Weekend trip to Beijing

Over the Chuseok Holiday, which is like Korean Thanksgiving (Sept 13-15th) we decided to take a trip. We had the Monday off for a 3-day weekend AND it happened to fall on Samantha's 30th birthday. Since we had never been to China before and had heard some not-so-good things about it, we decided to go on a tour. There is a travel agency here, based in Busan, that organizes trips just for foreigners. You have to get a visa just to enter China, so the agency arranged all of that for us. Our package included airfare, a GREAT hotel, food, plus all the sites. (On a side note, thanks to the dollar being strong, we saved a bundled on the airfare part by using our American credit cards! We are trying to make the dollar work to our advantage!)

So Bryn covered our classes on that Friday and we headed up to Seoul for the night (Samantha's actual birthday). We decided to try a different area of Seoul so we went to Hong-dae, which is by Hongik University. There were tons of restaurants, bars, and shopping. Its a great town with a lot to see and do. We walked around attempting to find a Mexican place called Casa Maya, which we hear is there, but had no luck and ended up having Italian. (We are dying for Mexican food! Its the one thing we truly miss that is just NOT available here!)

We flew separately from the rest of the tour group because we wanted to fly out of Seoul and they all flew out of Busan, so we didn't meet up with the group until we arrived in China. And yes..it was very easy to find them...a bunch of foreigners in an Asian country. Anyway, in Beijing you will be pleased to know that we were complete tourists!

Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven. (Yes they didn't even let us drop our stuff off at the hotel first!) Basically, its just a temple. Apparently many Chinese people from neighboring communities hang out there to socialize. They dance, play mah-johg, and talk. In a sense - its like a recreation center in the States.

After the Temple of Heaven, we were off to dinner at the Peking Duck, which is a very famous restaurant in Beijing. The server cut the duck right in front of us, which was very tasty (fatty, but tasty). Then it was on to an acrobat show - basically people that were extremely bendy doing things that we wouldn't recommend such as bicycling on your neck on a wire about 5 feet off the floor. Afterwards, they FINALLY let us go back to our hotel; which was awesome. Not only did we NOT have to share a bed, but we also had carpet, a real shower, and SPACE! It was so nice.

The next day, we had to be up bright and early for an exciting day of sightseeing. We started at the Jade factory, where they make real Jade. Samantha bought this bracelet that she basically needs to break her hand off if she wants to get it off and on. Then we went to the Great Wall. It was beautiful, but very steep! It was like you could see forever from the wall (probably the point in building it - huh?) We climbed it for about an hour before our calves were aching, we were completely out of breath, and sweating profusely, but it was pretty up there! There is something like 1600 steps in the portion of the wall that we climbed. The steps were all different sizes; which made it tough to climb. The reasoning behind the different sized steps is so that when other armies would try to invade - they couldn't plan their attack since the stairs weren't all the same size. Yep Mom and Dad - we did learn something on the trip!

After the Great Wall (and without a shower) we went to Summer Palace, which was beautiful and then a Pearl Factory. It wasn't the famous Pearl Market in China; it was small and kind of expensive, so we didn't buy anything. Then we were off to a Mongolian BBQ place for dinner (yep - we still hadn't showered). Finally, after a very long day we were able to go back to the hotel and relax. Mind you...this is about 9pm at night when we started at 8am!

Our final day in China we went to Tianamen Square. Our tour guide proceeded to tell us that there was a small misunderstanding at Tianamen Square.....I guess he has never read an American history book or an American newspaper, we would have called it a massacre, not a misunderstanding! And then onto the Forbidden City. Afterward, we just couldn't handle the group any longer, so we broke off and met up with Samantha's high school friend Kurt, who was in China to watch his brother compete in the Paralympics. Anneli (our new friend), Kurt and the two of us went to the REAL Pearl Market, which was awesome! We wheeled and dealed and haggled our brains off for about 3 hours! We got some awesome deals!!

After the Pearl Market we really wanted to see the Olympic venue, which was not part of the tour, so we bought tickets outside the Olympic park and went to see the bronze medal wheelchair game. It was very cool to walk around and be a part of it all.

The next day, we left China and made it back just in time for work (yes we were pushing it!). Some thoughts we had on China...

1. It is extremely clean. We had always heard it was dirty, it wasn't at all. Part of this could be due to the Olympics, but we found it really clean.

2. Food = Awesome! It was oily, but so good!

3. It was unbelievably cheap! It made Korea look expensive! A cab ride was about $0.70! It was very confusing to convert everything from the RMB to the Won to the Dollar, but by the end...we got the hang of it! We both bought REAL pearl earring for $3.50!! hahaha Gotta love China!

4. The air quality is poor and very smoggy as everyone said it would be.

5. Chinese is a language that we couldn't possibly comprehend, its a good thing almost all their signs and menus were in English! More people spoke English in China than in Korea. It was actually easier to get around.

Finally, we just aren't tour people. We will probably never take another tour because you are so stuck on a time schedule; however, we met some awesome friends! We are actually headed to met back up with them this weekend in Daegu. So the absolute best part of our trip was the friends that we made. We are working on our trip for the holidays - we are going to Thailand and Malaysia to spend some time in the sun. Fall has officially hit here and the weather has cooled off a bit. We are in full swing of work and our daily life here in Korea. We are still trying new things when we can and trying to plan for all of the trips we want to take. We still love it here and are REALLY glad we are not watching the political bashing ads on TV or dealing with the depression. We are just happy to be sheltered from everything else and enjoy our stress free life. Our biggest problem is where to travel next! Let us know if you have any questions/comments! We love to hear from you.