Beijing 2024 - Day Trip to the Great Wall (万里长城)

 

I forgot to mention in the previous post that each room in the hutong hotel has it's own name. Above is the name of our room, which translate to "clear sky cloud"? This is so Japanese, where those ryokan also have rooms with names on them. 

Anyway, this day was a Monday, and most museums and attractions are closed on Monday. So I've booked us a day trip to go see the Great Wall of China. We had to make our way to the nearest subway station as the bus would pick us up from there. Above is the view as we make our way out the other direction from Dashilan Road. It looked so rustic and traditional! I totally love vibes like this!

Upon reaching the main road, we were back to the modern Beijing again, with wide roads, big buildings, and looked at all those rental bicycles lined up ready for people to use! We await at one of the subway entrance, and pretty soon saw our tour bus pulling up to pick us up. We were actually the first 2 to board the bus! It went above collecting more passenger for the next 30 minutes or so before heading to the highway. So I got a free bus ride around Beijing City.

Above, Beijing Train Station! We didn't take any train ride on this trip, but I will be taking multiple train ride on my Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou trip this year! Haven't bought my tickets yet, but I know I'll at least managed until Suzhou since my China friend will be my tour guide for that weekend trip.

Saw the big bank building of China! ICBC. It was a Monday morning, so heavy traffic on the road.

Went passed what looked like Raffles City in Beijing! I heard there is also one in Shanghai! I guess you could get your Singapore food craving fix here. But I am NOT going into any of those malls!

After a short right at the highway, and seeing our fellow travellers, we finally made it to our destination. Funny thing was, two of our fellow travellers looked like my ex-colleagues from the Japanese bank. I forgot one of the names, but I texted my other friend to confirm it. Upon arriving at our destination, I went up to ask if the guy was indeed my ex-colleagues, lol. What a small world. Both of the guys were vendors from my previous project in the banks, and they were from Malaysia. Since China recently granted visa for Malaysian to visit China, I guess it wasn't that big of a surprised. Granted that they too can't speak Mandarin, and I hate Mandarin tours, we somehow ended up in the same tour together, hahahaha. 

So the weather was rainy on the day we were to visit the Great Wall of China. Our guide even wish us luck climbing it as he said it was steep and it would be slippery. I am not a fan of falling down!