Trip to China !

Hi to all folks !! i have been thinking from a long long time to start writing a blog. Initially i was a bit sceptical about the topics which i should traverse through.Then i couldn’t think of a better starter than my trip to China . let’s hope it turns out good.So let’s rock and roll now ! It was a short five day trip which started in september 14th from Chennai. My flight to Beijing was through Colombo (because it was sri lankan airlines,they make you come to sri lanka in any case though it could be on the opposite side of the globe.) .I had to be awake for the whole night at Chennai airport as my flight was quite early in the morning and other airport formalities usually take a long time.It was also my first trip abroad and i was going alone .So i was a bit nervous initially. so my flight took off sharp at 3:45 and it reached colmbo within an hour or so.We were supposed to wait at Colmbo airport as our next flight to Beijing was after 2 hours.I felt drowsy but didn’t want to sleep because i hardly knew anyone who could wake me up and i didn’t want to mess things up. lol.By the way Sri Lanka hardly looks like a different country than India. They speak similar language, same in colour and physignomy and they were a part of India in ancient times too. ..anyways my flight took off at 8 am from Colombo. It was via Bangkok.Flight was quite long but fun though. I started feeling the asian crowd presence (i mean the chinese face types) from Bangkok. I finally reached to Beijing airport at around 9 pm. Airport was simply awesome. I would say 10 times better ,bigger and magnanimous then Chennai Airport.Anyways some things which one ought to do before travelling to a place like China. a) Get the currency changed beforehand. b) Get your travel and stay bookings done before your travel begins. c)Be prepared if you are a vegeterian. I did my homework before leaving. Guys,no offense but chinese really suck at english. Out of all the people i met only 1% could speak english. So once i got down ,i went to some currency exchange shop and i made them write down the hotel address in Chinese so that if the Taxi driver doesn’t understand even a single word of english ,still i could hope to make it through. Having seen the airport,i started wondering how do they say that India and China are progressing almost at the same rate. Some very peculiar things with indians are ,they are really good at bargaining .So,when i came out one guy approached me and asked me where i wanted to go and he asked me 300 Yuan so it was almost 1800 bucks in my currency .So i immediately said 150 and he said no and i moved ahead. Anyways ,i was hoping to have some prepaid system.I took one cab which run on meter. I hopped in and was really tired. I was hoping to reach soon and get a goodnight sleep. The driver asked me where am i from ? i said “i am from India” and he repeated after me “from India” and he could barely understand me. Then i learnt that they really don’t speak english. My hotel was far away (i booked a room in Youth Hostels , i think it is the best place for any foreign traveller because crowd is usually young,place is cheap plus they can speak english.:-) ) .Taxi didn’t cost me a fortune though. I just crashed into my bed.

I went to Beijing to present my paper so i had to make sure that i don’t screw that up and do things properly. So i woke up and inquired about the university where i was supposed to reach and asked how to go there. Luckily ,the girl on the counter at the Hotel corridor was knew english quite well and she was very very helpful. I forgot her name but still i would thank her for all the help. Anyways we tried to locate the university on the map and it was a bit far away and she told me to take metro to a certain point and then take a bus from there. so ,i went out .It was the first time i went out after i reached so i didn’t know where was the metro station.So ,i thought i would ask them where is it ? Best thing in Beijing is where ever there is a subway , you would find a metro station there and you could also see some preparations for BEIJING OLYMPICS 2008.

So i went to one of the stall and asked one volunteer about the station and he guided me through ,still it took me almost an hour just to catch the metro. You know even if you try speaking name of the places you want to go ,it won’t help. Believe me, i have a penchant for languages.So, i tried at metro station to pronounce the name of my destination. She was totally blank so i decided to show her the written name of the station and decided not to make a farce of it. One interesting thing is if you aren’t a chinese then you will certainly be noticed in places like metro and buses. They were staring me as if i am an alien. One more thing i would love to share, i used to think that chinese chics have got good figures but no appreciable face though. But this thing got cleared when i went there. Some of them are super hot and really hip .I wish i could click some of them but couldn’t because they were all staring at me and such a debauchery would have been punished badly. So,i didn’t do it. .Anyways i got down and took a taxi because i didn’t want to be late. The weather was simply awesome, it feels really awesome zephyr touching your cheeks. Well now some things which indians can’t simply avoid like finding other indian fellows and talking to them. You wouldn’t believe me but we were like 6 indians and we were the only vegeterians there. They arranged separate lunch for us.But if you are really squeamish then it would lend you in trouble because you would find some vegeterian dish in between several type of meat.So, don’t be so queasy. Anyways i ate a lot of fruits infact i ate them till i felt sated and thanks to McDonalds ,they were my saviour. I Strived upon french fries,ice creams,burgers and some home made food.So out of 5 other indians there were two chics who were from India and it was good to have some company and luckily one of them knew Hindi too. So there was a goo comradery.I shouldn’t forget to mention that there were some hot chics in the conference too. lol.Anyways my presentation was good.

So having finished the presentation ,i had to visit whatever i could in BEIJING and of course THE GREAT WALL ! before that i would aver the same thing again. Indians cannot avoid Indians.so i met one indian guy which helped me totally.He gave me some awesome suggestions which i have to share with you.I wanted to visit the GREAT WALL next day and wanted to opt for the tours directly from youth hostel but he warned me that they would gouge me.Tour guys were asking me for 200 yuan and he said if i go by myself i need not spend more than 70 yuan.So i took his suggestion and went away by myself.Trip was almost of 2 hours and as we moved away from the city ,it became chilly too. Actually there are a lot of sections of GREAT WALL which you can go and i went to the most easily accessible and less expensive section. Usually foreigners from other countries seek for peace & solace ,so they go to less crowded sections.Anyways after reaching to GREAT WALL you need to pay some visiting fee.it’s same for foreigners and locals.It was 40 yuan. it was really crowded though.It was super huge and the massive structure gets filled with ice during winters.i just couldn’t imagine how awesome it would look.It’s almost of 6000 km,twice the distance from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and it’s climbing is very steep.I could barely go 200 meters forward.Still it was super fun.

So i reached my hotel having visited Great Wall, only few suggestions i would want to make.Guys, leave early in the morning if you want to spend some good amount of time at the wall. When i traveled to Great Wall ,i was alone and i got bored sometimes. Having reached hotel i had nothing much to do except browsing Internet and being a Couch potato for a while (yeah..i love this word ) . So, i met the indian guy again and being candid he was like an eye opener. few more suggestion he’d made to me which i would like to share. He suggested me to shift in dormitory from my room because in dormitory you get a chance to meet new people and might get good company and the most important thing is dormitory is a co-dormitory. i need not explain this further. by the way my indian friend who suggested me was staying in the dormitory had 4 chics in his room. Can you believe it and he also introduced me to them. There are some things which you rarely find in india like surrounded by four women in the middle of the night ,all pampering you. Infact you can only imagine in dreams. Anyways, i shifted to dormitory and except me there were 4 people in my dormitory. Two chics by the way were in my room (just to let you know ) . I was really bored that day roaming alone . I wanted one company . I talked to one of the girl in my room and next morning she was with me. I had to put a fight to make her understand me. She knew some English. So there i was and then we walked (sorry,i am a fan of dire straits , folks who listen dire straits would understand me immediately. ). Then after my breakfast at McDonald , we went to see the Forbidden city ,Tiannamen square and Zingshai park. You know i went crazy when i asked a few people to click a picture for us and they said ‘no’ .Then i said “what the heck”, can’t help those chinese.Anyways TIC (tHIS IS CHINA) .lol…

The girl was really nice and i couldn’t have found a better company that day. I also wanted to eat indian food and luckily the girl (she was Korean) had eaten Indian food before in Seoul. She liked it too. So, we decided to go to some Indian restaurant. It took us quite a long time and believe me if she weren’t with me then there was no possible way i could have found the restaurant. The mere fact that she knew chinese made me really relaxed. After a long travail we reached the Indian restaurant.it’s name was GREAT DRAGON hotel. You know it feels so good to find people who know your language and having talked to waiters who were indians ofcourse. .Food was good and the waiter suggested me to take some chicken for madam and i did that. Believe me chinese and koreans and all these types can’t live without non veg.Anyways we ordered that. Though it wasn’t any date but it looked like one. We walked a lot that day and were tired and really got recouped after a good dinner. Now the most important thing , don’t go craving for your country food in foreign lands. why ? because it is gonna cost you big sum, the money we paid that day for indian food equals to my monthly expenses on food. I didn’t know it before so i don’t mind either. One more thing which tickled in my mind is i never saw the hotel name anywhere “Great Dragon hotel” .Once we came out i saw a name “great zhillong”. Then i asked her what is it and she said ” Great Dragon”. I hope you get my point. Some name written in English won’t suffice.Anyways TIC once again. So after dinner with her sleuthing prowess, we reached hotel and slept as we both were really tired.

Some more starting things which i mentioned to forgot above (only because there were so many ,it’s difficult to write down everything in one single stretch. ) .All the chinese and korean too have got two names. One English name and one Chinese name.It sounds strange but it’s true. and when i asked them why ? They said that so that other people like us can pronounce their names and don’t even try pronouncing their chinese names because you won’t be able to and i know you wouldn’t want to insult them or offend them. Go with the english names. One more important thing, i rarely found phone booth or STD PCO shops. So i purchase one 100 yuan calling card.Though i didn’t need that much calling value. I had no other option left. I couldn’t use its total call value either. I also came to know later that 100 yuan calling card is easily available in 60 yuan or something. So i was gouged. Guys don’t take calling cards just like that from your hotel. U can put some efforts and purchase from outside. It can be used from any landline phone.

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