Summer Palace & Beijing National Stadium, Beijing 2009 - Day 4

It took us about an hour from subway Dongsi to Xiyuan station. It's quite a long journey from our hotel and we need to walk and transit subway line a few times too. Upon arriving at Xiyuan station, we still need to walk about 10 minutes before reaching Summer Palace. Having the largest royal park and being well preserved, it was designated, in 1960 by the State Council, as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China. Containing examples of the ancient arts, it also has graceful landscapes and magnificent constructions. The Summer Palace is the archetypal Chinese garden, and is ranked amongst the most noted and classical gardens of the world. In 1998, it was listed as one of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Summer Palace is really a huge garden and we only managed to cover about 60% or less. After spending more than 6 hours here, there is still so many red LED dot on our electronic map. Seriously, this place is damn huge! We love Suzhou Street really much. The scenery here is kind of peaceful and beautiful with shops along the riverside. By looking at the charm of Suzhou Street in Summer Palace, it gave me a sudden urge to visit Suzhou in future asap. We had our lunch here while simply enjoying Suzhou Street scenery. I have really nothing much to talk about Summer Palace so let’s roll up some picture here and hope you enjoyed it. Here is some picture we took during sunset at Summer Palace. I don't think so that one could finish walking with all the POI covered. Yes, maybe you could do that but it will be like amazing race (quickie) kinda thing. A famous travelling website said that Summer Palace recommended time of visit is about one and a half hour. He must be real kidding! Our next destination is Beijing National Stadium and we took subway to Tiananmen West station. According to my research of direction in Google map, it shows that the national stadium located somewhere near to Tiananmen West station. Daphne was smart enough to ask the station staff before exiting the station. The staffs look at us and reconfirmed the place we wanted to go and she said it's impossible to walk from this station. Then I only I know that Google map gave me the wrong direction! Check the printscreen below! The national stadium is the one I circle up and not the B destination. We quickly make our way there by going back to the train and did some interchange after getting the direction from the staff. Our leg is already suffering and begging for mercy and yet we still managed to crawl there. Bird Nest Stadium structure are truly amazing and Daph straight away knew that this stadium is very hard to construct. She works in a construction firm so she knew particularly well on building structure and material. The design, which originated from the study of Chinese ceramics, implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof; giving the stadium the appearance of a "Bird's nest". The retractable roof was later removed from the design after inspiring the stadium's most recognizable aspect. Due to the stadium's outward appearance, it was nicknamed "The Bird's Nest" Beijing Nationals Aquatics Centre in the other hand is simply marvellous too. The outer wall is based on a structure devised from the natural formation of bubbles in soap foam. Many people believe Water Cube to be the fastest Olympic pool in the world. The proof? The Aquatics Centre saw 25 world records broken during Beijing 2008 Olympics. It is 1 meter deeper than most Olympic pools. Up to a certain limit, beyond which swimmers will lose their sense of vision, deeper pools allow the waves to dissipate down to the bottom, leading to less water disturbance to the swimmers. We spend about one hour and a half here despite our leg not listening to us anymore. We really tortured our poor leg in these 4 days. We went back to our hotel and call it a day.

Badaling Great Wall & Ming Tomb (Dingling), Beijing 2009 - Day 3

We woke up earlier today at 7.30am as we wanted to conquer the Great Wall of China. When we came out from the hotel street, we are happy to see that there is a busy local wet market in the morning. This is a good time to snap a few photo of the locality of Beijing daily life. We spend about 20 minutes here despite we are in hurry to go Badaling Great Wall as it's about 70km from our hotel. We took subway to Jisuitan station and walk to Deshengmen and from there we met a conman that wanted to cut our throat. We knew about tricks of 919 buses to Badaling beforehand and we are extra cautious on this. There will be a lot of 919 buses and all will be going to the direction of Badaling Great Wall. It’s just that the routes are different from each other and some might end up going a big round before reaching destination. The problem is we need to find the exact express direct way to Badaling. Despite knowing the facts that there are many conman trying to squeeze our money out of pocket, we nearly fall into their trap. This 'bus guy' we met was asking for CNY400 for transportation and keeps asking us to take cab. He said that it's hard to wait for 50 people for the bus as it will wait for passengers to fully board the bus before departure. Then he told us only his bus are going to Badaling and if we buy one way ticket, we wouldn’t be able to come back to Deshengmen. We keep on asking him how he calculates the total CNY400 amount as we knew the original bus only cost CNY12 and he keep on pushing my question away. Finally he told us that amount included ticket for cable car and ‘others’ as he knew we are reluctant and our suspicious grew stronger on him. I told him off saying that the cable car only cost RMB60 and he argued back saying that there is no such cheap price. We walk off and let him grumbling behind. Within a few steps ahead; we finally found the real direct 919 bus to Badaling. It cost only CNY12 per person compare to CNY400! The location of this direct 919 bus is a little hidden behind Deshengmen tower. We reached Badaling in an hour and bought entrance ticket which cost CNY 60 per person and sliding car ticket for CNY 60 too. I must admit that Badaling Great Wall was truly a wonder of the medieval world. We took a slide car to the 4th station which we need to climb another 3 station before reaching the top of Badaling Great Wall. For the adventurous, you can climb from station 1 and it's said to take about 6 hours as the steps are steep and there is only one way up and down. Sometime you need to wait for an hour’s for people to descend only you can start ascending as it's very narrow. For people who couldn't climb but wanted to enjoy the top could opt for cable car instead and it will bring you to the 6th station. We wanted half half experience so we took the sliding car. We climb for an hour before reaching the top. Alas we conquered Badaling Great Wall and the feeling is so great! The scenery on top really took our breath away and we really enjoyed the nice cool windy weather. We are lucky to have visited Badaling Great wall and other part of Beijing on October. If we were to go during July which is their summer, I am sure the mood will be completely different. People who are exhausted, hot and tired are easier to get angry. We are tired but the cold weather really helps a lot in controlling our mood. We took a lot of picture here and as usual, let the picture do the talking. We then hired a private car to bring us to Ming Tomb - Dingling. We wanted to go Changling and Dingling but the driver misunderstood us for other place. We ended up in The Ming Dynasty Wax Museum. We quickly spend a few minutes here and buzz off to Dingling as the time is running out. We then arrive at Dingling Tomb at 4.30pm and paid our private car and he goes off. We quickly bought the ticket as the Dingling will close at 6.00pm. Dingling is under ground and about 27 meters deep. It is the mausoleum of Emperor Zhu Yijun, the thirteenth emperor who occupied the throne the longest during the Ming Dynasty, and his two empresses. The main features are the Stone Bridge, Soul Tower, Baocheng and the Underground Place, which was unearthed between 1956 and 1958. The entire palace is made of stone. The Soul Tower is symbolic of the whole of Dingling and it forms the entrance to the underground chambers. When I came back to Malaysia and done some reading, I get to know that the excavation of Dingling tomb was rather disastrous as they didn't have the technology or the resource to preserve the excavated artefacts. Large amount of silk and other textiles were simply piled into a storage room that leaked water and wind. As a result, most of the surviving artefacts today have severely deteriorated, and replicas are instead displayed in the museum. The lesson learned from the Ding Ling excavation has led to a new policy of the China government not to excavate any historical site except for rescue purposes. In particular, no proposal to open an imperial tomb has been approved since Dingling, even when the entrance has been accidentally revealed. We nearly left stranded over 90km from our hotel as we have forgotten the time and thought the last bus depart at 5pm. We are lucky as the last bus for 5pm was actually from Badaling but not at Ming Tomb. When we came out from Ming Tomb, there is only two private cars left on the parking lot. We are so scared at that time and luckily a bus came just in time. We boarded the bus and it took us an hour to the last station. From there, we have to take another bus to Deshengmen which took us another hour. We reached home nearly 9pm and we had maggie noodles and some grilled meat which we bought on our way to hotel as our dinner. We are so exhausted by the time we finished our dinner and bath. Our leg seems not listening to us anymore and they beg for a rest. We use Yoko Yoko as counter pain for our leg. We called it a day and have a good sleep.

Forbidden City, Tiananmen & Wanfujing, Beijing 2009 - Day 2

We woke up at 8am today and had our breakfast in the hotel around 8.30am. Dong Si Fu Yuan breakfast sucks to the max. Nuff said. Our destination for today is Forbidden City, Tiananmen and Wanfujing Street Snack. I planned visiting Tiananmen at night as many forumers said that Tiananmen has a nice night scenery. We then took Beijing subway and reached Tiananmen around 10.30am. What I didn’t know is Tiananmen is actually a huge square that is connected to Forbidden City. I thought they are separated afar by each others. On our way into the Forbidden City, we came across persimmon trees. This is my first time looking at persimmon tree and it bears a lots of persimmon fruits on each of every tree! Ticket for Forbidden City cost CNY60 per person and we managed to get it after 10 minutes queuing. We also rented the automatic tour guide aka electronic map which run on sensor. The red LED shows point of interest (POI) and when you have arrived to that particular POI, the LED light will goes off indicating 'visited' places and automatically begin talking about the history. Deposit CNY100 for each unit and CNY40 for English while CNY10 for Chinese language. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. For almost five centuries, it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government. The construction of Forbidden City took a total of 14 years involving millions of workers and hundred thousand of artisans. It was the order of Hongwu Emperor in Ming dynasty to start this massive construction during 1406. I am amused and fascinated at the structure of the building in Forbidden City. Just imagine that you are walking in an emperor's palace which is the most powerful man in China during the era of 1400-1500 something. During that time if you are a normal person, dun even think to steps into this powerful palace. If you offended the emperor, be prepare to be beheaded and not only you but your whole family! I was so interested in this Forbidden City history that when I came back to Malaysia, I read the whole summary of this piece of history as I wanted to know why there is no more emperor’s generation anymore in China. I found out that the last emperor was Pu Yi with the history "From emperor to normal citizen" which is quite interesting, Nanking massacre, protest at Tiananmen in 1989 and others. I wonder why I have more interest in knowing a part of China history rather than our own Malaysia history. Well, I wouldn't want to bore you any further with words describing Forbidden City and Tiananmen but I will just let the pictures do the talking instead. We spend a total of 8 hours from 10.30am to 6.30pm in Forbidden City and Tiananmen and we had a wonderful sightseeing here. I enjoyed the sunset in Forbidden City too and we ate biscuit and hot dog as our lunch. The time sure past very fast here. The only cons is our leg is killing us with all the walking we done here. We then took the subway to Wangfujing station for street snack attack for our dinner. I must admit that Donghuamen food is better than Wangfujing. We ate tan tan noodles by the street while watching opera show on the second floor of the building. Then we continue walking down the street eating those snacks we ate at Donghuamen. Then we took subway to Dongsi station and walk back to our hotel. Both of us soak our feet into hot water as our leg is so painful. We called it a day around 11pm. Oh, by the way the temperature in Beijing during day time is somewhere between 15C-18C while at night about 10C-13C. A lot people said that during October is the best time to visit china as it's not so cold and hot. For us Malaysian, it can consider pretty cold. Haha

Bali, ayam kambing soon..

Yup, you heard me right. Bali, I am coming soon. We will be flying to Bali on the 26th January 2010. Well, just say that I get quite a superb bargain on the Air Asia air ticket and Tune hotel in Legian. All I could say is the flight and accommodation that I booked cost below Rm500 for 5D4N stay. That sums up to be only Rm250 per person! What's more, the departure time is 9am and reaches there by 12pm. And going back time will be 1.55pm which is extremely great time too. The wonders of this Tune hotel are for RM155 I could stay there for 4 nights. Now how cool is that. A mere RM38.75 a night! You better believe it! I have stayed in Tune hotel in Penang before and all I could say is superb! Anyway, of course there is a catch on this super mambo promotion by Air Asia. It's a rainy season during Jan - Feb in Bali. Heck with the price of peanut, I couldn't care more. We will just embrace Bali with raining coat if necessary. I actually wanted to book on Dec but then it was too expensive during school break and year end holiday. Upon searching the website, the flight to Bali itself already cost RM704 cheapest. Then, the departure time is something like 4pm and you reached there 7pm night. One day gone. Returning time sucks too at 6.05am! It will be as it like 4D3N if you get what I mean. The better air ticket will cost no less than RM900 and above. Not to mention that the hotel is expensive too. I have started to do some light survey on the places of interest in Bali, currency, food, bike rental, conman artist, map and others. There is a lot more to edit in my Bali draft. Anyway, it's still early for any preparation yet. Gosh, I can wait for another exciting trip!

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.

China, Ayam Kambing!!!

I am now in JJ Kepong and I am so excited that by tomorrow 9.00am, we will be landed in Tianjin, China. Our flight supposes to depart at 1am but it is delayed to 3am.. I have called up airport limo to pick us up at 11.30pm tonight. Gosh, I can't wait to fly and yet I haven't even pack my luggage lulz. Basically, I will be covering mostly in Beijing and only a little in Tianjin. Research has been done intensively and I hope all our journey goes smoothly. I have also done mapping to each of the place we are going and it's as detail as "Head west on 东四西大街/東四西大街 toward 连丰胡同/連豐胡同 for 0.3km" Thanks to Google map, I am able to get a very detail direction. Not to forget getting as much info as I can on Beijing various scam/conmen trick. The most famous one should be Tea Ceremony, Medicine, Art student, Black Taxi and other minor scam. Day 1 - Temple of Heaven - Donghuamen Night Market Day 2 - Forbidden City - Behai - Tiananmen - Wanfujing Day 3 - Badaling Great Wall - Ming Tomb Day 4 - Summer Palace - Bird Nest Stadium Day 5 - Hutong Liulichang - Guang'anmen Food Street - Hutong Zhuanta Day 6 - Courtyard Hotel 81 Rosegarden (F&E) - The Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street Day 7 - Tianjin Ancient Cultural Street Any additional place will be added in if there is any free time during our visit. I am sure important places like Tiananmen is well decorated as they had just finish celebrating China 60 years Independence Day. Well China, AYAM KAMBING!! (I am coming)

Wedding Night Dinner

We woke up early at around 7am today (27/09/2009) to load cooking utensil, cooking material and others for tonight wedding dinner into a rented lorry. All this 'ka zhang' is for Daph mum's cooking at Thean Hou temple for his son wedding dinner tonight. The reason they did it themselves as they believe that their own cooking benefit from giving guests the best of the best cooking ingredients. They wanted all their friends and relatives to have the best of the best with her generous cooking. I must admit that she is really a tough mama to handle all this by herself. Of course she does hire 7 aunties to do the washing and cleaning job and 10 youth as waiters. We continued sleeping after loading the utensil while Daph parents and his bro go to Thean Hou temple for preparation. We only went there around 12pm to decorate Thean Hou temple's staging. It took about 2 hours for us to decorate the staging with the help of Daph dad and bro. I took a bath in Then Hou temple toilet at around 5.15pm as I am the last one doing the staging balloon decoration. Daph had to bath earlier as her friend will make up for her around 4pm. Daph bro, Weng need to go back to fetch worker for tonight wedding and need to go off earlier too. Everyone is busy with their own task but I can ensure you that the busiest person is Daph mum. She needs to cook for 62 tables and she started to do preparation and cooking at 10am! Even when the dinner is ongoing she frequently needs to go into the kitchen to ensure everything goes fine and at it best. Around 7pm, some of the guests have already arrived and there are a little hiccups during placement of table for guests. Sometime, there will be a long queue of guests waiting to be seated due to some error in finding the guests name VS number of table to be seated. We should have bring our notebook and thing will get easier using excel to quickly sort out name and table. Anyway, with the help of her cousin and relatives, we manage to iron out the problem and the arrangement goes smoothly. We waited for the guests to arrive until near 8.30pm before the wedding dinner start. Some of the guests already complaint and grumbling that it's very late start. What to do, there is still about 15%-20% late comer on that time. (I should have issue show cause letter for each of them for late coming like what I did in my company. Hehe). KL people will always be late for wedding dinner! The dinner goes well and we certainly are satisfied with our staging, food and our course happy for our newlywed couple. Everyone looks happy indeed. The dinner ended around 10.30pm and this time we need to wait for the workers to finish clearing up the hall and kitchen. I then sent a few aunties and a guy back to their home in Jinjang and reached Kepong around 1.30am. At Daph home, we have a post mortem on the wedding dinner with Daph parent and brother. We talk and chat until 2.30am before calling it a day. Everyone is so tired by then but with a big satisfaction smile planted on each of everyone face. It's like someone pat on your shoulder and said Good Job!

Wedding Ceremony

I woke up early today as it’s Daph bro, Guan wedding day with Cindy. I am his brother groomsman on last Saturday 26/9/2009. I reached Kepong around 7.50am and ate breakfast at his house. We waited for other groomsman to arrive before we headed to Puchong to 'fetch' his bride back. It's game time for his bridesmaids once we reached her apartment in Puchong. All the groomsman is ready to battle and we are power enough to go through many of bridesmaids challenge with ease. There is tong yuan stuff with god know what is it inside, find certain year of coin in cold ice bucket, and break the ice to take the bride room key, recognise bride lips in a paper and much more. Alas, the groom gets her bride with the help of groomsman and off we ‘fetch’ his bride back to Kepong for wedding tea ceremony. Chinese Wedding Tea ceremony is performed during a Chinese wedding. Tea is used in Chinese wedding ceremonies mainly because tea is Chinese national drink and it symbolizes respect. I would say the tea ceremony is probably one of the most important parts in Chinese Weddings. After lunch the tea ceremony is being performed and mostly all of the relative and family will drink the tea and give red packets or jewelleries. Some relatives prefer the bride and groom to wear the jewellery gifts immediately and will even put it on for them. With generous relatives, you may look like a Christmas tree after the tea ceremony. Unmarried elder siblings will not present the couple with gifts after drinking the tea instead the bride and groom will present gifts to the younger siblings and cousins who serve them tea. The tea ceremony ended around 2.30pm and we sent tai kam che (Chinese MC) back to her home in Aman Puri. At 3.45pm, we headed to the bride and groom house in Kajang. It's said by tai kam che that at least a young kids must follow them back. They will have to jump up and down on the bed to give luck to the couple. It is said that this practice gives hope on the fertility of the couple and will make them produce an heir soon. Then we fetch Daph relative back home and reached home around 6pm. We were so exhausted by then. Later we accompany Daph younger brother to their grandma house to pick 38 of her 'Ayam Kampung' for tomorrow wedding dinner in Thean Hou Gong. We slept at 10.15pm on that day as we are tired like mad. I would say it's a tiring but fun day. Tomorrow will be another hectic day. We have to get the stage done in Then Hou Gong and prepare other thing as her parent will cook for their son wedding dinner. Yeah, her mum will be cooking for 60+ Chinese wedding dinners!