Beijing Day 4/5: Jacco Tours

Well, the posts stopped on Day 4 in China due to Google censorship and my complete inability to get onto blogger. We transferred hotels almost every night once we joined the tour and to my surprise, many of the hotels didn't have free interwebs (which didn't really matter since facebook and youtube were inaccessible).  So anyways, I'll backtrack to Sunday July 7th and continue on - luckily I kept records throughout the trip and I wrote blog posts on a word doc so I won't forget too much xD.  

Sunday 
On Sunday we left our awesome hotel downtown and joined up with Jacco Tours group consisting of 37 people from Toronto, Australia and New York.  The hotel was super out of the way - although closer to the highway which is good for tour purposes.  I’ve got to say, the hotel here is super nice as well; it’s considered a resort with a little shopping plaza, five restaurants and even a barber shop.  Unfortunately the bowling alley was closed when we got here, and the gym as well as the pool was taken over by little children.  We decided to go out to a massive shopping mall in the evening before calling it a day (6am wake up call tomorrow -.-).  



Monday
So today was a crazy day.  The group started at 6am and headed down for breakfast before hopping on the bus.  Our tour guide is a very energetic woman, she definitely knows what she’s doing, and knows her history down to the tee.  Beijing traffic is crazy, fun fact: on certain days of the week, cars with a license plate that end in a certain number aren’t allowed on the road – so today it was the number 3 and 8.  To get a car in general, you need a license plate which is done by lottery in Beijing.  In Shanghai only the wealthy can afford a license plate, if I remember correctly it cost about 16 000 CA for the plate alone!  Anyways, today we headed down to Tiananmen Square followed by the forbidden city.  The two places alone took over two hours, and with the crazy crowds it was a miracle the group didn’t get totally lost!  Then we headed down to the Beijing Zoo where we saw the Pandas!  We were only there for half an hour before we jetted over to Olympic Park and saw the Bird’s Nest before once again heading off to the older parts of the city.  We had a rickshaw ride through an area called the Hutong where the houses have not been touched by development yet.  Finally the day ended with a Kung Fu show which was....interesting, it was impressive acrobatics although I can’t help thinking every single stereotype/scene in a western kung fu movie was covered in the show (which was geared towards western tourists).  I skipped out the meal parts of the day, but obviously food was consumed etc.  The food is quite good, it’s interesting trying the different dishes, plus each region has its specialty – in Beijing its Peking Duck.  And before I forget, the weather was perfect today, it was raining and overcast so it was the first day in Beijing where I didn’t sweat to death! 

Tiananmen Square

Inside the crowded Forbidden City - see that teeny little yellow flag on the right?  Yep, we had to follow that....

The pandas were so sad looking, the ones inside were even worse - I hope the Toronto Zoo has better conditions :( 

Olympic Stadium 

Houton Area

Kung - Fu show....already the outside of the theatre is pretty corny looking...

-M

Beijing Day 2/3: Temple of Heaven & Summer Palace

So unfortunately it’s really really difficult to blog from China – harder than I thought it would be.  I did my research before, but most people said they were able to access the editing portion of blogger, just not blogspot.  Turns out I can get on, but only once every 35 tries.  Anyways, I’ll do my best and just backtrack when I get home.  We spent the past two days at the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace – two places we’ll hit during the tour, just not very long (we’re hitting both along with the Great Wall within less than a day).  First off, I take back everything I said about the heat and humidity in Hong Kong, nothing compares to the heat here!  Apparently it feels like 45 degrees over here, and later in the week it’s supposed to feel like 49 degrees -.-

Beijing is quite different from Hong Kong in many ways, first off there doesn’t seem to be many “foreigners”/people who don’t speak mandarin.  Most of the people who are part of tours seem to speak the language, and although signs are translated to English, communicating is a lot more difficult.  Nevertheless, food is still awesome, cheap, and transportation is again, ridiculously cheap (less than a buck for a single ticket).  The subway system is similar to Hong Kong but MUCH more crowded, lots of shoving (which didn’t exist in Hong Kong) and we have to go through security before getting into the station.  Either way, it’s much cheaper than a taxi! 

At the Temple of Heaven we rented audio guides so we could listen to the history while we were walking along.  It was really interesting, but sweltering hot with hardly any shade in sight.  It was neat to see where/what the emperors did and as the audio guide claimed we “walk along the same path as the Emperor”.  Of course, it was absolutely crowded in the tourist spots, and things like public bathrooms are much different from what I had gotten used to in Hong Kong (it’s all about the squats in China).  We went to a restaurant with rave reviews claiming to have the best Peking Duck in Beijing, and I have to say, I can’t really disagree...it was fantastic! 

The Summer Palace was really nice, we stayed closed to the lake (man made) so we got the cool breeze off the water.  It was a very large park and we spent quite a while walking around and taking pictures.  Unfortunately (as I gathered from reading the descriptions in front of buildings), many of the original structures were completely destroyed by the anglo-french forces during the Opium Wars, so what we saw was the reconstruction or the remains, many of which were converted into tourist buildings such as restaurants.  Now we’re just getting ready for the tour which I’m sure is going to be completely hectic, I guess we’ll find out soon!    

Temple of Heaven

Peking Duck!  The chef let my mom sneak into the kitchen and take photos like a true tourist xD

View of the Summer Palace

-M

HK Day 7/Beijing Day 1: Chasing the Heat

So we're in Beijing now!  It's a little bit difficult to blog partly because of the bad internet connection as well as the numerous blocked sites in China.  I tried to download proxy servers and hotspot before I left, but they unfortunately don't seem to work since I got here.  For now, I'll just blog first, and add photos later when I have time.

Yesterday was our last day in Hong Kong, so we went back to some areas to pick up some food we liked, and buy iPod cases etc.  We visited the Hong Kong Art museum, and again, more food xD.  It was sad to leave Hong Kong where everything was very familiar, from the language to the culture.  It was nice to have everything translated to English in case my bad Chinese couldn't hold up; it was also nice to have British TV since I love the UK.  I'll definitely miss the cheap food, and the even cheaper transportation in HK, they also have free wifi everywhere throughout the city which was perfect for an internet addict like me.  I think I could see myself being comfortable in HK if it wasn't for the blasted heat and the mosquitoes which love me.   Speaking of heat, when we left Hong Kong, the weather was getting a bit cooler, turns out Beijing just got hotter today and will be unusually hot until after we leave.  Chasing the heat indeed -.-

Today we sadly left our tiny hotel and took a flight to Beijing.  The plane was delayed so we spent some time in the HK airport which was awesome.  The airport is massive, and even had a dim sum restaurant amongst the various shopping centers and duty free stores (which is pointless anyways since Hong Kong doesn't have tax on their items).  I should also mention the check in was so efficient, it was not only fast, but their technology must be better than ours in Toronto because they didn't force me to take off my shoes or belt! The flight was pretty short, but it took forever to take off and get off the plane after we landed.  Surprisingly the food was very good on the plane, but it was hard to understand what was going on since the English translations I've gotten used to doesn't exist in China xD.  We went straight to our hotel which is the largest hotel I've ever been to.  Our "room" is a two bedroom suite with a kitchen, laundry room, two full sized bathrooms and a living room & dining room.  I'll have to post some pictures later, but believe me, it's HUGE. I think our suite is larger than our old house we had a couple of years ago in Toronto! Thankfully HBO is still aired here in China so I'm not going to be in complete withdrawal without my facebook or youtube.  My first impression of Beijing is it's very similar looking to Toronto - at least on the highway and downtown area.  Entering Hong Kong was a huge difference visually, but besides the chinese characters, everything looks pretty much the same here.  We'll be staying in this hotel for three days before we switch hotels and join up with a Canadian/US tour group which I'm a bit nervous about since I'm pretty sure it'll be hectic.  Hopefully I'll be able to get onto blogger a little later to add pictures :) 

HK Museum of Art

(Contemporary exhibit)

View from Ascott Beijing

-M

HK Day 6: Lantau Island

Today we went to Lantau Island, HK's biggest island and home to tourists attractions including a massive bronze Buddha and Tai O, a fishing village (both of which we visited today). It was coincidentally a ridiculously windy day, but we decided to take the cable car up the mountain anyways, since the roads that the bus take are windey and takes a lot longer (we took the bus on the way down).  Surprisingly, even though it was windy, the cable car was quite stable, although the higher we got the more we could really feel the impact of the wind.  At the top, we climbed up to see the giant Buddha and we had a bit of really tasty Buddhist vegetarian food.  We then took a bus over to Tai O where we wandered around and looked through the fishing village.  We bought a live fish, and brought it over to a restaurant at the other side of the village and they cooked it for us for dinner.  (The fish was still moving inside the bag as we were walking over and made my sister jump every single time since we forced her to carry it.  She had an especially good time eating it...revenge is sweet).  As I mentioned earlier, we took the bus back - took so much longer, but also less nerve wracking. 

Taking the Cable Car to Lantau Island

Tai - O

-M

HK Day 5: Rain day & Food!

Today it rained a lot here in Hong Kong.  It was a bit of a downer as we were hoping to spend the day outdoors visiting gardens and temples, on the bright side it was more the Toronto weather I'm used to (thank god!).  As it started to pour, we arrived at a temple called Wong Tai Sin and looked around - lucky for us, rain meant less people (normally it'd be packed).  In the evening, we decided to take the tram from one end of the city to the other, just for kicks.
 

So obviously a trip to Hong Kong isn't complete without food! I don't think I've talked about food yet, but basically it's awesome.  Not all food is cheap here, but practically all of it is really good.  The street food here is extremely tasty, and the fruits are really really sweet and fresh. So, in case you're hungry here's some food:


-M