Travel: China - Beijing

[starlight1968sg]

Anybody visited Summer Palace? The subway (Bei Gong Men) will bring us to the north gate. However, many recommended tours start at the east gate. The distance between them is not near. How to "solve" this?

Also, we need to take a boat to see 17 Arch Bridge. How much is the fare? Am not going to row the boat…

[cookieandmonster]

MUMMYOF3:

Hi,


Seek yr advice here. Hope someone can help.

I juz booked over the weekend 8days trip this dec n bringing my 3 boys n dad there. Bought some thick jeans n cotton thermal for them but my friend said jeans doesn't help as the wind will blow thru. Is it true? Wat kind of pants should I prepare?

Hi,

Which travel agent r u traveling with? How's the itinerary like?

[megatron]

starlight1968sg:

Anybody joined a local day tour (from a travel agency in Beijing) to Great wall?


Anyway visited Beijing Zoo to see the Panda?

I joined a local day tour when I was there. The tour guide was good and she was able to tell us the history and stories of the places we visited (Great wall at Ba da ling). But as usual they bring you to all types of shops (selling jade, sweets, chinese medicine etc).
The lunch was really bad.
We were brought to this room with people from all different tour groups to have our lunch.
You have to join a table (about 10 pax), then then they start to serve the food (with no server spoon!)
The food was terrible, fried vegetables, steam fish (a small one to be shared by 10 pax), some man tou.

[starlight1968sg]

megatron:

I joined a local day tour when I was there. The tour guide was good and she was able to tell us the history and stories of the places we visited (Great wall at Ba da ling). But as usual they bring you to all types of shops (selling jade, sweets, chinese medicine etc).

The lunch was really bad.
We were brought to this room with people from all different tour groups to have our lunch.
You have to join a table (about 10 pax), then then they start to serve the food (with no server spoon!)
The food was terrible, fried vegetables, steam fish (a small one to be shared by 10 pax), some man tou.

Thanks for sharing.
After reading many interesting stories, we have decided to go to The Great Wall on our own. Hope we will not encounter much problems. The only issue is we are unlikely to cover the Ming's Tombs.

[verykiasu2010]

starlight1968sg:

megatron:

I joined a local day tour when I was there. The tour guide was good and she was able to tell us the history and stories of the places we visited (Great wall at Ba da ling). But as usual they bring you to all types of shops (selling jade, sweets, chinese medicine etc).

The lunch was really bad.
We were brought to this room with people from all different tour groups to have our lunch.
You have to join a table (about 10 pax), then then they start to serve the food (with no server spoon!)
The food was terrible, fried vegetables, steam fish (a small one to be shared by 10 pax), some man tou.

Thanks for sharing.
After reading many interesting stories, we have decided to go to The Great Wall on our own. Hope we will not encounter much problems. The only issue is we are unlikely to cover the Ming's Tombs.

rest assured that you will not encounter problems going to The Great Wall on your own.

sure problems : hunger, nature's call, souvenirs - buy or not .......but they have fast food KFC, reasonably well kept toilets, etc so no worry

[starlight1968sg]

Thanks verykiasu2010.

We are preparing a packed lunch to settle our hunger. Just hope that we can still tolerate the toilets

[hquek]

Didn’t quite catch the initial question, but I hired a driver for the day. Think it cost 600RMB or so. We visited the Great Wall - think it’s the Mutianyu side (someone told us the usual spot is overrun with tourist). Then he drove us on to the Ming tombs (only visited the main one).


Finally on the way back, we asked him to help us find an orchard to pick fruits. He talked to a farmer on the wayside and we went to his farm. Very tiny place but there were shorty peach trees all brimming with fruits. Each fruit was covered by brown paper. Kids had loads of fun picking those. The peaches we picked were charged by kg - much more expensive than supermarket; but all the fruits were sweet…even a green one I picked by mistake.

Let me know if you want his contact. He was introduced by friend of friend. quite ok guy.

[starlight1968sg]

Today I went to DeShengMen to look for bus 919. OMG, there are so many buses 919. All said express with bus fare RMB12 and all are light green and white. Some said the journey was 1.5hr, others said 3hr. Which is the right bus 919 to take?

[galgal]

I'm going to beijing in Mid Dec, thinking to go to ski resort for 2 nights stay. Anyone been to ski resort? Which ski resort is nice to stay for 2 nights, we do not know how to ski at all.

[starlight1968sg]

For info:

The public bus 919 to Badaling Great Wall is gradually being replaced by bus 877 which is also a public bus and bus fare is 12 yuan but with Yi Ka Dong (similar to our ezlink card), the fare is only 4.80 yuan.
The journey is about an hour plus and there are hardly any stops during the journey to Badaling.
We alighted at Xiong Le Gu (where we saw sunbears). The ticket inclusive of sliding car ride is 60 yuan. We didnt take the sliding car. But we walked for a short distance (about 15min) and reached another entrance where we paid 45 yuan to enter. We missed the museum and climbed from the base to the highest point ("level" 10 ?). The sliding car brought tourists to "level" 4 and we saw cable cars too.
We started climbing at 10.30am and left around 2.30pm, inclusive of a few breaks for our legs, take pic plus take a sip of water plus eat buns.