Happy Chinese New Years everyone! I just returned from a four-day tour to Beijing, China with some friends. It was truly an awesome experience and a great way to bring in Lunar New Years.
On Saturday morning Taylor, Kaley, Erin, and I ventured to Gimhae International to meet the tour group leaving from Busan for Beijing. The flight was about an hour and forty minutes. There were about 150 people on the tour so we were split up onto different teams and we were team pink/team C. We arrived in Beijing super excited to be in the newly built Terminal 3, which was created for the past Olympic Games. The terminal was massive and so modern! Once we gathered all our belongings we headed to bus C and met our tour guide for the weekend – Mark pronounced as Mar-kuh. From here we drove to our first tourist attraction of Beijing, the Temple of Heaven. We were all pretty stoked to be in China and learn some interesting historical facts from Mark-kuh. On the walk into the Temple of Heaven there was a corridor built where you would find Chinese locals playing hacky sack, cards, and singing at the tops of their lungs for pure enjoyment. In all honesty, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t do this indoors cause it was flippen cold but I guess there’s some history/beliefs/sacredness to why they do it in this corridor. There were also vendors trying to sell you post cards, panda hats, Olympic paraphernalia, etc. We were warned at the start of the trip to watch out for these people and make sure we mind our wallets due to pick pocketing. After the Temple of Heaven we headed to dinner to try out Beijing duck and other traditional Chinese dishes. This meal was not the greatest (still good) but some of the mystery meat in ball form, made us think it could be dog or cat. UGH! From here we headed to our 5 star hotel resort, which we called home for the next four days. This place was amazing! The beds were huge, the buffet breakfast was so great (American style!!!), duvets and down pillows, huge soft towels, and a BATH! Not having these amenities for 5 months makes you appreciate them a lot when you do.
Every morning we were woken up at 6:30am to get our full tour days in. Day two -our first visit was to a jade factory where we saw jade being carved and learned some facts about the second toughest stone next to diamonds. Then we had the opportunity to buy some jade goods (I’m not much of a jade fan) so we spent more time in that place than I would have liked to but whateves. From here we went to the Summer Palace where the Emperor would holiday at for the three hot months of the summer. We journeyed around the palace in the cold wind coming off the man-made lake. Mark-kuuuhhh kept going on about how far and long we were going to be walking over the whole trip but honestly it wasn’t very much. After this we jumped on the bus and went to the pearl factory, which had fresh and salt-water pearls. Belinda, the pearl guide, opened up a real fresh water pearl and there were about 30 pearls in that bad boy. We had time to check out all the pearls and I fell in love with a simple black pearl ring and bought it.
For the afternoon we went to our shopping portion of the tour. This was insane! We were brought to a market that was five stories tall and two stories deep. There was everything you could possibly think of there to buy. I managed to get Roxy snow pants, a Volcom hoodie, D&G purse, a dress, boots, jeans, pearls, and a bunch of other stuff and spent like no money! The bargaining game was intense and I’m sure my strategy worked to my advantage…I played the nice person card. Honestly you should try to pay less than half the price the vendors set. We had three hours in that place and I’m sure it was way more than enough. It was definitely a rush and overwhelming at times in that shoppers paradise. For dinner we enjoyed a Mongolian hot pot and it was by far my most fave meal of the trip. After dinner we headed to see an acrobatic show and it was def another high light of the trip. The stunts and moves that went on were amazing! It was a mini Cirque de Soliel. This day was also New Years Eve for China so we were graced with tons of fire works going off all over the city. They were super sweet.
Our third day, Monday, was the Great Wall experience! We were all super excited for this part of the trip. Learned how GREAT the Great Wall was; 8000 km GREAT is the Great Wall of China. WOAH. GREAT. We bused up to the part we were going to conquer and the morning was gorgeous. Each bus got a group shot at the bottom before we embarked on the trek of a lifetime and we were able to purchase the shot with a Great Wall info book. The winter months are very clear in China – well as clear as they can get for Asia, so we had prime photo weather for our trek up the 2000 stairs. The stairs we all uneven and we all broke a sweat conquering one of the seven manmade wonders of the world. I was happy that we started up the Great Wall when we did because when we were coming down there were tons of people starting their climbs up. It was seriously one of the coolest things I’ve done in my life and I def recommend it.
After the Great Wall we had some lunch then headed to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We walked through the Forbidden City and took many pictures and saw many temples and a garden.
In addition to the sites we were graced with a norm, which was foreign to us; pee time! OH pee time. We were walking through the garden of the Forbidden City and we see this kid squatting…totally just thought they were playing around like kids should…little that we knew the river she was squatting over was from her! UGH. At least her mom was considerate of others to plop her over a drain/sewer unlike the other encounters of pee time. We walked around all the temples of the Forbidden City. It was super cool to see and hear about this historic place. Once again while checking out a temple we see a kid pop a squat. We not only witnessed pee but….POOP. Yeah, that’s right, POOP! UGH. Then the kid wiped his bare ass on a railing. I was definitely in shock to see this “normality” of China’s. We had to investigate how these kids went about pee time. Turns out they had special snow pants with zippers on their ass-crotch and they walked around with them unzipped so when they had to do their business in the comfort of strangers they could.
Other than seeing one too many pee time squats we headed for Tiananmen Square. As we got closer to the biggest city center square in the world the crowds started to feel like how I imagined China – over populated. We followed Mark-kuuuhhh and his pink flag as best was we could and tried to snap decent photos of Chairman Mao.
To get to the actual square we went through an underground tunnel and had to go through security where they scanned bags/purses and confiscated lighters. I guess they don’t want the square to be known for having the world’s largest amount of cigarette butts or have the square burnt – haha! While in the square we heard a spiel from Mark-kuuuhhh then had some time to roam around. We saw one more attempt to pee time but her mother quickly picked her up cause we were pointing and laughing. We also had encounters with curious Chinese who thought foreigners were the coolest thing in the world. A lady was right up in our faces videoing from her cell phone; she was so happy but it was really the weirdest ever. Also we had a photo sesh with a Chinese family – they really wanted their sons to have pictures with us. I guess we were kind of like celebrities. We boarded our bus and made our way to a tea ceremony and tried some delicious tea. In all honesty, I was exhausted and really wanted a catnap. After the tea ceremony we went to our final dinner at another Mongolian place. Along with our meal we had some entertainment, which was kind of hilarious. Our table was located beside the speaker so I was nearly deaf after American Idol tryouts. After dinner the girls headed to a Kung-Fu show but I wasn’t feeling it slash had no more money so I went back to the hotel and had a bath. I was happy with my choice because the show was a little KUNGfusing and the bath was amazing! I hadn’t been in one in months.
Our trip came to an end with an early departure from our pimp hotel – 4:30am. Kaley and I decided to hit the snooze and catch some more ZZZs however, China new we what we had done and our telephone wakeup call proceeded to ring. WHAT THE!? How does China do it? Scare me. In all, the trip was a blast and such a great experience to bring in the Chinese New Year in the capital, Beijing. Until next time folks! Keep it real.
Oh and this Porn Star (shot) is for you Nathan. Cheers!
