Blogs from Beijing, China, Asia - page 7

On Thursday night we flew from Beijing to Xi'an a city of 10 million. We arrived at our Holiday Inn hotel at 11 PM. We were very tired ! The next morning we were up and on the bus at 9 AM . First stop was the Jade Factory. We are not really interested in jade but it was interesting to see the carvers create the beautiful figurines. We were ushered into a huge showroom with all kinds of jewellery made from jade. We abstained. Next stop was the Terra Cotta Warrior factory where replicas of the warriors are made for tourists who want to have one in their backyard. LOL! Also for sale was everything a tourist might want to buy such as silk scarves, kimonos, and lacquered furniture. Our lunch was a buffet upstairs ... read more

Our first full day in China was a wonderful learning experience! We were up and out for breakfast at 7 AM. Our breakfast here is a buffet with many options both Chinese and Western food. Of course I brought my bran so I took my container and first stop was to get milk. It is quite difficult with the language and writing barrier, very few people in this hotel speak English. I found a dispenser that appeared to be milk and poured it in my bowl and headed for the table . Yuck! What I had put on my bran was a sweet yogurt drink! Awful! Not able to waste my precious bran I had to suffer through it and hopefully I will reap the benefits! Bonnie enjoyed her breakfast with lots of fruits, hard boiled ... read more

Think about all the research that you do, the booking decisions you have to make and the logistics you need to arrange every time you go on holiday. Now imagine that you have to do all that every few days. First world problem I know, but after two years of it, it gets a bit frustrating and tiresome - especially when you're on a budget tighter than Richard Simmons's spandex. This was how I spent my last day in Shanghai, so just as well as it was raining, just like it had been all damn week. All day, every day. Constant. Relentless. It was definitely time to get out of this place. China's railways are pretty advanced these days; high speed rail is going up all over the place and a bullet train can take you ... read more

Another hostel breakfast set us up for the day and we headed out to see some more of Beijing. We decided to head to the Forbidden City. What should have been an easy journey wasn't. Becuse Beijing becomes so crowded with tourists in the National Day holiday the roads were roped off and there is a one way system in place for pedestrians. And I had thought Tiananmen Square was busy the previous evening, it was even busier today. It took ages for us to get to the Forbidden City, but we managed to get there in the end. Tickets for the Forbidden City sell out super quick in the holidays and by the time we got there, the ticket offices had long been shut. We joined the queue for tickets to Tiananmen Gate and after ... read more

I knew that my flight was going to be badly delayed when they started serving the food while we were still sitting on the tarmac. I had just eaten a rather large and expensive breakfast at the airport, so just picked at mine. If I had of known I would have just waited for the plane food. The flight was maybe couple of hours and uneventful. I took the subway to where I was staying. A couple of annoying things about the subway. One you can't buy a through ticket, when I got off the airport line, I had to queue up to buy a ticket for the rest of my journey. Then when I got to what should have been my stop, the train sailed through it. I later to I d out that thirty ... read more