New Years Trip to China: Beijing

Korea celebrates two very big holidays every year, one is during the summer (Chilsok I think it is called) and the other is New Years during which everyone parties for like a week straight. So, we folks at LIKE had ourselves a nice long weekend. Me and Jeff took an extra day off to stretch it out to a long week off of work and joined a tour trip of Beijing through Happy Tour Agency. Mr. Han (our travel agent) came with us on the tour and off we went for four days and nights of guided Beijing adventure!

Day 1: Depart Daegu, Arrive in Beijing, Meet Local Guide (Roger), Temple of Heaven, Dinner at Taejok Folk Restaurant, Acrobatic Show, Hotel Check In.
Day 2: Full Day Excursion to The Great Wall, Ming Tomb and Temple of Earth Ice Sculpture Show.
Day 3: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Foot Massage, Dinner at Beijing Duck Restaurant.
Day 4: Free Day (Beijing Subway, Dalilama Temple, City Gate, Museum of Natural History, Silk Street Market, Beijing MacDonalds).

It was a good time, but I recommend going to China during the fall or spring, it was fucking cold! Our guide (Roger) was nice, but I don't think he liked us much at all, he kept yelling at us and we never had enough time to really look at what was going on since he kept talking and then walking on. We quickly learned to optimize our time with Roger (much to his dismay). At the ming tombs I rubbed the turtles nose for good luck and Jeff dong-shimmed it and yet I was the one that always got sick. Bastard. The Great Wall was awesome, we had two choices for a climb, everyone was taking the easy climb so pretty much the entire group went the opposite way for the good hard climb... the view was much better from atop the steep climb. Tiananmen Square was just that, a square. Nothing but concrete, policemen (plain clothed and uniformed), but it was interesting. Forbidden city was depressing since it was pretty much reduced to a museum. Everywhere we went in Beijing had that same museum sterile quality to it, which just sucked. The only exceptions were the Summer Palace which was quite beautiful and the Dalilama Temple which was still a functioning temple (but no photos allowed). Still, it was a damn good trip!

1: Temple of Heaven. 2&3: Turtle of Luck at the Ming Tombs.

Shots of the Great Wall of China, whew... what a climb...

1: Jeff and Mr. Han. 2: The Happy Tour Group A.

1: Tiananmen Square (where we played spot the plain-cloths-policeman). 2: Summer Palace Lake and Temple (ouch!).