Yay! So I’ve finally gotten round to it! Posting photos of my vacation! Yay me!
A rundown of the dates…! 21st to 29th… well 30th actually, because it’ll be 1am on the 30th when the plane touches down. Yes I know I have horrible handwriting!
Well. Naturally, our trip begins at the airport
Can you guess where this was taken from?
No?
The toilet!
Yes! The freaking toilet! A toilet with a view!
Decorations at the airport. All these are taken after immigration.
Christmas tree!
Mickey mouse decorations at the airport.
Cute recycling bins.
Another view out onto the tarmac. This was taken from the boarding gate.
And that’s the plane we flew in! We flew by China airlines. The ride to Beijing was possibly the worst ride I ever had. There was a lot of turbulence, and somehow the air conditioning(?) wasn’t adequate. It got so cold on the plane. I’d never been that cold before on a plane I tell you! I was freezing! Had to get my jacket out! And for once I was using the blanket. None of the other flights I took on this holiday trip was any where as cold.
We reached Bejing w/o delay, despite that not so pleasant plane ride.
It was cold outside at the Beijing International airport. We had our winter down jackets in our hand carry so we had no problems bringing them out to put on. The taxis in China are all the small, sedan cars. And the drivers put stuff (like buckets and what not) in the back of their boot. Most likely on purpose…so if you have loads of luggage you have to use two taxis. We had two pieces of big luggage, and a number of small carry ons… so yeah. Thankfully there was this 7 seater taxi - that was used for fetching businessman/those on conference, but when there were no events they fetch normal customers too. The driver was a friendly young chap, and they charged a fix rate. Because it would otherwise be impossible to book a 7 seater taxi, we got his phone number and book him for our return trip to the airport too.
The hotel room! Our hotel in Beijing was situated just a short walk away from Wang Fu Jing street, the prime shopping street of Beijing, the equivalent of Singapore’s Orchard road.
It’s a really pretty hotel. 4 stars after all. There’s this translucent panel where you can see in the bath. Somehow they like doing that in hotels eh? I see that in hotels quite often (not that I go on holidays often though!)
That’s our luggage. Newly bought for this trip! :P Japan made. I hope it lasts long! It’s really light. We’ve had bad experiences with several luggages where the wheels crumble and fall apart… hope this one won’t be like that!
It was pretty late by the time we reached our hotel. And it was cold outside so we were starving! We had Dong Lai Shun mutton steamboat at Wang Fu Jing. Delicious! The meat… ahhhh heavenly! That sort of… stickiness of the lamb that just fills our mouth and overwhelms you. It’s been so long since I had such good lamb! We were lucky that day! Normally there’d be a long queue, but I guess cos when we reached it was kinda late already, past the usual dinner crowd, so there was no queue! I ate this restaurant once before when I went with Beijing with my family really long ago. I think that was more than 10 years ago? Beijing then and now has changed loads. Plus it was so long ago that I couldn’t remember a lot of stuff anymore. What I did remember though was that the steamboat pot… coal is placed in the middle to boil the water (still using coal now). But last time that ‘chimney’ in the middle was really really long. Now it’s… truncated lol! We still saw some of the pots with long chimneys in other tables. I guess it broke off because of wear and tear?
Well that bowl you see there, it's a sauce. You dip the meat in it after cooking. And it's really more like shabu shabu then steamboat in the sense that you don't dump the meat in the soup. You just dip it in with your chopsticks and removed it as soon as it's cooked, in maybe... 10 seconds? The meat are sliced very thinly after all. Ah yes and the sauce. It's a peanut based sauce, with some salted veggie sauce mixed in. We managed to buy the peanut and veggie sauces in sg, and you've made similar sauces ourselves at home. Just that we don't make it so thick and so salty. Oh we add in our own ingredients too, like wasabi. It's nice! Trust me!
The wonderful, wonderful meat.
Buns with stir fried lamb. Yummy! The buns are really… how should I put it? Tough? Hard? It’s made of unrefined grains - so hard but very fragrant, and really filling.
There! The name of the restaurant! XD
We wandered around Wang Fu Jing street after dinner. There’s this food street there, with loads of stalls selling street snacks. Most were closed by the time we went that night though…
There’s loads of shops selling BBQ stuff. Including strange food like BBQ scorpions (yes those stuff at the top of the counter in those wooden buckets), starfish, and silkworm pupa. We didn’t try any that night, though we did try the scorpions on another day. We tried the starfish and silkworm pupa in our previous trip, and it wasn’t very nice so we didn’t try it again this time. The spiders my parents tried on their previous trip to Beijing and they weren’t inclined to try it again this time, and I wasn’t particularly interested either… Well of course they also BBQ normal stuff like lamb, squid, and quails etc.
We wondered into a mall called Beijing APM. Pretty much everything was closed by that time, but the Christmas decorations were still lit. It’s the prettiest Xmas decorations I saw in Beijing.
Some random statues in that same mall.
OHHHH And this! *Dances around in glee*
HUH? What’s so special about this glass staircase you ask? Well. I just read Steve Job’s official biography some time back, and in it they talked about Steve’s obsession with making the staircase entire made of glass. And eventually that glass staircase became like a centrepiece of every Apple store. Yes. This is an Apple store! What’s so exciting about an Apple store you ask? Well, for one you can call me an Apple fan. And two, I live in Singapore, there are NO Apple stores here! Only authorised resellers. :( I’m still waiting for the day Apple opens an Apple store here! Plus, hey it’s quite an amazing piece of architecture right? A staircase made of more than 90% glass. Like all the supports are GLASS. Kinda scary too eh?
Amazing eh?
The main entrance of the Apple store, with a huge LCD screen advertising iPhone 6. Diagonally opposite was an LCD screen (smaller though) advertising Samsung hahaha! XD
Well. The ‘jing’ in Wang Fu Jing actually means well. And that’s the famous well that got the street named after it. Yeah. It’s now sealed and covered up with a little cover that looks like a decorated manhole cover no matter how look at it. Lol. No wonder I didn’t remember the well at all, those my sis remembered. Once I got there I recalled though. Especially this...
This door! To some idk what… right behind the well. I remembered snapping a photo of this last time too! Cos it kinda looks nicer than the well? LOL! Fancy myself thinking the exact same thing like a decade later.
Random snapshots as we head back to the hotel.
This! That thing on the LCD screen! Have you seen it before? It’s like what was always shown on the TV when I was young… when nothing is airing on TV that’s what is shown on the TV screen! Nostalgic! Hahaha! I wonder if it’s the same thing shown in other countries too… hmmm…
That’s our hotel! The Tian An Rega Hotel! Pretty eh?
And that’s all for Day 1! Phew. Finally finished the post hahaha! XD That was a really long post eh? And this was just day one woah!
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