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Archive for June 2008
Hotels in Beijing
Prices vary a lot for the SAME hotel!
It is very important to compare different booking sites for a specific hotel.
If you think it is too complicated and time consuming to compare 30 hotelbookingsites, here is a helpful page for you: You pick a hotel and the site compares more than 30 booking sites and tells you the prices. Simply pick the lowest rate!
Sights in Beijing
Forbidden City (Palace Museum, Gugong)
What an impressive piece of history the Forbidden City is. This place is very cool and i bet you will like to go this place too.
Tiananmen Square
The Tiananmen Square is the largest square in the world. Thousands of people come to the Square every day.
The Temple of Heaven
This temple is very huge and beautiful and is surrounded by a vast public park. Home to many ancient trees, this is also the greenest place in Beijing.
Lama Temple, Yonghegong
Yonghegong (also known as Lama Temple or Palace of Peace) located within the city of Beijing is a very nice sight worth a visit. It is a holy place for many pilgrims.
The Great Wall Badaling
Nearly everyone has heard of the huge stone wall known as the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China was built to protect the Chinese Empire from invaders.
Jingshan (Coal Hill), Great views
There is only one hill to be found in Beijing: Jingshan Hill, also known as “Feng Shui Hill” or as “Coal Hill“. It offers very impressive views of the Forbidden City and entire Beijing.
The Tiananmen Square is the largest square in the world. Thousands of people come to the Square every day.
Reasons to go there
First of all: this place is really really huge! It is an astounding place and a spot to linger and see visitors from all over China, many visiting their capital for the first time. For us, there is no better place to get the true modern feel of Beijing.
You can visit Tiananmen Tower, Monument to the People’s Heroes, Great Hall of the People, Mao Zedong Memorial Hall and see the national flag raising ceremony. Tiananmen Square is worth a visit on your Trip to Beijing. Don’t miss this attraction!
Helpful Tips
The Tiananmen Square has become a relaxing place for the chinese people to fly kites and walk. On a holiday, the whole square is covered with fresh flowers.
Beijing is a very safe city. However, tourists are often preyed upon by cheats and touts around Tiananmen Square.
There is only one hill to be found in Beijing: Jingshan Hill, also known as “Feng Shui Hill” or as “Coal Hill“. It offers very impressive views of the Forbidden City and entire Beijing.
Reasons to go there
From the top of the hill there are wonderful views of Beijing, especially over the Forbidden City, hence its name, which means “Scenic Hill”. The hill top offers a 360 degree vista: DianMen Dajie with at the end the Drum Tower, Beihai Park and of course the entire city itself. It might be a good idea to start your sightseeing trip of Beijing here.
Below the hill there are a small gardens with benches to relax weary feet and maybe write a postcard or two.
Yonghegong (also known as Lama Temple or Palace of Peace) located within the city of Beijing is a very nice sight worth a visit. It is a holy place for many pilgrims.
Reasons to go there
The Lama Temple is a very lively temple in the Chinese capital. We watched several traditional ceremonies.
This spectacular temple-complex is sprinkled withy lovely gardens, and wonderful pavilions containing superb and detailed interiors. Five of these great halls stand out among all of the structures within the courtyards and monastery grounds. The temple is famous for its 18m statue of Maitreya Buddha carved 
from a single piece of sandalwood.
Helpful Tips
You can view most of buildings in an hour or less. Admission is 25RMB and seems a bit overpriced. Closes at 4PM.
Visitors aren’t allowed to take pictures of holy statues inside most of the temples.
Nearly everyone has heard of the huge stone wall known as the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China was built to protect the Chinese Empire from invaders.
Our impression - Reasons to go there
This wall is huge and definitly worth seeing. When we reached there , we noticed we were the only ones from a foreign country, the rests were locals.
We went to the Badaling section where you have nice views and can walk up the hill for quite some height. The left part of the Badaling wall is steeper but gives a better scenery of the wall.
Badaling, located at Yanqing County 70 km northwest of Beijing, is about 5 km long with 19 watchtowers. The wall extends from peak to peak and is made of rectangular slabs, standing eight to ten meters high, six meters wide at the base and five meters wide at the ramparts.
We arrived very early 7am and witnessed hundreds of Beijing locals practicing all manor of exercise forms from Tai Chi, Kung Fu, jogging and dancing. The whole ambiance of the park and the people in it was fantastic and very calming and peaceful. This was a special experience on our Beijing trip.
Our Impression - Reasons to visit the Temple of Heaven
This temple is very huge and beautiful and is surrounded by a vast public park. Home to many ancient trees, this is also the greenest place in Beijing.
Three Echo Stones are outside of the gate of the Imperial Vault of Heaven. If you speak facing the Vault while standing on the first stone, you will hear one echo; standing on the second and then the third stone, you will hear two and three echoes respectively. Another interesting and famous place we visited is the Echo Wall. The wall encloses the Imperial Vault of Heaven. If one person stand at the east and the other at the west roots of the wall respectively and you whisper a word, then your will hear clearly what the other one said. Isn’t it interesting? The phenomenon utilizes the theory of sound wave.
What an impressive piece of history the Forbidden City is. This place is very cool and i bet you will like to go this place too.
The scale of the “city” (or palace) was incredible.
Our Impression - Reasons why to go there
The architecture was amazing, with the Forbidden City containing a succession of huge courtyards flanked by high red walls, with large, ornate bulidings and gates dividing up the sections. Along the way we got to see some of the ancient sculptures, which were carved into stone along the sets of stairs leading down into the courtyards.
During the first half an hour or so of our visit, Sabine and I had trouble finding ourselves on the map in the brochure. We figured we had been walking for quite some time and thought we were probably about halfway down the western side. I finally found our position: we were still in the upper northwest corner and had hardly made any progress at all.
That was ok, but we also realized that we had to pick up the pace if we were to see much during the three or four hours we had planned for the visit.
Hong Kong is a place with multiple personalities, as a result of being Cantonese Chinese with a long-time British influence. Today, the former British colony is a major tourism destination for China’s increasingly affluent population. It is also an important hub in the Chinese Diaspora with global connections to many of the world’s cities. It is a unique destination that has absorbed people and cultural influences from places as diverse as Vietnam and Vancouver.
Climate
There are four distinct seasons in Hong Kong. Hong Kong can be a little chilly in the winter (10°C) and hot and humid in the summer. The best times of year to visit are thus late spring (March-April), when the average temperature is around 25°C and autumn between (September-December). Christmas in Hong Kong can be a delight with a fair chance of mild sunny weather that will appeal to those used to northern climates. Hotels experience peak occupancy in the months of April and October. Typhoons usually occur between June and September and can bring a halt to local business activities for a day or less. The weather in winter is usually caused by the winter monsoon which brings dry cold winds from the north. In winter the air can be cold but the sun can still burn. Expect winter temperatures to rise to 20°C on sunny days and fall to under 10°C at night. Chinese New Year is notorious for cold wet weather and, since many businesses close and non-Chinese tourists will not see Hong Kong at its best. Should you find yourself in Hong Kong at Chinese New Year, you can make the best of the weather by going hiking if it is dry.