Lama Temple & Confucius Temple

They are not next to each other, but they are near to each other (about 10 min walk apart). Althought they are near to each other, they are not neccesary mean they look similar.

YongHeGong or the Lama Temple, look so much better in shape. It is very nicely renovated, and look few times better than the Forbidden City that is in such sorry state. Furniture and statues inside there remained the same after many hundred years.

This temple was formerly Emperor Yong Zheng residence when he was still the crown prince.



Entrance to Yong He Gong


This building has a very large wooden standing buddha within

Confucius Temple, on the other hand, look worst than Forbidden city. Everything there seemed so run down, broken. In my opinion, people in China these days must not be taking Confucius's teaching seriously anymore, that is why they neglected his temple so much. Hahahaha...


The bad shape Confucius temple

Toilet in Beijing

I tell you, toilet in Beijing is just so so disgusting. The look at it doesn't seemed dirty, but the smell I tell you, you just can go bonkers getting the smell alone.

Even at high class shopping mall, like the Oriental Mall, it is just as bad. That floor in the toilet always seem so so dirty. No matter how many time the worker mopped with her dirty dry mop, it will never clean it all all.

I mean, the street of beijing is so clean, but the toilet is just so difficult to keep clean which I am not sure why. Apparently they have been doing large campaign to rates public toilets, be it three stars or four stars. But they just can't maintain it too long.

In the toilet at forbidden city, the people was told that they cannot wash their hair, wash clothes, wash leg, etc. so I guess you can see the reason why toilets in beijing never get too clean.

Another thing, is that we can't flush the toilet papers into the bowl. Even though you have wiped your butt full of shit, you just got to throw that disgusting piece of paper on the small little bin next to you. I forgotten about that last night, so I caused one of the bowl blogged till now. Oh well...

In my opinion, no matter how fast Beijing might want to progress, they will have a long way to go when comes to improving their toilets.

Writing from the Backpacker's Hostel

Hie all,

been reading my post lately? :-)

I am still here after being in beijing since wednesday last week. All of my colleagues had gone home yesterday. Mark and I have stayed back, until thursday. We checked into this nice little Backpacker hostel call "The Red Lantern House" in Xin Jie Kou.

It is one of those older brickhouse located in the old Hutong area. But very nearby to the main road to grab a quick bite. There are Mc Donalds, Dairy Queen, Yashinoya, and local stuffs like noodle and dumpling shop.


The courtyard of Red Lantern House

This place is quite nice and homey. There's a man made Koi pond in the middle, and a black color dog running around to be friend with us. The owners are very friendly too.


Cute Michael (read again, I say Michael, not Mark, :P )

Mark's still fast asleep upstair at this hour, while I already fed myself long before. Hehe...

We have been very tire from our whole last week's travel, so we decided to take it easy in Beijing itself. For me, all kind of sickness has been catching up. First had sore throat last week, then a mild cold with coughing, after that was the urinary tract infection. I just kept on needing to go to the toilet. And you know how bad china's toilet can be. Hmmm... also, my knees still hurting since thursday climbing the great wall.

Mark on the other hand is having some stomach discomfort, probably due the oily food he has been getting here. Food is quite a problem here, as it can get very oily most of the time. So once in a while we both just got to pay a visit to the McDonald's for a meal.

The Great Wall

The Great Wall!!! at Ju Yong Guan

We went to the Badaling Great Wall today!!! And the part of great wall that the guide chose is "Chu Yong Kuan". Heavily renovated according to the Lonely Planet guide. If you ask me, I still think this heavily renovated part of the great wall, to be quite challenging. After all, all the steps are actually not evenly paved.


Highway branch off to Great Wall



Perilous slope awaiting


Motivated at Starting Point

Despite of that, I managed to climbed to the level 4 in 1.30hr. Most of the people that came with me, went all the way up to the highest peak, at level 6.



I huff and I puff




I wish I didn't come! Hmm...


The view here is just breath taking, can see more of the great wall section on the opposite of the highway. The weather was rather cloudy, and feel a litty mysterious when looking down. A top of the world experience to me. Yeah!



But for the nice view...




Nevermind "lah"!!!


Made it up also, at the end. Haha!!

Going up is hard, but decending is not easy either. I just got to come down slowly so that I won't tumble over. We stopped at level 3, 666m above sea level to get our certificates. Damn, the girl that engraved our name wrote it so badly.



Souvinir Time


Careful when you making your calls to show off at your friends!


Coming down is just as tricky


YEAH!!!

Ming Tomb - DingLing, largest of the 13 Tombs

This place is very quite a far drive from the city (about 1 hour). After getting down the bus, we walked up a small hill, apparently is the upper portion of the tomb!


Can you imagine the tomb below here???

Going behind the hill, we reached the entrance to the tomb. And there we walk down the staircase of about 6 floors. It is quite cool inside there. Some might find the coldness eerie. BOO!!



Various sightings within the tomb

Though the government claimed that everything in the tomb remained as it was first found, I find this tomb to be very empty. Ceiling is high within, built with very smooth wall. I would suspect that must be of very superior masonry skill.

I think I will go the the Ching Dynasty (in He Bei) tomb next time as I heard it is very painstakingly built.