Beijing

Hello all! It has been an exhausting, tiring but insanely fulfilling 3 days in Beijing. It has been nothing short of eye-opening, inspiring and amazing. We saw both the ancient aspects as well as the vibrant culture and lifestyle of Beijing. We visited the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square , Salintun Square and more. The amazing part was that i’ve only ever seen these places on the web via photos. The fact that i was there, in the moment was stunning. So the trip started with a lot of build-up, anticipation and strangely, a whole lot of nervousness. No idea why but every night when i slept, it hit me that i was gonna be in a foreign country for the next 4 months. Oh wells. Probably because i had never done anything close to something of this magnitude. First time travelling for exposure with friends. First time travelling for so long. First time gonna be travelling alone (for a certain portion). Flying was annoying because well we wanted to get to the trip not the movement part. The hour-long delay did not help but after everything we managed to get to the hostel (the load i was carrying was annoying). The hostel we managed to get was honestly way way beyond what we expected (Email me if you want the location) . A splendid room, plenty of charging ports, clean toilets, okay-ish wifi, as well as a nice restaurant/bar were all aspects we loved.

The first day schedule was Forbidden City to Tiananmen Square to roaming around the Wanfuding Shopping district. Forbidden city was really amazing. The queue was scary long but we managed to brave through it. The architecture, the layout and the sheer size of the thing. The fact that it was literally meant for royalty in the past is just obscene HAHA. So so much space for the royalty. Tiananmen Square was a bit less majestic (in my humble view). Not too much to comment on it other than the gigantic picture of Mao lived up to it’s size. The trip to Wanfuding was pretty fun especially with the part where we found the street food. Pork sausages, corn, donkey sandwiches, Chinese donuts we tried them all. Highlights was honestly the pork sausages and the corn was NASTY. We did try some dumplings and black bean noodles but the service people at the store we tried were pretty pushy and obnoxious so that really put us of from the meal. It was a pretty exhausting day as we had to travel a lot and with the exhaustion of the flight. The first experience of Beijing metro was not too great. The speed and efficiency was really impressive, but the massive crowds and lack of people giving way was a real disapointing factor., The lack of respect for the city that some of the locals give was a real let down for me. The littering, spitting and in some instances, urinating in public places were some the unsightly things we saw. The fascination of the locals with the two dark-skinned people in our group (Me and Sid) was quite stunning. Many people stared, ask questions, took photos with us and one even commented that we had really pretty eyes (i ain’t complaining).It is quite a culture shock from Singapore but quite interesting.

Day 2 was pretty simple. THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. We visited the Mutianyu section of the wall for the more authentic feel of the wall. Despite the crazy exhaustion we had from the previous night , we all woke up at around 545AM and left the hotel at around 630AM. The bus ride we took was around 1.5 Hours and we had to take a separate ride after that and get on a connecting shuttle bus to the base of the wall. The uncle that offered us a ride at a very reasonable price was one of the nicest locals we met throughout the stay in Beijing. Was so kind to give us tips and show us around as well as bring us in to help us buy the tickets. He was around to bring us back as well. So we took a cable car up (chair lift and toboggan was closed URGH ). The wall was indescribable. Magnificent and majestic. No photo i ever saw online was sufficient replacement for witnessing it in person. It was so high up and so stunning.  The walk up was so, so SOOO exhausting. We had to rest for around 30 minutes once we had reached the top due to the difficulty of the climb. The pictures will show it all. In the evening we had a mini-scare as we were given the wrong address to collect our tickets to Ulannbaatar and luckily we only had to endure a 45 minute detour to another place to obtain our tickets. We were given a small panda keychain in compensation (we all wear it on our day bags HAHA). The night at Sanlitun was pretty much like Taiwan as we wandered around eating street food, chilling and taking in the culture.

After a tough two days we decided to sleep in on Day 3. After only waking up at around 930AM, we left for our famous Peking Duck meal at around 11AM. We managed to get in before the crowd. The Hostel’s recommendation was spot on as we managed to get some fried rice, peking duck and pork knuckle meal of thee price of one peking duck at another more pricey place. As it was my first time having such a meal, i was  excited and it did live up to the hype. The skin was tasty and the meat was delicious. (DM me if you want the address!) After which we spent a couple of hours at Temple of Heaven, which was decent. Nothing on the Forbidden City but a nice place nonetheless. The really cool part was that there were loads of retirees there playing Chinese chess and i managed to play against one of them. I was beaten soundly but nonetheless it was fun playing against on of the locals. After that we went to a nearby flea market in the building. Managed to get a fake Super-Dry shirt for a cheap price but some go the instances that occured there were so outrageous it was funny. First a lady offered us 580 Yuan (110+ SGD ) for a FAKE Under Armour T-Shirt. My friend (Sheng Yang) was so outraged he offered 30 Yuan and left, while i was laughing by the side at the shopkeeper’s brazen attempt to con us. Another lady tried to con David (also a buddy on our trip). She took a shirt of larger size than he requested (Size L) and pasted the Size M that he wanted on shirt’s size L label. Luckily me and Siddarth spotted it and we immediately left the place. I really pity the inexperienced shoppers unlucky enough to be conned by such people. The day ended with the 4 of us in the hostel restaurant/bar eating, playing cards and simply having a good time. Gonna be headed to Ulaanbaatar tomorrow for the next leg in our epic journey. Stay Tuned 🙂