Of Forbidden city, Confucius temple and Lama temple

We bought the return Beijing-Dalian train ticket which cost us about RMB 500. The train we took from Dalian to BJ. You can find the post I wrote about the train in China here.



I stayed at Beijing City Central youth hostel when I was at Beijing. The location was very good as it is opposite the Beijing railway station and right in front of the subway station. The best thing is one room only cost us around RMB 130 per night. Damn cheap k? We had two single bed, a huge room, air conditioned and TV! We had to use the shared bathroom but it is still something for such a cheap price. Thanks Fernando for recommending the hotel.

The first morning at the hotel was hilarious. I saw Fernando walking pass the reception counter when we check in. I shouted his name for a few times but he can’t hear me. He looked surprise when he saw me. Hahaa.. He was with his bro and another friend. We headed to Tiananmen and the Forbidden city after we took some rest at the hotel. We met F again at the subway station. Trust me, we had no idea on how the subway station works. It is so different from the one in Malaysia. There’s no proper maps/guide. What they have is a list of station. Grrrrrr. We took line 2 from Beijing station, interchange to line 1 at JianGuoMen and stop at TianAnMen East. The subway ticket cost us RMB 2 per ticket no matter how far you travel. The bus is definitely cheaper but you need to know where to take it and you need to understand Chinese as it is not English user friendly at all. The road is BJ is different from DL as they divide the road to North, South, East and West. Better still, they have road name like Beijing Railway station north road west. So confusing can die k?
Ai Ling and I bought a map in BJ but it was useless as there are around 300 bus routes. Never buy a map for BJ. I had China Google map application on my cell phone and it helps a lot when we were travelling on our own.

TianAnMen East station is located right in front of TianAnMen Square. If you don’t know where to go, just follow the crowd until you see portrait of MaoZeDong.


Then, you will know that you are at the right place. We didn’t went up to the 天安门城楼 because we wanted to go there after Forbidden City but we ended up at the other door which is far away from the main door.


So, we skipped thatone. Entrance fee for Forbidden City was RMB 40 for student but for adult is RMB 80. By the way, student ID means for degree student only and Master student need to pay full price ticket. They have this digital tour guide thingy which cost RMB 10 for mandarin and RMB 40 for foreign language. You need to pay a deposit of RMB 100 as well.

It was very informative and they did explain every single detail about the building. For example, “look at the pillars on your right, how many dragon can you see? Then, they will start explaining every single thing.” Lol For places which you had already visited, the dot will appear red colour. It is very convenient especially when you are alone and you don’t need to pay for an expensive tour.
Forbidden city is so huge!


Just a reminder, bring enough water and food when you were at the Forbidden City. We didn’t visit all the taman-taman and place in the Forbidden City as it was really huge and we gave up after spending few hours getting lost inside there.LOL I remember F told his friend that FC is just a piece of red colour crap. Hahaha.no offence ya?

We walked to WangFuJing which is like Bukit Bintang in Malaysia. Yeah, we walked from Forbidden City to WangFuJing. As you walk, you might see people selling bottles of Beijing yogurt like the one below.

Trust me, it is the best drink which you can have in such a hot weather. A bottle is around RMB3 to RMB 4. Never pay more than that. Haha.
I don’t like WangFuJing as it is another tourist trap. We asked the local beforehand on where to eat at BeiJing and they told us WangFuJing.

The price of snack there is so so so expensive. Omg. RMB10 for a snack like the one below. It is only a crispy snack made of flour and nothing special about it.They called it 炸响铃. And you can also bargain for the snack. From RMB 10 to RMB 5. wtf right but that is China. lol


fml. The best thing is it doesn’t taste good at all. Things are never cheap in WangFuJing but you can try buying souvenirs there. You must be daring enough to cut the price till 80% of the original price and start bargaining. If they don’t give you the price you want, always walk away and you will get what you want. Hahaha..But, we did found place which is better for buying souvenirs.

From WangFuJing, we moved on to YongHeGong Lama Temple(Sunway line 4). The ticket is RMB 24 per entry but student can only pay RMB 12 with student ID.

I think the Lama temple is a very nice place to visit. Perhaps much better compared to the Forbidden City. There’s exhibition inside too.


From YongHeGong, we walk to GuoZiJian and the Confucius temple. The entrance fee is RMB 10 and you can get to visit two places at once. GuoZiJian is the place where people sit for exam last time.They are 4-star tourist spot.


They have exhibition that exhibit exam scroll from ancient and also history of the exam system last time.

It is a very interesting place.
In my opinion, there’s nothing much to see at Confucius temple.
If you want to make a wish, you need to pay RMB100 to get something like this and you can write your wish on it.

@ Confucius temple


It is nice to walk around the Confucius temple and also GuoZiJian. If the weather is hot, you can have a bottle of yogurt drink too.


After that, we head back to the hostel and went to SanLiTun for Fernando’s birthday celebration. Sanlitun is the hot place for young people I think. Too bad we went there at night and we don’t have time to hang around. There’s a row of shops around there where they called it ‘bar/pubs’. According to my experience, we can’t have too high hope on China pubs. I was right. Their pub is likemamak style. Can you imagine that? Well, that is China and we can’t expect much from them. Never visit pubs/clubs there as it is way beyond your expectation.

End of Day 1.