Friends visit Part 4 (Beijing, 北京), updated...

this is the last part of the friend visit blog.

before this beijing trip, we were hesitating if we want to visit. as well as the transport to beijing. finally we decided to take a night train to beijing for a 2 days 1 night. my family stayed for another night as we can afford the time while my friend required to head back to singapore.


when we reached beijing the next morning, we bought our return tickets just outside the train station. headed to the taxi queue. many private car drivers were touting to get us to use their transport but we declined as i know that the taxi cost to the hotel were only 15rmb max instead of 100rmb that those sharks were asking for. i should talk more about the behaviours of beijing people as i goes. taxi queue was long but the taxi comes once after another, so it was moving at a pretty decent speed. in 15mins time, we boarded a taxi. showed the taxi driver the address, he does not know how to go... i was very surprised. i called the hotel and handed the phone to the driver so that he can communicated to the hotel staff. i noticed that the taxi driver were rather rude to the hotel staff over the phone. my wife was in another taxi with two other friends and the same happened. beijing maybe a very commercial city but the civilization is not as good as suzhou.

a must visit in beijing, the Tienanmen (天安门) and the forbidden city right behind the mao zhe dong picture.

within the forbidden city. clockwise, starting from top right. a) keith posting with his china flag. b) this was where the emperor had his morning session with all his governors. c) pretty busy on a weekday. d) the big stone carving measuring 16.75m in length, 3.07m in width and 1.7m thickness and a weight of 200 tons.

the last emperor puyi love his bicycle given by johnson. for his convenience, he ordered that the door sill of various door be saw off. see green arrows in the picture.

in the evening, after visiting the grand tiananmen, the great forbidden city and the busy wangfujing, we took a train, transfering from one line to another line, to the 2008 olympic park located in the northern part of the city.

the birdnest. very big in tv, but as i saw it, it is not that big that i expected. anyway, still looks grand and colorful. we did not purchase any entrance ticket as it was late and probably nothing much inside.

the cube, where the water sports were held.

the next day, 20th March, we visited ming tomb as well as the great wall. it was adviced that we should not take pictures during the visit as it is not good to take pictures of the dead.

we headed to badaling great wall (八达岭) after lunch. didn't expect it to be that crowded when we reached there. probably because it was friday. the greatwall trip was excellent. we took a slide up the greatwall and walk for another 1.5hrs before reaching the top of that session. i was proud of my boy who made it to the top of the session. credit had to be given to my friends who helped a lot. allowing me to have time for photo taking... ok, pictures follows...

look at the crowd queing for the slide up the greatwall. 人山人海. we went through at least 20 zig-zag to reach the slide. it was rather well managed because the queue only allow single person width. no cutting queue was allowed.

a smiling ah ma enjoying the queue. she is probably at least 80 but she looks very healthy. many chinese are very healthy because of the food and the way of life is. walk, walk and more walking...

this was the slide that i was talking about. the ticket is 60rmb for a return trip.


GREAT wall, GREAT friends, GREAT funs.

that was it for the friends visit. we did have some great funs, walking street, tai hu, jinji hu, tong li, humble garden, beijing, tiananmen, forbidden city, ming tombs, great wall and not forgetting the pubs.

friends, if you have anything to add, please comments.