This trip was booked 3 months ago. After a long time of waiting, it's finally time for our Beijing trip! Our accommodation and meals were covered by our friend Pam, who was sent there by her employer for a bit of work.
Currency Conversion:
CNY 1.00 (Chinese Yuan Renminbi) = PHP 6.78
Our plane left Manila at 7:35 of September 15 and we arrived in Beijing International Airport at 12:05am of September 16.
Tip: Go where the bulk of people are going. There's a long line getting a cab but it's fast moving. Don;t let other cab drivers on the side fool you. Flag down rate that night was CNY 11.00 and meter was CNY 2.00. We paid CNY 100.00 upon arriving at the hotel.
Essentials:
Map of the hotel and its business card
Beijing map w/ Subway guide
A list of helpful vocabulary written in Chinese characters
We stayed at the Grand Mercure Hotel. Our friend got a free upgrade from a Deluxe Room to an Executive Room, which was at the topmost floor (10th) of the hotel and can only be accessed by the elevator upon swiping the room card.
We slept for a couple of hours and woke up at around 9am to prepare for a long day of walking around Beijing. Since Pam was at work, only my bestfriend Dianne and I toured the city together for the day. Our map didn't let us down! It was fun walking around in a bit cold weather and a clean surroundings.
nice flowers we saw along the way
happy BFFs!:)
THE EGG (National Grand Theater of China)
It was just a few blocks from the hotel. We referred to our map and we ended up passing by the inner streets that were a bit scary haha. Then we reached The Egg, however, they said it's better to go there at night because of the nice effect of its lights.
The Egg at night (a photo from Pam)
THE FORBIDDEN CITY
From The Egg, we're supposed to go to the Tian'anmen Square. But we kinda lost our way and entered the street on the left of the Monument to the People's Heroes. Then we found a garden on our right where we entered. We paid CNY 3.00 to get in. We kept on walking 'til we saw a gate full of tourists. As we entered, we saw a huge "plaza" and realized that it's the gate to the Forbidden City.
We bought tickets at CNY 60.00 each. Since it's kind of expensive, we just chose not to rent audio guides anymore at CNY 40.00. It's a gadget that tells you the story of the Forbidden City in your preferred language as you tour around. We actually tried finding a group of English tourists and free-ride on their tour guides but we didn't find any 'coz most tourists were Chinese speaking also.
at the entrance
it's just so awesome!
After an hour of walking around, we finally reached the exit. We rode a bus headed to Dongzhimen and we went down somewhere along the way to have some authentic Chinese late lunch. We were so delighted that we got really good service. There were a lot of choices from the menu! Thank God for the photos of the food haha. They also served food fast. And the best part was, we only paid CNY 59.00 for everything we had -- roast duck, soup, fried rice, soda!:)
After lunch, we walked going nowhere 'til we found the Oriental Plaza, which I will discuss on my next blog entry. So after there, we tried going to the subway. We're supposed to go back to the hotel and go down at Xidan but we accidentally went down at Tian'amen haha!
TIAN'ANMEN SQUARE (Gate of the Heavenly Peace)
So there, we're surprised to see the Mao Zedong Mausoleum, which actually led us to the main entrance of the Forbidden City. It took us a long walk to have such discoveries haha.
Then we walked going to Xidan station where we road the train to Xuanwumen, which was just a few meters away from our hotel. It has been such an awesome day of experiencing ancient Chinese culture. We may be tired from walking, but we're happy on how our day turned out.:)
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