[Part 2] One night in Beijing

Waking up in sweat.

The worst mistake is not to know what the air-conditioner in the hotel room functions during winter.
Funny, stupid but true. I jacked the temperature of the air-cond’s controller down to 16 degrees and I found myself sweating inside the room while outside of the building is freezing cold. Why? That is when I found out that is supposed to be a “warmer” during winter.

This is the name card of the hotel.

The voucher for the breakfast, which valid daily from 6AM – 9AM. Yes, it’s that early.

This is the definite Ms. Liu Cong, courtesy of our organiser, AirAsia X. Mobile Number: 13331025262. It was morning at 9AM and she took us for a 1-day trip around the city center of Beijing. An “interesting” life experience.

And so the morning is filled with a lot of cars everywhere, to work, school and so on.

These are the Asian plum tree during Spring. They were supposed to bloom during our visit to this country but it seems the Winter took a little longer while to go away.

Taiping Street

The shopping boulevard

I had no idea what these are called, but apparently the taxi fares are rather affordable from RMB2 above.

And the ever first destination of the morning was to Qian Men Avenue in Beijing. It’s a well rebuilt place that offers shoppers various brands to go with, and some Peking Opera shows as well. It was a cold morning with the temperature reaching 11 degrees Celcius. It gets even more troubling when the chilling winds blowing onto your face.

Local tourist police.

Starbucks on the main entrance.

Bought a sweat parka here in this shop. Opens on 10 AM to 10 PM.

And there’s a surprising number of locals here in the morning.

And parents seems like to train their children under these cold.

And it gets even more interesting on the smaller lanes along the main avenue.

I have forgotten what is that massive building on the left for. But this is where the first railway in Beijing situated.

And so we went away from this place after 30 minutes here. Suprising? It gets even more interesting at the later part of the trip.

Local Breakfast

We stumbled into this small shop inside a building near to where the travel guide brought us, which sold silk to tourists. Yes, expensive silks. And so we walked out and smelled this. Apparently the rounded cakes on the bottom right are sold at 50 cents yuan, or precisely, 0.5 RMB Yuan. But we paid RMB2 Yuan for it. For the big pizza ? We paid RMB12 for it! What the hell

After finishing the pancakes and local delicacy for the breakfast, we thought to move away from this silk selling stores and then we were brought to a hidden store next to the same lot of buildings, that is selling knifes. Apparently, the sales-girl is promoting a “German” branded knifes known as Hillman but it appeared most of the print ads with German in it has a logo on the bottom right that says, Dellman. Which is which?

Food for thought

While we were a bit relieved of leaving those sales-ish place after 2 hours there in the morning. The tour guide once again asked if we were interested to have lunch in a local restaurant where a lot of tourist happened to dine there.

And it appeared that we had to pay RMB40 Yuan for each person. Reason? Beats me. Not long after the lunch in the restaurant. We were once again brought to a place known as Min Zu Yuan, where the China’s aboriginals are placed together near to the Olympics’ stadium (Bird’s nest).

The infamous Dr Tea (or so the Tour Guide claimed) was our destination after the lunch. According to several sites like:

Though reviews about this place are mixed but I personally felt really ripped off when they start to have tons of sales-girls running into the tea-tasting room where we were sitting (12 people in total). Though we did enjoy all of the tea etiquette tips, but all is gone when they kept pushing us to purchase a full-set of a Pu Er tea cake which costs RMB400 per piece, and RMB2800 for 7 piece (which is packed into 1).

Well, apparently I did intend to purchase some tea back for my parents, but after must hesitation and aggressive sales method, I decided not to.

Just outside the shop, the after-taste reaction for the 1-day tour. And it just about to get interesting.

The Bird’s nest

We felt entirely relieved when the tour guide decided to take us to somewhere more relevant, in this case, the Olympics opening ceremony stadium. Which located not too far away from the tea shop.

We took quite a long walk from where the tour bus is parked. And to reach into this entrance, it took approximately 5 minutes by walking.

Happy man flying kites.

And we’re literally standing on top of the traffics.

I felt amused looking at these tall radio towers.

It suggests us not to stand below it during rainy days.

The height of the hike

After much walking on outside the stadium, no we didn’t get inside the stadium, reason from the tour guide saying that it would be a waste of money. We were then brought to this AWESOME plaza near the stadium known as The Olympics Energy Experience Center.

Note that all of us were convinced that this were a real deal. The old lady on the picture explained that we supposed to be honored to be trying this “limited” services provided from Tibet. A miraculous treatment for your health from Tibet. And though at first most of the thing is taken at face value…

We were asked to dip our legs on this miraculous tea from Tibet. To soothe our legs.

Not too long after that, there is a bunch of trainees came into the room to provide foot massage to every one of us. (GASP). Too add salt to the wound, they start to invite a bunch of middle-aged male into the room claiming them to be the masters from Tibet that would cure any pain or sickness that the science couldn’t do. And without even knowing what happened, the masters start to be reading every one of our palms and saying, me… that I have an incurable disease that could only be fixed by taking on their medication.

And I was slapped with the bill above. Canny soon took over the slip and tear it apart. Lucky me.
Without further ado, the four of us, me, canny, eugene and shihui walked out from this forbidden plaza of conman.

That’s equivalent of 790.572USD (As per current currency conversion rate). The reason I’m in this plaza at the first place is I believed in the organiser of this trip would not bring me to the tip of the hell’s door. Who’s to blame?

Leaving the dark side

Right after being totally furious on this old lady, Ms. Liu Cong, we decided to move on our own. We decided to travel independently, realizing a day is wasted from all these buying-beijing-miraculous-scam-shops.

We were then asked to filled in a feedback form on HER performance. Note the money notes on the hand of Eugene, and yes, we WERE ASKED to pay RMB 15 yuan per person for the transportation fee. Alright. Great.

What in the world that has gotten ourselves into. Is running into scam is part of the experience package?

Boulevard of Beers, Boobs and Balls

This is where we parted with the tour guide (And we may thank our god for that).

It’s a beautiful street that has various shops that sell handicrafts and snacks.

It gets even better knowing that this are the “Beer/Disco/Pub” or where the night life are situated.

And this pretty much reminds me of Clarke Quay, Singapore.

A shop filled with random bottle and can collection.

Hot Lamb Pot of Soup

This is the real deal, a local delicacy loved by Beijing-ians. Thin sliced lamb meats.

Though it looked pretty similar to the steamboat that we have in Malaysia or Singapore but it is entirely different. Not the size of the pot, but instead of the bottom is powered by charcoal, it is the middle of the pot is filled with charcoal, hence the name, Hot pot. It’s a fresh experience, but a tiring one. Reason given is we need to dip the meats one by one, instead of the usual deal with steamboat where we threw everything into the pot.

While you are here in China, you may consider getting one of this for yourself.

It’s a beautiful sight at night.

And really cold. There are various (and plenty) public toilets that can be found, but you may sometimes bump into one without a door.

This is actually located near the opposite of Tian An Men Square, known as Di An Men. As funny as it sounds, one represents the Heaven (Tian) and another the Earth (Di). That concludes the second day of the trip around the forbidden city of conman.

And yes, we ended up taking cab to our hotel as it is located down south of Beijing. And most of the train service ends at 10PM (opposed to what we known, 11PM)