Beijing April 07 2011

Started our second day by hunting for breakfast in the midst of strong breeze. This is because we wanted to save money from dining in the hotel cafe.

We walked for around 300m until we found the well-known franchised bakery in China - Wei Duo Mei.

The breads are really delectable.

Then we were back to the hotel lobby to wait for our tour guide to fetch us for the trip we signed up earlier in the airport.

We were fetched and were told there would be another two tourists joining us. The two good-looking tourists were picked up from Marco Polo Hotel and we knew they must be either very rich or on a luxurious business trip. True enough, they are flight attendants from Vietnam Airlines.

We were then heading to Badaling Great Wall, which is located at the northern part of Beijing, about one-hour-drive from the city center.

Once we got down the van, we knew we would be frozen if we were not going to get a wind breaker. So we simply grabbed two winter coats from a stall nearby at a very low price of RMB250.

Even our camera lens was "moisturized"
due to the very low temperature.

Great Wall is really magnificent and amazing. Imagine that there was no machine assistance, but the impregnable Great Wall was built across various barriers like hills and rivers!

We were given 1.5 hours to conquer Badaling Great Wall and for photo-taking.

Thiet, Vinh and Jess :)

Part of the Great Wall is really steep. But for each step you climb, you will say nothing but to be astounded by the perfect and excellent masterpiece.

We were marveled by the intelligence of
the architects and engineers involved in this grand project.

sign of victory

After an hour, we sat down to rest and have some information exchange with Vinh and Thiet on Malaysia and Vietnam.

When we were passing through the tunnel to take a cable car down to the base, we were "attacked" by the ever strongest and most freezing wind I met in my life. For the one minute, we could not utter anything, but to try covering ourselves up. The chill ran into our mouth and down to our spine. Luckily we survived in the "wind attack".

At the base, when we were about to leave, we saw this attractive camel and spent RMB20 each person to take pictures with it. *grin*

After that, we were led to a jade factory to learn how to differentiate the genuineness of the precious and splendid jade and also had our lunch there.

The next station was Summer Palace. It is another improbable masterpiece! The whole palace stretches around 3.0 km square, with 75% being the man-made Kunming Lake and 25% being the man-made Longevity Hill. The Summer Palace was built during Qian Long Emperor for the 60th birthday celebration of His Mom.

The soil excavated from Kunming Lake was used to build Longevity Hill.

I like willow very much as it gives me a sense of tranquility.

The Marble Boat is a sight not to be missed in Summer Palace. It was used by the Emperor and His Mom to enjoy tea and the breathtaking view.

Our last station was Dr Tea House. We sampled four types of tea, namely Puer, WuLong, Litchi and Jasmine Green Tea. In the tea ceremony, we were briefed the way to drink tea and the history of each tea.

At the same time, we were chatting really euphorically, making jokes of the tea history etc.

The correct way to drink Puer:

We then made our way back to the hotel, bidding goodbye to the two new friends.

After checking in hotel, we walked around HK Macau Center to look for dinner. We tried this classy restaurant. The food was really delicious and cost reasonably unlike the Beijing roasted duck we ate on the first day.

Then it marked the end of Day 2, we got ourselves early to the bed to be energetic for the associateship professionalism course the next day.