First challenge after landing at the airport and clearing immigration, was to find our way to our hotel. We've booked a local hotel in the middle of the city area. And normally on my usual travel, this would be just a minor task to get us there. But here in China, without Google Map, it might be a challenge. But I wasn't too worried about that. Worst case, we could always ask people for direction. The main challenge we needed to over come was paying for our transport to the hotel! We've read that cash wasn't used in China. We have setup our Alipay and WeChat pay, but this was going to be the very first time we are going to use it! We didn't know if it would work.
Saw this cheesy sign at the airport as we walked to the train station....
First taste, getting an Airport Express into the city area before we can transit to the city metro to get to our hotel. We found the station, we found the machine, and the struggle to buy the ticket begins! I actually have a set of test cases I wanted to go through on the first day in China, and it looked like this:
TO DO List
- Get Transport Card (Hutong Card if possible)
- Test TnG Ali Pay
- Test WeChat Pay Wallet
- Test WeChat Pay YouTrip QR
- Test YouTrip Card
- Test Starhub Data
- Confirm all other attraction entrance ticket
Anyway, cut the story short, we did managed to pay for our Airport Express. I tried WeChat but it didn't work. I tried cash, but we only had 100yuan cash and the machine didn't accept it. So as a last resort I tried my TnG wallet that is integrated with Alipay and woohoo! Success! I help paid for my husband's ticket too and off we went! First hurdle pass!
Second hurdle was to get a metro card. Didn't know where to do that. Couldn't even find a control station. Maybe it was too early. I decided to test out my mandarin by asking two ladies in uniform at the underpass information counter. As luck would have it, they were able to help me! We managed to buy the transport card from them, even using our cash to pay! I had around 200sgd of cash with me, and I wanted to use them all up once I was sure I could survive on my cashless payments. I've heard that only foreigners use cash in China, so I wanted to blend in!
Made it into the metro station. We were headed to QianMen, which was the nearest station to our hotel.
Getting to QianMen station was a breeze. Finding out way to the hotel without Google Map was not! But they do have maps on the road and also inside stations. There were also a lot of road signs. Problem was, everything was in Mandarin....
With my superb sense of direction (which is mainly following where the crowd was headed), we managed to find the main street that our hotel was at. Or to be more precise, this was the nearest main street. Our local hotel was at the side road just opposite this bustling shopping street called Dashilan Shopping Street.
With hotel located, we managed to check in and deposit our bags there before coming back in the afternoon for the room. I snapped a photo of how much the rooms cost. I forgot how much we paid for ours, probably around 37sgd per person. So around 70+ sgd a room? No breakfast included, and this was kind of a local hotel. We decided to stay here for 5 nights? and stay in a higher end hotel for our last 3 nights. So the Hotel Name in Chinese (in case you are interested) is called 维斯特酒店(北京前门大栅栏店). Check-in for me was quite a challenge. It seems they have not encountered a Malaysian Passport before! So there was a few confusion as to how many days my Visa granted me. I told them it was 2 weeks at least, but they said they have to check as they needed to report all foreign visitors to the government. Ok..... When I returned to check-in in the afternoon, the receptionist instantly recognise me as the Malaysian guest -_______-
We got the ground floor room all the way to the back of the building. Although the front of the hotel looked small, once you go inside, it was a mazed of rooms! Above is what our two twin room looked like. There are windows which opened into the back alley too! We do open them as the room was kinda stuffy and mouldy smelling..... 5 nights only! We can make it!
The toilet was rather interesting. It was quite a good size. And what I really like about it was the amount of clothes hanger they provide! It was so awesome for washing clothes (which we tend to do a lot!). The other thing I like about China was the toilet paper. It doesn't come with the middle core hard cupboard in it. So basically the whole roll of toilet paper was just that, toilet paper! So it was really convenient to just carry those smaller rolls with me out to use in public toilet, lol. Yeah, not all public toilet has toilet papers in them, be prepared!
The toilet also came with these cute rubber slippers too! Which I though was rather homely and uniquely China. But I used my own since I always travel with my own slippers to use inside the room and toilet. And on good weather places, also wear them out on the streets, lol. When I travel, I want to feel like I am part of the locals living there. That is my goal. To live a different live during my travels, so that I manage to live many lives before I die.
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