Yi Wang Lou Hotel Chengde

... directions. The views of the valley were even more beautiful than the falls to me. Further up I ran into a Chinese woman who fancied herself and English speaker and quickly locked me in generic conversation. I did my best to humor her but she ended up thinking I was born in Tianjin, then asking me how I got here (bus or car). I said bike, she said no...<br><br>Anyways, past that little sub-adventure, above the falls there was a little stone hut with ...

... exactly what you'd expect, and we opted to take the side path (far down, far up again, but not far as the bird flies) to a nearby 'frog' rock. Here I climbed to the top and got some fun pictures, and we climbed through a small hole in the backside of the rock (apparently that allows you to have good knees for the rest of your life).<br><br> Here also, there was an old man selling little red straw ...

... at the various accessible points within a day-trip distance of Beijing. The closest of these are known to be over-run with tours and hawkers, which I was desperate to avoid, so I found myself on a minbus at 7a.m., for the three-hour drive to Jinshanling, which is supposed to be much less developed. It was a good choice, with only a handful of other visitors along the ancient trail - even the hawkers weren't too pushy ...

Well, I'll keep the personal bits of this leg of my trip to a minimum. Let me just say that this was the first time I met with my gals parents and family (basically all of whom were home for the holiday), with which we stayed for 7 days all while taking in the sites and new experiences of the surrounding lands.<br><br> The rest of the drive from Jixian was very fun and I took a lot of ...

... dans les environs de Beijing. C'etait vraiment incroyable, et ca ne nous a coute que 8$, et il y avait trop de canard pour moi et Josee, on a du en laisser. Bref nos experiences culinaires s'ameliorent.<br><br>Apres Chengde, on retourne pour une derniere journee a Beijing. On ira voir d'autres parties de la grande muraille a Badaling et visiter les tombes de la dynatie Ming. On espere que ca en vaudra le detour.<br><br>A bientot,<br>Sylvain et Josee

... Friday night, it turns out that you CAN have too much of a good thing, and you can definitely have too many noodles and dumplings, especially when served up for breakfast! On the plus side, shrink-wrapped chicken's feet, pig's snouts and shelves and shelves of sausage meat of dubious origin have been available in abundance since we crossed the border. We're really missing proper cheese - they don't really have it here, save for the occasional plastic ...

... pork or just enjoy the experience if Sichuan Hotpot on a cold night and finish it off with drinking with the local on one of few small bar in Chengde. <br><br>Bishu Sanzhuang probably contain 10% main palace and 90% park. Woke up early in the morning to beat the tour group, Fortunelty it was covered with snow from the night before, making it more beautiful. the downside, it took me longer to cover the ground due to the slippery ground (I fell the ...

... food and tried to find a table to fit at quickly so that i could get to the real reason i had come the temples. Well there were no places to sit and eat so i was just standing nibbling on my fries when a Chinese invited me to come take their extra seat. Well i did and we just sat and talked in Chinese until i was done eating my lunch. Then i left KFC walked two blocks and ducked my head into the apartment part of the Agricultural Bank of China. My hope was to run into some of my old ...

I get the impression Chengde is a more typical Chinese town than Beijing. Which is to say, not somewhere you would like to spend too much time. Large and crowded, very built up and polluted and generally not too much worth seeing. At least it had a few good restaurants. The main reason to visit Chengde is the Puning si temple. Half ...

... was class mate Emily. She is Cambodian/Chinese-Australian, but everyone just looks at her and thinks she is Chinese. Unfortunately for her, this means everyone assumes she will speak Chinese. After we pushed ourselves onto the train, stepped around people camped out in the aisles, and kicked a man out of our seat, we sat down and started talking. The five Chinese squished into a three-person bench across from us became bug-eyed. They were staring ...