Fabulous Guide to Beijing


Helloooo my friends out there (one of my friend said that she felt when reading my blog is like reading a girlfriend's note which I like it!)

After a long pause from my last blog, here it is my Beijing guide. I just went there to visit my baby sister who is living there at the moment. I have to admit that I went there without any expectation about the city or people or whatsoever. But in the end, I really had a nice time there but most of it was because a good company that makes the trip different. Also the city and people surprised me a lot as well. In 6 days there, we found that ( from my opinion) Beijing is very modernized in terms of standard of living, technology and very convenient to get around. Shopping is unfortunately not considered great, you know I'm from Bangkok and we have these great local designers and superb shopping experience. But to tell the truth, without my sister as a local guide it would be difficult for sure as we don't speak a word of Mandarin. Yes! here everything is in Chinese and not many people speak English. We were fortunate to spend our time there in local way which was make it more interesting. So! here are my thought and sharing of things to do and place to go for you guys.

To be in Beijing


Recommend App to check pollution rate
 
Pollution is the first thing we need to consider when travel to Beijing. So better be prepared with face mask and checking the pollution rate in the morning before you go out. You can check with many apps available in App Store. Luckily we had good weather and pollution rate in healthy level the whole time.

However the weather in August is not ideal for travelling as it was boiling hot when we were there the whole time which made us not as appreciated in the beauty of the architecture as we supposed to be. So ideally Spring or Autumn are nicer. 
Skyscrapers view in the morning which we can see pollution quite shockingly clear 




To reach out

As we all might know, most social media are blocked in China. So Facebook, Instagram and most chat apps are unusable here except if you use international roaming from your home country.

To get around

Transportation is very convenient. We did a lot of Metro to get around which covers most area of the city and it's so cheap. In 6 days, we got this metro card with amount of 30RMB and we didn't even use the whole amount. It depends on the distant we guess as some ride cost 1 RMB and some cost 4 RMB.

Taxi is also an option but luckily we have our own car sometimes so I cannot really tell you my experience in this area. But man! to drive there requires a lot of nerve.

Bicycle is also another popular options, when people take metro and they usually use bicycle to reach their destination if it still a bit far away. To use these public bicycle, you would need an app to pay by scanning this QR code and it will charge your bank account or WeChat account. For short distance, sometimes it doesn't even charge but we found that it might be difficult to find a bicycle at crowded place in rush hours.


To Do

Our mission for this trip was actually to relax, experience local life and 2 must go places in our list were the Great wall and The Forbidden City. However once we got there, my fabulous local guide aka. my gorgeous sister took us out to these places all day everyday. So here they are.

Walking streets

Yes! walking streets! There are 3 main places you need to go see and experience. Shopping is not the main attraction as I said. We found that local are very supportive to their local business even though there are millions of huge and beautiful shopping mall around the city but we found these walking streets has it's own charm. You would see families come out enjoy their day walking eating. Gotta say street food is a really big thing here.

Nanluoguxiang

Most walking streets looks the same in their old style Chinese grey buildings. You will find variety of snacks, candy, fruit tea and etc which you can try along the way.




 
 
You can keep walking through this street and continue to Houhai lake which is beautiful and serene (as it can be with millions of Chinese people)





On our way out from Houhai Lake, we met this super cute grandma selling small things like rainbow umbrella shape hat and Chinese style hairband. In the end we couldn't resist asking for a photo with her and look at her cute genuine smile.



Wangfujing : Street Food Heaven

Candied fruits sticks

We found out later that the sign is "No Photos" Well...

Ma La Lamb sticks


If you want to experience the true Beijing delicacy, you definitely need to go to this walking street. A small alley way in Wangfujing area where you will find unimaginable things people eat, you name it! Scorpions ( alive), Starfishes. The locals here love their street food in stick such as Ma La Lamp, squid and etc. Ma La is a popular oily, spicy and numbing Chinese spices and we found this in almost everything we tried on the street. The place is very crowded so better be prepared and Locals here tend to buy their food and eat while walking straight away. Hazard from food stick is prominent.

Qianmen

This large walking street is nearby Tiananmen Square and quite busy. With hot weather, ice cream seemed to be the most popular options. We found our favorite Jasmine Soft Serve at Wuyutai shop and just like that "We found heaven" for 6RMB. There's not much attraction here for me mostly locals sweets and snacks but still good to go experience Beijing way of life.

Starbucks


Jasmine Tea Soft Serve

That's all for now. There will be more on our Eating list and Sightseeing next time.

Thank you for reading until now and hope you'd enjoyed my blog. See you soon xxx



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