Zaijian Beijing!

Better late than never as they say... As planned, I've left Beijing on the 31st of March and had a great farewell party with a bunch of people from work. The plan was to meet in HouHai Hao 5 (a bar located in HouHai as its name indicates) and see from there what we would be up for... of course, we ended up in Vics!!! I had great fun - Thanks guys!

Here's the slideshow...

Hardcore visiting before the finish line!

This is typical of me... always leaving the best till the very last minute!

Since the "old invaders" arrived I went to Yonghegong (Lama Temple), Hongqiao Market as well as some other places to practice my bargaining skills, also Sydney, the Olympic sites, 798 Art District, the Great Wall at Badaling (again!), Changling Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City and TianAnMen Square. FYI I absolutely loved Sydney!!! Since I'm very very lazy, I will leave you with some pictures to look at instead of me chattering away...

Images are stronger than words and also time saving :D

My folks acting French in Beijing!

Yonghegong (Lama Temple)

Sydney's QVB (Queen Victoria Building on George Street)

Sydney's Opera House

Sydney's harbour & famous bridge

Nice architectural building in Sydney

Typical "Have a wonderful day!" Free Hugs dude

Sydney's harbour bridge by night

Party OZ style!

The Beijing team (part of it)

Monorail in Sydney

The famous Bondi beach
(reminded me of the South West of France... aaah home sweet home)

Beijing Olympic Stadium (aka the Birds Nest)

Beijing Olympic swimming pool (aka the Water Cube)

798 Art District masterpieces

The "old invaders" at the Great Wall

I'm on top of the world!

Rush hour in Badaling

Not so Teddy bears in Badaling

The Sacred Way leading to the Ming Tombs

Silly me being beaten up

The Forbidden City or Palace Museum

The Gate of Heavenly Peace

Mao's Mausoleum in TianAnMen Square

If I get one last boost of energy before my flight on Monday, I might post again but this is very likely to be my last post... we'll see! Hope you've enjoyed this blog!

Lazy bee keeping bee-zee

I've been quite lazy with my blog lately but I have a good reason for it... I've been out and about since last Thursday night and didn't find a minute to make a post!

Thursday
Joe came back from London for two weeks and a we decided to throw another going away party for him when he left again :) We went to one of the real hidden gems of Beijing. A place called Ball House, in HouHai - literally impossible to find! I took the address with me to go there, then told my taxi driver, then phoned the place to make sure the taxi driver would understand and ended up phoning a friend to guide me to the door. This was a bit like "Who wants to be a Millionaire" as I've used all my Lifelines! Anyway, this place is great. It looks like somebody's living room and has pool and foosball tables with sofas around. We had a very relaxing night out for a change!

So many options... which one would you go for?

This looks like a homemade foosball table with car engine parts as players and dried fruits as balls (a bit like in Friends with Chandler's crazy flatmate)

Friday
A few of us went out for dinner right beside the office. This place used to be their regular "canteen" before one actually opened in the office. Again, we haven't learned from our mistakes and ordered way way way too much food! But still, the bill was about 15€ for 6 people! I love this country!!!

Chinese feast!

Saturday
I went out on an international night-out with KunAn (representing Malaysia), Albert (American/Korean - another ambassador) and Judy (from Taiwan) to Awana, a great Malaysian restaurant that I had already been to. We almost didn't dine there as there was a private party but KunAn who has connections got us in :) I love Malaysian food. Between Malaysian and Taiwanese, my heart is torn! As I'm not too fond of super spicy food, I stick to these two. You think you actually like spicy food until you try Sichuan or Hunan... especially those "numbing mouth chili peppers"... much too hot!

We then went to a horrible deadly empty bar next door to wait for Lu who was on her way and had these mini drinks that tasted weird... From left to right, you have a Screw Driver, a White Russian, a Margarita and my empty Pina Colada glass :)

We left this horrible bar never to return and headed to CJW, a lounge bar with a jazz band and a great singer from Vegas. Great night! I unfortunately can't load any videos of the band since YouTube is currently returning a broken link. But let's try to embed it through Blogger... that's a first for me :)

Sunday
I went out for dinner with Lucy to one of my favourite restaurants close by, Taiwanese food! We then took a taxi to join others at Party World, a huge 24h karaoke chain! That was great craic! They had a few songs listed in French but they're all very old songs that I've heard maybe once or twice but wouldn't even dare to destroy ;P I found comfort in English songs such as "Shape of my heart" by Sting or "Careless Whisper" by George Michael to name a few. I know it's a lame choice but songs are listed alphabetically by title, not by singer which makes it really hard! I even sang "Bring me to life" by Evanescence and was joined by Yu-Kuan on that one! Of course I ended up singing the guy's part and he did the woman's :) My real shining moment was on "Crawling" by Linkin park that I rocked with another girl. I have to admit that reading Chinese while you sing seems like quite a challenge but it looks pretty on the screen. We even had some Japanese and Cantonese tunes...

Monday
Tina took me to play tennis with a few others from work. It's time I get my a** moving and get fit again. We played for 1 and a half hour without stopping and it really felt good to play again, even with bad shoes and a rented tennis racket :) But I'm far from being fit. Today is Wednesday and I still can barely walk!!! Feels like my Great Wall experience all over again!

Tuesday
Chris from MV was up for a small pub crawl in HouHai. We went out to dinner before that with Zhijun and Lili and arrived in HouHai at around 8.30. We did 4 bars and then called it a night.

Zhijun & Lili - still early and wide awake :)

...which brings me to Wednesday! I am now "officially" on holidays and it feels pretty damn gooooood! But I won't get a break for too long as "THE INVADERS" are coming tomorrow in the shape of my parents! There will be more to come in the next few days as I'll make myself useful by showing them around... They'd be pretty lost without me!

妈妈 & 爸爸

HouHai, Summer Palace and T6 Hot Pot

...and another nice weekend has just ended! Now it's only 4 weeks to go till I return to Ireland!!!

This great weekend all started on Friday night when I headed to HouHai with some co-workers. We had a delicious Cantonese meal in a very busy restaurant and then went to a bar to listen to some live music and relax after a long week!

Here's the band...

The special thing about this bar is not about the music or the drinks, it's about the toilets... Have you ever seen Turkish toilets with a glass floor under which there is an aquarium full of fish? Me neither until last Friday :) I'll spare you the dodgy picture (apart from the tribute in photo #2) but I'll let you imagine... It's quite disturbing!

On Saturday, I went to the visa office (again!) to apply for a new Chinese visa in order to be able to come back to Beijing after going to Sydney in March for the conference. Since I only got a single entry visa the first time, I need a new one and so far, it hasn't been easy to get. But this time, I managed! After being stuck in traffic to go there, queueing for ages, getting myself re-registered by the hotel, begging them to accept a photocopy of my business license instead of the original, I finally got the papers!!! I still have to go back to collect my passport and my visa next week but at least, this is something less to worry about from now on :)

Stuck in traffic!

On Sunday, I went to visit the Summer Palace with Albert, the new ambassador who's here for 6 weeks. I have to admit, the Summer Palace is now probably one of my favourite places in Beijing.

Tower of Buddhist Incense (Foxiang Ge)

View of Kunming Lake from the very top

Same tower - different view

The weather was lovely today, a little bit windy but very sunny! The place is huge! I don't actually know how much time it takes to really check out everything in there but we walked around for 2 hours today and that seems to be pretty good. For a full visit, check out the slideshow below...

Finally, after all this exercise, we had a well-deserved Hot Pot tonight in T6, close to Wudaokou subway station. That was delicious and a great ending to a great weekend!

The Great Wall & Ming Tombs

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man" - Mao

On Saturday, I went to the Great Wall with Lili, Hailei, Jing, Ann and Adam. We took a minibus from the office that drove us all the way to Badaling, about 70km from Beijing. This is the most high-profile and most-photographed part of the wall and rises at 1000m above sea level. On the way there, Lili gave us some background history about Beijing and the Great Wall. She used to be a tourist guide when she was a student and didn't lose too much of her knowledge. It was very impressive! Once we got there - it was absolutely freezing by the way - we bought our tickets and jumped in a little wagon on rails that took us up the starting point of the great climb.

The entrance at Badaling

Saving our energy for later...

Hailei, Ann, OC, Adam (+Jing taking the picture)
"We made it!"

This is pretty steep!

The Olympics are EVERYWHERE!!!

I have to admit, this was quite tough but I'm happy I did it! However, the way down turned out to be more difficult than the way up. Very strenuous and exhausting overall! My legs ended up shaking on their own when we returned to the ground :)

Now you can enjoy a 360° view of the Great Wall...

After that, we went to visit a "Cloisonne factory". "Cloisonné", in French, describes something that has fences or walls around it. In Chinese, it's an ancient handcraft art that originated during the Yuan Dynasty but prevailed in the Ming Dynasty (around 1450) and consists of enameling vases, plates, bowls and various other pieces of decoration using metallic wires.

After a well-deserved very heavy lunch above the factory store, we headed to the Ming tombs and visited Ding Ling which is the mausoleum of the 13th emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yi Jun, who ruled for 48 years!

Map of the 13 Ming tombs

Please zoom in and pay close attention to point #3 :)

NB. If you walk through the gate on your way in,
you have to walk through the gate on your way back otherwise...

View from the top

As the palace that holds the tomb was underground and hidden,
tunnels had to be dug to find it. This is now the main access...

Me acting silly... as always!

This was quite an exhausting day but very rich in history, culture, scenery and fun!