Donghuamen Night Market, Beijing 2009 - Day 1

Currency: RM1.00 = CNY 2.02 We reached LCCT around 12.15am as our flight is 3.00am. Why so early? Well, this is to avoid additional 50% surcharge for the limo taxi that brought us to LCCT. We call the airport taxi to pick us up at 11.30pm. We had our supper at Old Town in LCCT and boarded the plane at 2.45am. It was a long 6 hours journey to Tianjin, China. The Air Asia X is equipped with in flight entertainment LCD but you need to pay to enjoy these facilities. Anyway, for in flight info such as GPS etc is FOC. We slept throughout the journey. We touched down Tianjin at 9.05am and took a bus to Tianjin Railway Station. We bought the bullet train ticket from Tianjin to Beijing and boarded the train at 11.40am. The bullet train cost CNY57 per ticket. The speed of the train is amazing according to Daph. I felt asleep in the train. The top speed is 324kmph as written in the screen! We reached Beijing in no time. Our hotel is Dong Si Fu Yuan hotel where it's located at Long Fu Si Street in Dongcheng district. We took their subway and headed to the nearest station which is Dongsi station. We checked in the hotel and were a little disappointed with the room as it look a little old and wear out. The price per night is CNY180. It seems to get good feedback from the trip advisor though. First, the breakfast seems always finishing anytime from 7.30-9.00am. Mostly only vegetable and hard bun etc. Then, they never clean the cup in our room, never sweep floor etc. They only change the towel and tea packet. The last day we stayed, the water heater spoiled. They even nearly walk into our room at 6.30am in one of a morning and luckily we put the door chain lock. Then they apologize as they thought nobody is in the room. There is no kettle but they only thermo. They fill the thermo everyday in the morning and expect the water to be hot until night. What’s more, you pour the water out and there is water dripping on the other end of the thermo! I think I can go on many things but I will put a full stop here. We stayed here 5 days as we have not much time to look for other hotel. The only thing I like is the location of this hotel. There seems to be a good hotel a few steps from Dong Si Fu Yuan but it was fully book until next month according to the hotel receptionist. We headed to Temple of Heaven but it's already closed by the time we reached there. So we decided to move it to other days of our self make itinerary. Btw, by 5.45pm the sky is already dark and by 6pm it's like 7.30pm here in Malaysia. This is due to autumn season. The weather is cold throughout the day especially at night. We went to Donghuamen Food Street and taste a very new food/snack in China. We tasted a few foods here. It cost about an average of CNY10 per food here. Among the nice food we tasted here is 'satay look alike' lamb, stuffed pork ball, unagi stick, fried noodles and sugar coated fruits. Now the bad one we tasted is pineapple sweet glutinous rice, fried milk, corn (their corn is very different from ours), goubuli, chien ping and the worst among the worst is exotic food, starfish. Just for being ‘been there, done that’ kinda thing. Hey at least I have eaten a starfish. It cost us CNY20 for the fried starfish. You could only eat the inside part as the skin or shell is too hard to be eaten. China people really can eat anything. There is a lot of exotic food such as live baby scorpion, worm, dog meat, just to name a few. We walked back to our hotel which is about 4-5km plus lost and wrong direction from Donghuamen and Wangfujing. It's only day 1 and our leg is almost broken. Haha. Seriously, we walked a lot today from Tianjin to Beijing with our heavy big luggage and not to mention a lot of wrong way and direction when going to Dong Si Fu Yuan hotel. We called it a day around 11pm as we need to wake up early tomorrow for a full day plan ahead.