Fareast Beijing

The day where we arrive in Beijing, get lost, eventually find the hostel and eat duck! Stepping of the plane in Beijing it was noticeably hot; but inside the airport was nice and cool... and suspiciously quiet. Apart from the others on our flight (of which there were very few, we'd had about 4 seats each to relax on) it was pretty much deserted until we reached passport control, where suddenly queues formed and we had to wait for ages. Its funny, I always seem to get really nervous going thro...

We stayed in a pretty cool hostel called "The Far East International Youth Hostel" (Yuan Dong Bin Guan). It had a 24 hour coffee bar where they serve great coffee and play movies for free. They also had a 'do it yourself' laundry room which was luxury for us. The people working there were also very friendly and helpful. It didn't take them long to recognize who we were. There was a phone in the laundry room that we made good use of while we were there. Whenever we couldn't get a hold of someo...

written by Rudi Beijing, 16-5-2004 So yesterday we moved to the Far east youth hostel and went back to the bank. They assured us no money was withdrawn from our account! so that good news. We had a look around the famous tiananmen square but not to long as it was raining. So we HAD to go and have some food ;-) We are in a dorm room now and slept fine....until that little break where some of our roommates friends decided to break in to our room te steal his watermelon ?!?! And today it rains a...

Written by Jeroen China, Beijing, 14-05-2004 After 1.5 days in the train we arive at around 14.30 at Beijin Central Station. To me always an exciting moment. New country, Big city, what is there to do and how do things work? Up till here we pretty much had everything organised. Now we are free to go or stay when we want. first things first... We need money so we start looking for an ATM. We try to use it and only get a receipt but no money. as we can't read chinese we have no clue what the re...

So at long last we reached the capital of China. Much has been said and written about this city so I will spare most of the boring details outside of what you can see in our pictures. For one, Bejing has an amazing metro line, better than anything we have encountered on our trip. It is also brand new (finished just before the Olympics) so this is probably the reason why. It took us everywhere we needed to go for less than a $1 each time. Better than anything we saw in Europe by far. Bejing wa...

After having a crazy evening in San Francisco the night before I left for China, my buddies dropped me off at SFO where I would fly straight to Beijing. I flew on China Airlines, and had no one in the seats next to me, so I spread out and went to sleep for a few hours. Finally, after what seemed like the longest flight of my life, we touched down in Beijing. We pulled into the brand new terminal they had built for the Olympics. I must say it was quite possible the nicest terminal I have ever ...

************************************** Update - February 2006 *************************************** I've been fortunate enough to get back to Beijing, and China, as part of the another trip. Check out the entry here. It's a bit more informative than this entry and has some nice pictures (but I would say that, right?) ************************************** Update - February 2006 *************************************** We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment - Hilaire Belloc ...

*************************************** ** Update - February 2008 ************************************* I made reference below to this being my third time in Beijing. Well, I made it back for a forth time in February 2008 as part of my ill-fated Honeymoon, enroute to Tibet. Check out my entries which begin here. I've been told they make for enjoyable reading so you might actually like them. *************************************** ** Update - February 2008 *************************************...

In cooler climates, there's a point when you feel you can't get any colder. When your fingers and toes are in the first stages of frostbite but you don't realise because they've been numb for hours. When you feel that every inch of skin, muscle and bone has been snap frozen. When you are thankful the contents of your nose have turned to ice instead of dripping all over your scarf. For us, that point was today. Ok, so it was only -2 degrees Celsius, but our introduction to Beijing, China, is a...

17th
- 23rd
We ended up being in
Beijing for quite a bit longer than expected and had a great time.
Rather than go through everyday I'm just going to try and remember
the main things that happened.



No trip to Beijing would
be complete without a trip to the Forbidden City and Tiannamen Square
so we headed there on the first day. Don't get me wrong the Forbidden
City is very impressive but the throngs of tourists around ...