The Old Beijing

One day, we asked our friends where is the must visit sites in Beijing and they told us that it will be the Old Beijing, which is called 南罗鼓巷(Nan luo Gu Xiang) in mandarin. To go there, you can either stop at 'GuLou' station or take bus from BeiHai park. There's another station but I seriously forgot the name. The tip is ask the local and they will lead you the way =)

Actually Old Beijing is a large area formed from many Hutong (胡同). There's many small streets which linked to each other. If I'm not mistaken, Houhai (后海） and the YongHe Lama Temple is just nearby. If you love photography and antique buildings/houses, you must visit this place. Almost all the houses in that area are protected.

At the beginning of the street.
The map and brief introduction about the place.
The main street. This place is good for shopping, search for unique cafes, for food and unique souvenirs. If you love to take photo, it will be a good place for you too. If you want cheap clothes, never by from this street. You just need to walk a little bit to the street behind it and you will find very very cheap bargain. For example, a dress selling at the price of RMB25. Never never buy something from the main street.

One of the cafe there. As you can see, all the buildings there are very unique. I think it is just the right place for people to take pictures. Perhaps should dress up for Old Beijing next time :)

The Panda House.

One of the hangout place.

Our Chinese friends strongly recommended this dessert called 双皮奶(SuangPi Nai) as the must eat dessert in Beijing. It is so famous that a few shops is selling the same thing. All you need to do is to find the right one. The picture below show the most famous shop(Wen Yu) in Old Beijing. Everything is homemade and the stocks are limited. The queue is very very long and you need to do is just be patient.

Their opening hour is from 11am-they finish selling their products on that day. See? We were there around 3pm on the first day but everything was sold and the shop was closed. =( But, we tried our luck on the second day and the shop was open \o/

If you miss the famous shop, dont worry. You dont have to go to the other few shops to get the same dessert. You just need to go to the lane behind the shop and search for this one. Apparently, it was opened by the sifu of WenYu. Cool right? They had a brief introduction on the dessert as well. Apparently it is from the old dynasty.

If you are wondering how it looks like, it looks like this ! haha. It tasted a bit like soya but it is not soya. I think it is made of milk. The price for this is RMB 8. Other than this, there's other dessert such as yogurt and etc. According to them, it gives good skin complexion. And now I know why their skin look so nice.

I think I will still go back there if I happen to visit Beijing again. There's so much to see at Old Beijing. :)

I shall end my post here.
To see more post from Beijing,please click here.

Till then.

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.

You are not a man if you have not been to......

THE GREAT WALL !
不登长城就不是好汉!

Climbing The Great Wall was indeed an amazing experience. Plus, it is a detoxification journey because you will sweat a lot. We chose Badaling great wall for our first experience as we were told that it suits first timer the best.

We travelled to beijing north station and bought a ticket at the counter. I would advice you to buy the ticket one or two days earlier as the train to badaling is very limited. We met a guy from Singapore and he told us that he can only buy the 'standing' ticket because he was late. Standing ticket means you have to stand all the way throughout the journey.


The train travelled around 110km/h which is pretty fast. The seats are spacious and they can turn the seats around.

When you reach the station, you will see this sign or you can just follow the crowd. All of them will go to the same place for sure.



The front door of Badaling.

They do sell tickets in the train. They will tell you that the queue is very long and try to persuade you to buy the combo ticket (great wall+museum). We chose to buy the tickets at the counter instead as we don't really trust any ticket agent/tour agent in China after the trip to Lv Shun. The best thing is they offer student price too! (RM 22.50 if I'm not mistaken)

Once you get in, you will see what awaits you in the beginning of the journey. Be prepared for sure.

We took the first picture together at the beginning of the climb. We were still very semangat at the very first place.



There's a few place with stairs and some without stairs. But, the slope are steep. very very steep. It was like 60 or 75 degree. Luckily there's handle all along the way so that we can hold it to support our body so that we can go further. Do wear a pair of good shoes if you do not want to roll down the great wall.

This picture was taken before we pass the first hill. Look at the slope!

We finished the great wall in 2 hours plus. It was pretty fast actually. The reason is because our train reached there around 11am and our train back to beijing was 3pm. So, we didn't rest much because we were afraid that we will missed the train.

If you are going to visit Badaling, do walk till the end as the scenery will be different and the sense of achievement is very fullfilling. We met a few people who went there with a tour and they told us that their tour guide asked them to walk back when they reach the first hill. They do not have enough time to finish their journey. They do sell souvenirs and food at the exit.

There's buses at the exit which will send you to Beijing city. Or you can just walk for 10-20 minutes from the exit to the main entrance and then you can take the train back. The taxi driver there told us that the walk will take us about 50 minutes and he wanted to charge us RMB 100 for that. We didn't take the taxi as we were not rushing for time at all. Luckily the walk was short enough :D

I do think that your stamina must be real good to complete the whole journey. Bring more water and also some snack. Btw, the toilet is very far from each other and we will need to walk very far to the toilet. I didn't went in and hence I can't tell how's the toilet. :)

alright, that's all for badaling.