Last week I probably did my last trip during my time here in China. After being to Shanghai during Golden Week and visiting one of the holy mountains of China, Taishan, I definitely wanted to see the capital of China – Beijing.
Before the trip started my good friend Aubry came to Qingdao two days in advance and I had time to show him Qingdao (which has been my home for the past 5 months). I showed him around in our beautiful old part of the city, as well as our nice beaches.
On Thursday our trip to Beijing could finally start. We decided to stay in a hostel called Sanlitun Youth Hostel, which I can really recommend to you, if you want to stay in Beijing for a few days or even a while. It has cheap prices, a warm atmosphere, clean rooms and even offers some nice food – I can definitely recommend you the big Swiss breakfast.. yummy! Besides that, you have a young, open minded and very international audience that we liked to hang out with.
The next day we took a trip to the Great Wall which I have really been looking forward to. It was a great experience to walk up all the way on our own and enjoy the landscape. Also the wall itself was quite impressive. At the end of our walk on the wall we found a part which has not been restored – this is where you can have the nicest of all views!
The following day we started exploring the city a bit more. We visited some of the more famous sights of the city as the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. A personal tip here is to go to the Jing Shan Park near the Forbidden City. It is not very much crowded and is a really nice area. If you go up the little hill inside the park you have a great view above the Forbidden city and also the city in general.
After we explored much more of the city area, we decided to find ourselves a nice place to eat. We found out about Sanlitun village which is a big complex with lots of restaurants and shopping. The place you should not miss if you like some Mexican food is the Cantina Agave. Atmosphere and food there are top notch. Near Sanlitun village is also huge bar street where we had some drinks in various bars.
All in all it has been a nice experience and Beijing is a city that is worth a visit. We had a decent time and I guess we have really been lucky with the weather, as it was sunny all day and there was literally no smog at all. Beijing is a bit more Chinese than Shanghai in a way but is also just as lively. Nothing more to say than – bye bye, Beijing!
Would you like to combine travelling in China with an internship as well? Then apply now!
Inner Mongolia Trip: 30th of September to the 6th of October
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More information on travelling to Inner Mongolia :
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/searchResult?q=inner+mongolia&facet=origin%3Athorntree_thread
Where to find friends to go with you on an Epic Adventure : http://www.internchina.com/zh/contact/apply
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Hello everyone,
My name is Philippe Touzin and I am the Marketing and Graduate Recruitment Manager for InternChina. I am based in the city of Zhuhai and this is the second part to my blog on travelling to Big Sky Country: Inner Mongolia (China).
Part I: http://internchina.com/inner-mongolia-trip-30th-of-september-to-the-6th-of-october-part-i/
Gallery of the Inner Mongolia Trip
2/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – Grass Plains
8:00am: Breakfast and then we went for a Hike in the grass plains, walked up some hills, saw some Lama Buddhism stone prayer “temples” and flags , herd of horses, sheep and endless plains- we took some photo shoots and then went back to our farm for lunch. The afternoon was Mongolian Bow and Arrow training/shooting session, followed by horse riding.
The horse riding was not part of the tour, and cost 150.-rmb per hour, so we went out for 3hours and rode around with our guides. We all came back feeling like Mongolian Men with sore asses, and the best part was when John Pitts fell of his horse- I didn’t get to see the fall, but Max’s description and the thought of it got us all laughing for about 2hours! (John Pitts: Product design/production manager for a design and manufacturing firm that supplies the top MNE’s in the world with highest quality electronic goods/ accessories)
We had a rest and then dinner again (stew of potatoes, mutton, mutton ribs,…) which was cooked by the wife of the farmer- followed by copious amounts of Horse milk alcohol (sour horse milk + extra baijiu!) and beer, and more card games in the yurt.
Baijiu: Chinese alcohol, usualy over 60%!
On our way back from the farm to our yurt, I met the Grandfather/owner (Mongolian name: Nasan Oqir- 70 years old ) of the lands who invited me for some beers together. He was very cool and explained that his father had built this house and his livestock consisted of:
-300 sheep
-60 horses- which he herds riding his motorbike from sunrise to sunset, every day.
-30 chicken
-2 dogs
-1 cat
-2 rabbits
-and 2500 sqkm of land!!
He wakes up every day before sunrise, rides his motorbike to the neighboring farm (15km) where his best friend lives,… drink some horse milk alcohol together, have breakfast and then gets to work- He offered me a job working for him and honestly it was very tempting!!!
Dulung came to save me before he took out more Baijiu and I returned with him (quite drunk already) to keep partying with my friends. At some point in the night-when we finished all our alcohol, we went out in the plains with all our blankets (temperature: 10 degree Celsius) and lay down to star gaze- Amazing!!
Dulung was quite drunk and passed out, so we ended up having to carry him back to the Yurt, by creating a human King Chair which ended in a few falls and lots of giggles.
3/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – Grass Plains
9:00am: breakfast (we had the same staple Mongolian food every morning- Rice with mutton soup + warm horse milk- and some sort of bread)
Spending the morning going for some more walks and then thanking and saying goodbye to the family for having hosted us. When we had first arrived we brought with us a bottle of Famous Old Grouse whiskey, as it is customary to bring a gift when staying with the family- and this was a good present apparently 🙂
Our car had changed for the last leg of the journey to a normal car, which was fine but meant we were 4 big boys at the back-OUCH- we departed and of we were! But 1hour later we were stopped by the police…they were not too amused to see 4 people sitting at the back and after we talked with the officers, giving our foreign charm, they agreed to take Dulung to the next village so he could catch a bus and no other problems. The police also decided it was a good time to have a photography session with us- so quite alot of posing and Victory signs later we were off again!! But we forgot to take pics with them also! 🙁
We had some emotional goodbye’s with Dulung, our guide. He is our age and our time together was more 5 buddies travelling, laughing and getting drunk together- we still keep in contact using our weixin, and have invited to stay with us in Zhuhai where we would guide him to the local Island!! (next blog? :D)
Weixin / WeChat: is a Chinese app (similar to whatsapp) which everyone uses here in China. You should download it if you’re coming to China!
We arrived in Hohhot at 8pm, tired and exhausted, no showers for 5 days, bodies filled with sands everywhere, un-kept beards and full of amazing adventure memories. Inner Mongolia/become mongolian men/adventure time= Success!
We checked in to the same hotel : Wanli Hotel and had the longest showers in the world. On our way to the rooms we found the room service lady/ her trolley and raided it for extra shampoo and shower gels as we were super dirty! :p
We had a early dinner and then me and Joe went back to the room to sleep-NACKERED-…John and Max went to a bar called: Seattle Bar- Do Not Go there– they had 3 drinks and don’t remember coming home- we are pretty sure their drinks got spiked with drugs as we are all heavy drinkers.
4/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – Grass Plains
10am wake-up. John had a lie-in but Joe, Max and myself went walking from our hotel to the Great Mosque of Hohhot (where john met up with us). Hohhot was on the old Silk Road and there is a big cultural mix, including a thriving Muslim community. The walk was long but got a good feeling of the city- not much going on- but the Mosque was beautiful and the surrounding area very interesting with street markets and pet markets: they had all kinds of animals and MASSIVE snakes.
Had some good lunch= Big grilled Naan breads with lamb bbq, followed by going to visit Lama Buddhism temples, pagoda’s, old street market and yes…we got more fireworks for our last night in Hohhot!!! The guys were super nice, we were the first foreigners to have gone in their shop so they gave us all the fireworks for free!! We proposed to take pictures so they could print it out and use it as advertisement!
Last Dinner and night life
For our last dinner we had a Meat Fest-6kg of meat between 4 guys- 1 huge lamb leg and a full rack of ribs- It was the BEST Lamb meat we had ever had and we washed it all down with local beer- we ended up having some locals join our able, one of them being the 2nd best Inner Mongolian champion wrestler and a bunch of girls of one who nearly vomited on Max. :p
After this we headed to a Mongolian bar which had live music and local Mongolians drinking- it was fun and good until- the Mongolians got too drunk, one got angry wiped out a mini sword and smacked one of them hard on the head (with the scabbard still on thankfully), then he ran out , came back and slashed another guy on the arm with the scabbard off and then ran out again, this time chased by other guys carrying, not chairs, but tables—it was shocking but slightly comedic at the same time. I then approached then with Joe and offered to give first aid as IC employees in all offices are first aid trained. They both needed stitches but they’ll be ok.
After that we finished our drinks and decided to go clubbing, found a “Box Club” which, I swear, smelled like horses! Club are the same everywhere else in the world and we ended up drinking / making mates with another Mongolian and coming home at 4am.
5/10/2013-Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Province – back to GuangZhou
12:00 get up and check out. We had been eating Mongolian food all week and were hungover so we went to McDonald’s to set ourselves right. We then kept going with some more tourism by going to tourist shops and buying some small gifts (combs, bracelets,…) for our friends and family back home!
3:00pm return to Guangzhou Airport. On arrival in Guangzhou you can easily take a express bus to the Center of Zhuhai, Gongbei station (last stop). For more info please contact: info@internchina.com
I hope to go back and go into real Mongolia (the country), although the travel and experiences we had felt very authentic and Mongolian. I highly recommend learning some Chinese and speaking some basic Chinese as this way you get to skip all the mass tour groups and discover the Real Inner Mongolia (or chat with Andal guesthouse 🙂 )
Thank you for reading, and please do not hesitate to stop by Zhuhai InternChina office for some tea and stories.
USTRAAAYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
(cheeerrs)
Philippe
More information on travelling to Inner Mongolia :
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/searchResult?q=inner+mongolia&facet=origin%3Athorntree_thread
Where to find friends to go with you on an Epic Adventure : http://www.internchina.com/zh/contact/apply