Day 4

Day 4 started with a long night's rest until 11am+ when I woke up.

We went out for lunch at Macdonald's today. It was cheaper than Singapore! Had a double cheeseburger meal which tasted the same as Singapore which was pretty nice.

After that we went for a massage to help alleviate from all the walking from the day before which amounted to 28.73km of walking. It was so shady. The massage parlor was probably provided some kind of extra service. The masseuse kept promoting more stuff to us to get us to spend more for them and they seemed pretty weird too. Everything felt off.

But we got out alive and probably will never go back there ever again. It was pretty expensive (RMB 338 which was roughly SGD 67).

After that we went back to the hostel and had a meeting with everyone at night over at Kai Zhong's hostel. Hahahh it was pretty cool hanging out with them all and so far the trip seems to be heading towards a fulfilling one for all of us!

Day 3

Today was a rather hectic day.

We woke up early to head to 圆明园 yuanmingyuan (old summer palace) and we tried out the 地铁 train. It looked pretty complicated but it was actually pretty simple and easy to understand. The ride to 圆明园 station took about 4yuan and it was about 50mins including the time needed to walk to the train station from the hostel.

Arriving there, it was already pretty crowded and we got our tickets to go into the place.

It was a lot of walking and scenic places around the palace and shops set up for us to buy souvenirs or some snacks. It was pretty cooling due to the weather but still we walked about 16km in total!


We left the place at around 3pm and went to Wangfujing which is one of the most famous shopping streets of Beijing. There were so much to see and eat. There were so much interesting street food like fried insects (mostly scorpions) to fried ice cream. The crowd was pretty crazy as well. There were so many people in the area that we were constantly brushing shoulders with passerbys. The famous quanjude duck restaurant is also located nearby but it was a pretty tiring day so we didnt had the chance to eat the duck.



The hectic day came to an end as we took the train back to our hostel.

Day 2

So we(Liang Ping and I) had no classes today and went for lunch at a nearby beef soup place. They had a sign to remind us not to waste food which was pretty cool since we don't have it in Singapore.


We went for a short walk and found a public toilet right beside the road which was also interesting since Singapore don't have it

After lunch there was a welcome party cum mid-autumn festival for the international students and student volunteers. We were there to enjoy the festivities and mingled around with all the international students and student volunteers. We had some mooncake and goodies as well and it was pretty fun as there were performances lined up for us to enjoy and the international students performed as well! It ranged from self composed songs to dances and even had a poem recital!

We went back to the hostel for a bit before heading out for dinner again. Dinner was pretty nice! It was a steamboat but the soup base was a light soup and mala soup. Mala soup was really spicy but so addictive we ended up eating so much that it amounted to RMB230 which translate to roughly SGD10 per person. It was so worth it!

We went back to the hostel and got ready for bed.

Day 1

So Day 1 was pretty cool. We stepped out from the airplane and was greeted by the fog which is just the pollution of Beijing. The weather was very cooling! The highest was only 27 degrees celsius!  


We got our luggage and went to have breakfast after that which was quite expensive around SGD10.


We waited for a while before the BTBU student volunteers came to pick us up, had lunch and checked into the hostel! The hostel was at a pretty good location for us(Liang Ping and I, we are rooming together) and was decent.

The day went on by mainly doing administrative matters and we went for dinner with Mr Danny Lee at KFC. So after that the 8 of us went our seperate ways. Some went to the hostel to sleep while others went to get more food.

Liang Ping and I went for a walk to tour the area which was pretty neat. And found the locals dancing and doing taiji on the streets. There were many groups of them..this is just one.


We went back to the hostel after that and had a good night's rest!

HELLO!

Hey there! I'm a Year 3 Engineering with Business student in Singapore Polytechnic. I will be sharing my experience with all of you on the next 3 months in Beijing! Stay tuned! :)