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In April 2001, I went to China for one week. This trip was very cool for a number of reasons...
It was my first
trip abroad;
It was the first time I ever had to use a
passport;
AND, it was
free!!
My parents had already planned to take this trip and, later, decided to take my brother and me along. Mandy couldn't go because Jennifer was still too young for her to leave for a week. We hadn't taken a vacation together as a family since Mandy, Terry and I were kids so, even though it was neat to see a different country, it was equally great (and a little weird) to take a vacation with my parents again.
*NOTE: I haven't scanned my pictures (8 rolls!) yet, but Terry used a digital camera so, all of these pictures are from his disks. I'll add my pictures as I get them scanned. Also, I'm one of these annoying people who actually takes notes on trips, so my dad asked me for all the info and then wrote an email to all this friends about the trip. The travelog below is a compilation of what he wrote plus my additional comments.
DAY 1 -- Sunday (4/08/01)
We left for China from LAX. Our flight was supposed to leave at 1:30 pm, but we didn't leave until 2:17 pm. We were on a Southern China Airlines 747 non-stop flight to Beijing that took us over 13 hours. Our flight pattern took us to the north over Alaska and Russia before heading back south to Beijing. The flight over there was pretty nice because there were a lot of empty seats. Our group took up a good portion of the section we were in and everyone was able to spread out. Almost everyone was able to have at least one empty seat next to them.
DAY 2 -- Monday (4/09/01)
BEIJING
We arrived in Beijing at 6:26 pm and were met by our national guide, Jenny, and our local guide, David. We had really good guides our entire trip, but Jenny and David were probably the best. David reminded me of "Where's Waldo?".
The weather was 43 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy when we arrived. It was a little confusing and unorganized, but we finally made it on the bus and headed to the New Century Hotel. Jenny told us that in China all the hotels have a five star lobby but the rooms lose a few stars, so to not be surprised or disappointed. All the hotels we stayed in had western style toilets, baths and showers as well as either a filtered water tap or something where you could boil water.
Because of the time difference, Terry and I were still wide awake so, we went shopping in all the shops in the hotel until 11:00 pm. Every shop had a salesgirl named Jennifer.
Since these are Terry's pictures, I'm assuming that she was one of the girls he was flirting with. I wonder if she was a Jennifer...
DAY 3 -- Tuesday
(4/10/01)
BEIJING
Summer Palace, Cloissone Factory, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of
Heaven
I thought I was going to have a hard time waking up this morning, but I was up by 3:45 am. I waited until 5:00 am to call mom and dad and we all went to the breakfast buffet at 6:00 am. Every morning we went to breakfast between 6:00 and 6:30 am. All the hotels had an American style buffet breakfast along with okai and tsukemono. Some were better than others -- this particular breakfast wasn't very good. Their sausage was always a pale white color (ewww) and the "scrambled eggs" were soupy.
This picture was taken in front
of our hotel facing outward and to the side.
As you can see, there was a "disco" right next door.
This picture was
taken at the front entrance to our hotel.
The doorman wasn't very happy about our request
to have our picture taken with him. :-(
We left at 8:00 am for a 2.5 hour bus drive to the Summer Palace.
As we drove the streets of Beijing on the way to the freeway, Terry and I spotted this sign and we just cracked up. The quality isn't great, but luckily, Terry was able to get a shot of it as we passed by in the bus. (btw, we're assuming that it's a sign for a butcher shop).
Freeway in Beijing.
Wish our freeways looked as good!
SUMMER PALACE
Check out this Summer
Palace website for detailed information and more photos.
The first sight that greeted us were the throngs of street vendors. They were VERY persistent and made it difficult to even enjoy the scenery.
This was the first wave of vendors as our bus was still pulling into the parking area.
Map of an aerial view of the Summer Palace.
I don't remember exactly anymore, but I think every place we went to had a sign like this giving information about the site.
This was probably
the coldest and windiest day of our trip.
You can tell how gloomy it is and see the wind blowing through the trees.
This structure was across the lake.
We were supposed to walk around the lake and enjoy the various sights of interest and then take a boat trip back to our point of origin. Unfortunately, because it was so windy, we had to take a different route back to our bus after we got to the other side of the lake. After making this decision, David (our Beijing guide) warned us that we would be going through a "dangerous" area and to hang onto our belongings and stay together. He then took off at a very quick pace leading us to believe that he wasn't kidding around. I think it made everyone a bit nervous.
**Interesting footnote: One of the members of our group was the first to be
"taken" by a vendor when he made his purchase and received South
American money as change. At this point we were all pretty unfamiliar with the
Chinese currency and he didn't notice that he wasn't receiving Chinese money
back.
CLOISONNE FACTORY
The cloisonne factory was very
interesting and proved to be quite amusing. There were signs posted everywhere
explaining what was being done at each "station". The signs were in
English and, obviously, had not been prepared by anyone proficient in the
English language. Once I scan my pictures, I'll post examples as I took more
pictures of the signs than of the cloisonne!
TIENNEMAN SQUARE, FORBIDDEN CITY and TEMPLE OF HEAVEN
Well, believe it or not, Terry doesn't have any pictures of these places. Guess you'll just have to wait until I get a'scannin'!
In the meantime, if you want to know more about Tienneman Square, the Forbidden City and/or Temple of Heaven, check out these links:
The last thing we did this day was go to a Chinese Acrobat show. The show was
very good, but everyone was exhausted. I don't think there was one person in our
group who didn't fall asleep for a little while during the performance. We got
back to the hotel at approximately 8:50 pm and I was asleep before 10!!
btw, I think my dad's commentary of the day's activities is pretty amusing....
Tieneman Square.
Center of the city of Beijing. I’m
sure you have seen this on TV many times.
Forbidden City.
Adjacent to Tieneman Square.
Imperial Garden.
Pretty.
Temple of Heaven.
Nice.
Chinese Acrobat Show
Saw this stuff on TV at home.
Well, we all know my dad is a man of few words! :-)