch there, we headed towards the Great Wall.
DAY 1
8am
Darren (coworker) and I took a 2,900 Won (about 3 bucks) taxi to Building 63, and after about 15 minutes, boarded the airport shuttle which cost 13,000Won (about 14 bucks or so). The ride took, about 40 minutes or so. Got to the airport around 7:15am, checked our bags, and I changed my Won (300,000 - about 300 bucks) to the Chinese Currency which turned out to be 2,200 and some change while Darren got his reentry Visa (which I already had taken care of).
Then, I had a immunity booster from Smoothie King, since I feel like I'm catching a cold, while Darren got his money exchanged. Our flight was delayed about an hour to an hour and a half, so we left around 11:20, instead of 9:40am.
We arrived in Beijing around 12:30pm. Luckily, it turned out that the only 3 other guys from the tour group were on our same flight, so we all left at the same time. As we waited for our carryon luggage, I went to the bathroom to pee and after I washed my hands, the friendly bathroom cleaning guy offered me some paper to dry my hands, but that suddenly turned ackward when, after I said "Xie xie" (thanks), he raised his hand with a coin in it. I was like mmmm.. I don't have any change... So yeah, that was weird.
Our tour leader, who goes by the English name of Wendy, took us to the Temple of the Heavens, which was really nice, but way way *way* too crowded. There were a few very many beautiful wooden temples. I bought some very touristy playing cards which were very cheap, and have some cool Chinese pictures on them :p We were done about 3:10pm
Getting giddy, waiting at the airport:
A guy with some weird brandings on his back at the entrance to the temple of Heaven: (?)
A view of the "long corridor" and the Temple in the background:
Some random guy singing Beijing style Opera, very cool:
A closeup, with some women that were fanning him, people loved him:
Yours trully, with one of the temples behind me:
The Temple of Heaven:
Just to give you an idea of what was around at every second:
Then, we went to a really nice Tea House, where we tried lots of different types of teas, and then bought our favorite, which for me is Oolong Tea, which I'm probably misspelling.
Here's a cool random statue just outside of the tea house:
Afterwards, we went to the Chinese Acrobats Show, which was quite amazing. That was from 5:15pm to 6:15pm, and they did some pretty crazy stunts. Really good stuff. Pictures (and video?) to come soon.
A view of the theatre from the outside (we'd also see the Opera here a few nights later):
A cool balancing act :
Another cool balancing act, where there were two guys to each lion, and just some cool stunts:
Now it's 9:50pm and we're at our *very* nice 4-star Best Western Hotel. The only thing that kinds super sucks is the fact that the pool and gym are apparently out of order?? Psh I say!
Oh well, maybe next time.
DAY 2
On the second day we went to a Jade Factory on our way to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. It had been raining pretty hard since we had left our hotel early that morning.
Hardcore rain bike riding:
Beautiful jade eagle sculpture:
I had a great breakfast at the hotel, with bacon, eggs, and other good stuff. I was upset at having to leave so quickly from the Jade Factory, but things were overpriced there anyways, so probably for the best.
The Ming Tombs
So apparently there are 13 Ming (dynasty) Tombs, out of which only 3 are accesible to the public, out of which we only got to see one, which was the largest one. It was very impressive, surrounded by two mountain ranges, and with many fruit orchards all over the valley.The Chang Tombs (the ones we visited), were beautiful, with huge wooden buildings, but with *way* too many tourists (A reocurring theme throughout the trip). I also bought a couple of cool posters here at a discounted price, it seemed, and a shirt.
Entering the Tombs:
An Emperor Statue:
A shot of the Emperor's silk robes:
Approaching the center building:
I really liked this shot, as we were leaving the main wooden building:
After reviewing some of these pictures, I can't help but be reminded of the immense beauty of this place. I wish I could have taken pictures that would do better justice to this place, but it's hard to do. Just the size of these buildings and the surroudings were quite breathtaking, and the drizzling rain didn't hurt the atmosphere either.
So it finally stopped raining in the afternoon, after we stopped at a tourist arts and crafts store which had ridiculously priced items.
Here's an amazingly detailed jade sculpture of some horses... I beleive this was around 30 thousand dollars:
After having lunch there, we headed towards the Great Wall.
The Great Wall
We got to the Great Wall in the afternoon, which was great. I ran up most of it, to the top, which was quite a workout, but great fun, as I ran past some of the other hundreds of tourists. It was nice being there too, since it had rained earlier in the day, and it was nice and cool too. We also had good visibility, with not much fog around, as apparently sometimes it can get quite foggy and you can't see much.
Here's some buildings around the entrance to the great wall, with a section of the great wall seen in the background, which I would climb soon thereafter:
Another view of the buildings at the bottom:
A view up what I was about to climb:
Me peeking out one of the "windows" along the wall:
For those that don't know, the peace sign in the picture is just a VERY Korean thing to do, and I can't help but doing it all the time now haha... I haven't become a hippie:
Here's a shot of me around halfway up the crazy inclined steps of this section of the wall:
A view towards the bottom, out of one of the main guard stations:
One of the few things our guid explained; people get married at the Great Wall, and then put their locks here, as a sign of eternal companionship, which then was adopted by sisters and best friends as well:
My mom likes to see pix of me, so here we go haha. I look pretty serious in this one; also notice the steepness of the climb behind me:
Someone was nice and took this shot, with the other mountain range and section of the wall seen in the background:
Another view of the scale of the view:
Another shot of me, yikes:
Another view of the beautiful valley:
A closeup of the roof of one of the watchtowers:
Getting closer to the top:
I'm pretty sure this is a shot of the last (highest) watchtower:
And a view of what I had climbed so far:
Me and the view out of the highest watchtower:
A shot taken by a nice English family, from the roof of the watchtower, and the thick green backdrop:
And, after having been asked to have my picture taken with the two Chinese women on the bottom, I insisted to have one taken with the whole Chinese family haha:
And with some random military stuff on the way down:
DAY 3
Had a great breakfast again with lots of fruit. And today we headed to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden Palace.
A random shot along the streets of Beijing... Construction EVERYWHERE (seriously, everywhere) you looked:
And a view from my hotel room:
It was a really cool experience to visit such an important and infamous location that is Tiananmen Square (where the massacres occurred in 1989, when students were holding protests and hunger strikes, and over a million people filled the square). Only this time, it seemed there were over a million tourists, geez. Again, tourists being the reocurring theme throughout the trip.
Once inside the immense Forbiden Palace area, it was great to see all of the wooden buildings and palaces, but I was a bit disillusioned to find out that they regularly repaint the facades of the buildings, and not only that, but were completely overhauling many of the buildings for the 2008 Olympics that are to be held in Beijing. This completely threw me off, being used to Machu Pichu and other ancient historical sites in Peru. In Peru we don't really go, well... that rock seems much too old by now, let's CHANGE it for some NEW ones... that just doesn't seem right to me!
A shot of the insane crowd at Tiananmen:
At Tiananmen:
The line of (mainly Chinese) people to see Mao's mausoleum:
With a guard, in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City:
The Chinese Flag, flying in the great weather:
One of the three main gates:
And a (what I think) is a totem pole-type sculpture near the main entrance:
One of the many maaany buildings inside:
Details of the rooftops:
Buildings being renovated for the 2008 Beijing Olympics:
With a guard at Tiananmen, doesn't he just look super excited haha:
A dragon-looking lion (no lions in China):
Some beautiful rooftops:
In the palace's garden, towards the end of the walk through the city:
Some closeups of the rooftops in the garden area:
A pretty picture, I thought:
Standing in front of a rock that was taken out of some lakes in Southern China for the Emperor, which showed great wealth and power:
And since he was the emperor, he had a manmade hill made of these rocks, on top of which he had a "relaxation" room... not too shabby:
I obviously really liked it ^-^ :
After Tinananmen and the Forbidden Palace/City, we went to a "folk" restaurant for lunch, where there were some goofy dances with some goofy music. Didn't seem very authentic to me, but was entertaining to watch:
At the entrance to the summer palace:
Breathtaking view of the palace and the lake:
Striking a pose by the lake:
A view under the main building, a nice shot I thought:
And then we went to the Beijing Opera which was very unique, with their crazy looking eyes, and unique singing style:
Day 4
The last day was our free day, so I immediately took the opportunity and went to the Zoo! ^^
Unfortunately, I was running incredibly low on space on my memory cards, so I wasn't able to take as many shots as I would have liked
Here's a shot that attempts to show how beautiful the zoo was:
Some crazy looking birdies:
A beautiful white tiger:
And a panda! ^^:
Then I was off to the Lama temple, a beautiful buddhist temple.
Here's the 18-meter tall, made out of a single trunk of wood, Buddah:
Posing at the temple:
And an unobstructed view of the beautiful main building at the Temple:
And, good lord, I think that's it!!!
Hundreds of photos I had to browse through, and those are some of the best 70+ shots that I could choose for my blog... Good lord, what a fun Saturday night.
Final Thoughts:
I'm glad I did this guided tour trip because I feel I learned the pros and cons of this kind of traveling. I know it's very conveniant to have someone drive you everywhere without having to bother getting the taxi driver to know exactly where you're going, or for that matter, trying to find the bus that gets you there as well.
I also know I'd *never* do a guided tour again. I couldn't stand being rushed and told what time to get back to the van, being taken to the obviously very expensive souvenir shops so that the guide can get a cut on the items that are sold, and just not having the opportunity to go at your own pace and at the places you want to go, when you want to go to them.
So that's that!!
word!
We got to the Great Wall in the afternoon, which was great. I ran up most of it, to the top, which was quite a workout, but great fun, as I ran past some of the other hundreds of tourists. It was nice being there too, since it had rained earlier in the day, and it was nice and cool too. We also had good visibility, with not much fog around, as apparently sometimes it can get quite foggy and you can't see much.
Here's some buildings around the entrance to the great wall, with a section of the great wall seen in the background, which I would climb soon thereafter:
Another view of the buildings at the bottom:
A view up what I was about to climb:
Me peeking out one of the "windows" along the wall:
For those that don't know, the peace sign in the picture is just a VERY Korean thing to do, and I can't help but doing it all the time now haha... I haven't become a hippie:
Here's a shot of me around halfway up the crazy inclined steps of this section of the wall:
A view towards the bottom, out of one of the main guard stations:
One of the few things our guid explained; people get married at the Great Wall, and then put their locks here, as a sign of eternal companionship, which then was adopted by sisters and best friends as well:
My mom likes to see pix of me, so here we go haha. I look pretty serious in this one; also notice the steepness of the climb behind me:
Someone was nice and took this shot, with the other mountain range and section of the wall seen in the background:
Another view of the scale of the view:
Another shot of me, yikes:
Another view of the beautiful valley:
A closeup of the roof of one of the watchtowers:
Getting closer to the top:
I'm pretty sure this is a shot of the last (highest) watchtower:
And a view of what I had climbed so far:
Me and the view out of the highest watchtower:
A shot taken by a nice English family, from the roof of the watchtower, and the thick green backdrop:
And, after having been asked to have my picture taken with the two Chinese women on the bottom, I insisted to have one taken with the whole Chinese family haha:
And with some random military stuff on the way down:
DAY 3
Had a great breakfast again with lots of fruit. And today we headed to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden Palace.
A random shot along the streets of Beijing... Construction EVERYWHERE (seriously, everywhere) you looked:
And a view from my hotel room:
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden Palace
It was a really cool experience to visit such an important and infamous location that is Tiananmen Square (where the massacres occurred in 1989, when students were holding protests and hunger strikes, and over a million people filled the square). Only this time, it seemed there were over a million tourists, geez. Again, tourists being the reocurring theme throughout the trip.
Once inside the immense Forbiden Palace area, it was great to see all of the wooden buildings and palaces, but I was a bit disillusioned to find out that they regularly repaint the facades of the buildings, and not only that, but were completely overhauling many of the buildings for the 2008 Olympics that are to be held in Beijing. This completely threw me off, being used to Machu Pichu and other ancient historical sites in Peru. In Peru we don't really go, well... that rock seems much too old by now, let's CHANGE it for some NEW ones... that just doesn't seem right to me!
A shot of the insane crowd at Tiananmen:
At Tiananmen:
The line of (mainly Chinese) people to see Mao's mausoleum:
With a guard, in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City:
The Chinese Flag, flying in the great weather:
One of the three main gates:
And a (what I think) is a totem pole-type sculpture near the main entrance:
One of the many maaany buildings inside:
Details of the rooftops:
Buildings being renovated for the 2008 Beijing Olympics:
With a guard at Tiananmen, doesn't he just look super excited haha:
A dragon-looking lion (no lions in China):
Some beautiful rooftops:
In the palace's garden, towards the end of the walk through the city:
Some closeups of the rooftops in the garden area:
A pretty picture, I thought:
Standing in front of a rock that was taken out of some lakes in Southern China for the Emperor, which showed great wealth and power:
And since he was the emperor, he had a manmade hill made of these rocks, on top of which he had a "relaxation" room... not too shabby:
I obviously really liked it ^-^ :
After Tinananmen and the Forbidden Palace/City, we went to a "folk" restaurant for lunch, where there were some goofy dances with some goofy music. Didn't seem very authentic to me, but was entertaining to watch:
Summer Palace
Then we went to the Summer Palace, where the Emperor and his favorite concubines would spend the summer time, which was incredibly beautiful, with a huge lake in the middle. Hard to believe all these territories were owned by only one man.At the entrance to the summer palace:
Breathtaking view of the palace and the lake:
Striking a pose by the lake:
A view under the main building, a nice shot I thought:
And then we went to the Beijing Opera which was very unique, with their crazy looking eyes, and unique singing style:
Day 4
The last day was our free day, so I immediately took the opportunity and went to the Zoo! ^^
Unfortunately, I was running incredibly low on space on my memory cards, so I wasn't able to take as many shots as I would have liked
Here's a shot that attempts to show how beautiful the zoo was:
Some crazy looking birdies:
A beautiful white tiger:
And a panda! ^^:
Then I was off to the Lama temple, a beautiful buddhist temple.
Here's the 18-meter tall, made out of a single trunk of wood, Buddah:
Posing at the temple:
And an unobstructed view of the beautiful main building at the Temple:
And, good lord, I think that's it!!!
Hundreds of photos I had to browse through, and those are some of the best 70+ shots that I could choose for my blog... Good lord, what a fun Saturday night.
Final Thoughts:
I'm glad I did this guided tour trip because I feel I learned the pros and cons of this kind of traveling. I know it's very conveniant to have someone drive you everywhere without having to bother getting the taxi driver to know exactly where you're going, or for that matter, trying to find the bus that gets you there as well.
I also know I'd *never* do a guided tour again. I couldn't stand being rushed and told what time to get back to the van, being taken to the obviously very expensive souvenir shops so that the guide can get a cut on the items that are sold, and just not having the opportunity to go at your own pace and at the places you want to go, when you want to go to them.
So that's that!!
word!
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