Blogs from Forbidden City, Beijing, China, Asia - page 2

This might be one of the craziest cities I have ever visited... mostly in a good way. The amount of people, smells, tradition, and traffic is beyond anyone's expectations. We landed on Wednesday afternoon on a bumpy flight from Seoul and soon after experienced the traffic congestion to the hotel. After arriving and checking in we traveled to a bizarre street market called the Silk Market. We used the subway to get there and that alone was an experience... a very crowded experience. We had to sandwich ourselves into the subway car along with the other 100 people that wanted to do so. Once we arrived at the market we traveled through the narrow path of the most outrageous smells in one area. Whiffs of braised octopus, noodles, fried scorpions, bats on a stick, steamed dumplings, ... read more

Friday started painfully when I kicked a door with my bare toes and we watched my poor toe turning a beautiful shade of black! That'll teach me not to shift things with my feet but to bend down and pick things up! At 9am we were supposed to be collected but Richard and Cheng were a bit late. This was because there was a road traffic accident. We were amazed that this wasn't a regular occurrence. We drove into town to see the Forbidden City. This is a Ming section of the city and the outsides of all the ordinary buildings are grey. All of the buildings are single storey. The Forbidden City is the nickname given to the imperial palace area by the people of Beijing as it was forbidden to the average (and not ... read more

I dag har vi vært på den kinesiske mur. Dagen begynte rett etter kl. 0600 da telefonen ringte.. Michael skriker da ... VI HAR FORSOVET OSS!!!Det hadde vi ikke, det var guiden som kunne fortelle at hun ville komme å hente oss kl. 07:00 ikke 07:30 som avtalt... Grrrr ikke bra å vekke folk på denne måten! Vii hadde bestilt denne turen med dem for å komme i et reisefølge og møte andre turister. Det var to turister på denne utflukten, Svensken Michael og Nordmannen Marit. Det er utenfor sesongen så det er nok ikke mange turister i byen. Når vi kom på minibussen kunne guiden fortelle oss at ""the driver is not so handsome but a good driver" håper virkelig ikke at guiden forsto engelsk - sånn sier man da ikke!!! Vi var fremme ved ... read more

This post is just to add pictures.... read more

After having spent 6 months on two separate occasions in China, not having visited Beijing felt like having missed the point of it all. Nobody has heard of Urumqi or Yongding county. What they're really going to ask is about the wall or the forbidden city. Last year I couldn't make it to Beijing for I fell ill just a day before we were scheduled to take the flight. We were in Fujian and were weary after three days in the countryside, in a moment of weakness we decided to come back to Shanghai and that was that. This time around I made sure I start my trip from Beijing, I wasn't about to risk keeping it at the trailing end. So there I was, finally landing on Beijing airport. I was lucky to get a ... read more