One Better

Here's another Beijing video created by Ching. It's not obvious that we're all still hung over.

Made in China from Ching Lao on Vimeo.

Beijing Picture Video

We took lots of pictures during our Beijing trip, here are a few that I wasn't able to include in my previous blog entries, some unflattering, some funny but they sure captured the moment. 

Happy Valley

*Image heavy post

Since most of us are fans of theme parks, we squeezed in Happy Valley in our itinerary. From what I've read, there are three theme parks in Beijing but Happy Valley is supposed to be the most exciting. It's also near our hotel, a few MRT stations and a bus ride away.

We got there at around 11am since we had a late start. There were no queues at the ticket counter and it didn't really look like much from outside. Entrance is 160 RMB (1050 PHP).

This is what immediately greeted us and got us all excited. There were several rides that won't be operational until 2pm and we thought this roller coaster is one of them, unfortunately, this ride remained closed the entire day. 

The park is really huge. We stayed there until 4pm and we were only able to cover half of the park and this is after the fact that we didn't even have to queue for the rides since there were not a lot of visitors.

Most of the rides are extreme which I really really like. 

Our favorites would have to be the one below which we nicknamed Superman because of your position during the ride. It looks scary but it's not, it's exciting and fun. 

Another one of our favorite is another scary looking roller coaster ride.

We also saw the drop which they were mocking because it wasn't as high as the one in Genting. 

Little did we know that right around the corner is the drop's other siblings. Taller and looking all smug. 

There's also the 4D ride which I recommend you skip if you're going there. It's got to be the most boring 4D movie ever, I dozed off a few minutes after it started, no kidding. 

The last attraction we tried before leaving is the ghost house. It was one of the biggest ghost house I've even been to but it's not as scary as the ones in Manila. Still, Abby and Haydz who fell flat on their faces when they got pushed would sure remember this the most. 

We sure had fun! Too bad we really couldn't squeeze all the rides in one day.











Here's Eli and Noel looking all excited!

After Happy Valley, we headed to the railway station, Eli suggested we go to nearby Tianjin so we can experience the bullet train. One way ride is about 40 RMB (260 PHP). We loved the trains, it was very spacious and clean. It has more leg room compared to a normal airbus. 

We actually didn't get to see how fast we were going because it was already dark outside. Most of us took this train ride to rest, we were all fast asleep during the two-way ride. 

Tianjin is pretty and bright but we really didn't get to explore the city since we had to catch the train ride back. 

We then headed to Xidan to have a really late dinner since it's also a pretty popular shopping place but when we got there, we really didn't have any choice as to where to eat at since only Pizza Hut is open. I have to say though that service is top notch! We were all very pleased with the wait staff who attended to us. Lastly, the food is also good and their chocolate cake is one of the best I've ever had. Yum!

Great Wall and Modern Beijing

*Image heavy post

We were up early the next day since we'll be going to The Great Wall and travel time is about two hours. You can go to different parts of the wall but we all decided on Mutianyu since the cable car and the slide are there. We also read that the place is not as packed.

The hotel got the cabs for us, we negotiated a price, I don't remember how much but it was pretty cheap for a two-way trip, at the very least we will have transportation readily available when we're beat.

There are two companies selling tickets to the cable cars which got us a bit confused.

As it turns out, there are two ways to get to the Great Wall, by cable car or by sky ride (which they also call the cable car). They go in different directions but since the operators of the sky ride also operates the slide, we opted for the sky ride.

It was the perfect day to be there. The weather was great and there were not a lot of people. We walked the length of the Great Wall until we were too tired to take another step forward. The walk back to where we first started sure is hard. It was the first and only time, I sweated like crazy and took my jackets off in Beijing.

We had lunch at a forgettable place our cabbies took us to. After that, we requested that they drop us off at the Bird's Nest instead of the hotel but they were asking for 100RMB (660 pesos) more. We freshened up at the hotel for about an hour before heading back out.

Upon exiting the MRT, the bird's nest and the cube greet you. We all went our own ways taking lots of pictures before finally meeting up at the far end.

We then bought souvenirs from the sidewalk vendors and it was quite interesting because as they were preparing the things that we wanted, a group of police officers approached the vendors, I got scared a bit but the officers were nice. They waited for the vendors to finish their business before asking them to scoot. One officer even held the huge bag of souvenirs of the vendor.

We were also surprised when one vendor caught up with us and insisted she replace one souvenir that we bought that was not working. We were telling her that it was okay but she was really insistent. She wanted us to come with her but we didn't want to. She ran all the way to where they were hiding their stuff and gave us a spanking brand new souvenir.

Nicole recommended that we try Bellagio for late night desserts so we headed there since we haven't had dinner yet. Good thing there were Chinese characters on the website so we had no difficulty asking the cab drivers where to go.

Food was very good and the desserts even if it was already freezing cold outside seemed way too good to pass up.

Cabs were almost non-existent so we had no choice but to walk all the way to the MRT. We didn't know where it was so we got slightly lost but thankfully we were able to find it after a while. Thankfully, the trains were no longer crowded since we were all really tired.