[Part 1] One night in Beijing

Well, 4 nights to be exact. or probably, night-mares…in Beijing. It’s somehow a “nice” unforgettable experience. Short but sweet. And definitely some bitter ones.

I would have never actually imagined that I really go on a holiday at Beijing, this early. Which happened last week, to be exact. The weather forecast mentioned that the daily temperature were still around 10 degrees C or below. I was actually pretty excited when this news was brought to me by Eugene. And Canny excited (times two) as well.

Before moving on, I would strongly express that every single comment and thoughts written here are solely of my personal thoughts and feelings on this entire trip. Basically we were informed that it would be a trip for 4 for the prize winners of Niu Beijing contest organized by Air Asia. It was a nice feat and courteous that they ran this campaign, I’m pretty sure everyone’s excited during the contest as well, much like The Amazing Race, minus you walking around different towns for clues.

Preparations

Though the sponsored prize would be the air flight to Tian Jin, which spared quite a distance from the main town, Beijing, we actually have to apply for the entrance VISA into China. For an individual that is traveling into China once during a period of 30 days, they can obtain a single-entry VISA for RM28. And plus with the additional processing fee of RM30, that would mean you will pay RM58 for the visa application that will take 4 days.

It will be best to do the visa application earlier, but within 3 months before the departure of your flight. Of course there is an “express” service where you can obtain the visa at the same day, but with extra fees applied. More information can be found at Chinese Visa Application Service Center website. Worry not, the service center was renovated and was far too efficient than what I had imagined. Really.

Flight day

It was in the morning where we wake up and prepared all the belongings to the AirAsia’s terminal located at LCC-Terminal in Sepang, Malaysia. There is of course several ways you can reach this destination, by bus or your car. We decided to book a taxi in advance through Sunlight Radio Taxi Online. At first, we thought by leaving at our residence on 6AM would be good, and we were informed the fare would be at RM70++. But then we did realized it is better to reach earlier than to be sorry for being late. We decided on 5Am instead. The fare shot up to RM110++. The phone operator explained that the fare charges would be higher if we are using their services from 12 Midnight – 6 AM, which is under the extra midnight charges.

Checking in on the airport was a breeze, didn’t took long. We were early though.

One of the boarding pass in action.

And it does appeared that AirAsia X’s airbus is noticeably bigger, in size. Weather doesn’t seem too good at that time though.

Touchdown, Beijing!

The flight took about 6 hours from Kuala Lumpur to Tianjin.

Er, I mean Tian Jin. We were definitely surprised to see this brand here. And I have no idea why the English slogan were placed in such manner.

Upon walking towards the exit of the airport, we are opened to take one of two options to Beijing. The most common and painless route is to take a bus to the nearest bullet-train station to Beijing.

Ticket for each individual seems to cost at RMB10 Yuan.

And no, the bus does not operate the air-conditioner as the weather were still cold outside.

The bus would take approximately around 30 – 45 minutes to go from the airport to this train station.

It is really obvious that the air pollutions here are worse than any other place in South East Asia like Malaysia, Singapore or Thailand. Really.

The ticket counters inside. Note that the locals doesn’t seem to fond of queuing up at all. Note that on the electronic board on top that announces the ticket availability based on the date and time.

Sample of a train ticket.

The boarding and deparature time for the trains are actually pretty accurate and on-time.

There are actually 2 type of class, namely Economic and Business class for the seats, but it doesn’t really matter much as the seating positions are quite weird in general. We (me and Canny) were seating separately with Eugene and ShiHui.

The entire journey from TianJin to Beijing took approximately 30 minutes. They did claimed that the train are one of the fastest moving transport on earth.

The traffics in Beijing generally, jammed the whole afternoon to evening during weekdays.

Going to Hotel Califor…Beijing

We were taken to a ride by this Taxi-man as we had no idea where the Hotel is located on the map. This would actually pretty much thanks to the last minute (on the morning we depart from Kuala Lumpur) change of hotel by the contest organizer from Novotel Xinqiao Beijing to Hotel Laurel (http://www.laurel-hotel.com.cn/)

Some random high-rise building.

And some locals around the town. From what we known that we were in the Ma Jia Pu district.

And after much struggle with finding the correct directions, we reached the destination.

Hotel Laurel, or so it says.

And upon checking in, they required every tenant to place a deposit of RMB200 yuan.

Just right outside the hotel, it seems crossing the road like this is a norm.

I had no idea these kind of thing existed.

(Late) Lunch at KFC

And to our surprise, there is a mart nearby the hotel we were staying and decided to give a try on KFC. It doesn’t seem to sell chickens to us, since we only saw like 90% of the menu consists of burgers and buns. And some hot soya milk.

A walk down the Forbidden City’s entrance, The Tiananmen Square

We took the MRT

And had a rough walk outside the MRT. It was really cold out there.

And surprisingly I did noticed there are several locals with short skirts?!

Supper, good things are never shared!

And so that is what the locals (Chinese) believed in general. On our journey back to the hotel, we stumbled into this old rundown shop across the road.

We were definitely looking for something, and it might just be something we want.

Through various forums and online websites, it is a known local delicacy where lamb satays are made delicious. Note the price.

Lambs. Or sheeps?

The legendary local beers for Beijing-ers. The Yanjing. Give a wild guess how much it costs. 3…yuan. RMB3 Yuan. We did gulp on the infamous TsingTao beer. Didn’t taste as good as this one though.

And inside the shop has this really cosy tables and setups. And this actually concludes our first night in Beijing after reaching the Tian Jin airport around 4 – 5 PM. Such a magical find we did found.

There would be 4 parts in this entire log and I will be writing more.