A Wintery Beijing

Best thing about Beijing in the winter? Nope - not the minus 17 degrees!! It's being able to escape the hundreds and thousands of ANNOYING tourists. No matter how many times I go, there's just something so magical and majestic about the two most absolute famous sights of China - The Forbidden City and The Great Wall of China. I've seen them all year round now...in spring, summer & winter and honestly, I gotta say the latter is by far THE BEST time to go (my humble opinion).

On any ordinary day, I can understand why some people lose sight of why they even bothered to visit. The swarms of people pushing and shoving to take photos can be enough to put you off. It's pretty hard to imagine how the imperial family ever lived there or picture soldiers and horses running along e wall in battle amongst the massive tour groups wearing same coloured caps & waving the stupid "don't get lost" flag.

But on this sunny day in January, jin and I pretty much had the Wall to ourselves. It was bliss. We were really blessed with perfect winter weather (if there is such a thing) where the snow covered e ground for e best pics, but the sun kept us warm without even the slightest hint of a chilly wind (considering we were mostly on mountain peaks, I'd say what a massive relief!!).

I'll admit the Forbidden City wasn't quite as deserted but seeing that the grounds were so huge, there was plenty of space for everyone to do their thing :)

These giant trees in the Imperial Garden (back of the palace) have been around for centuries.... just awesome!

Beijing really has the best of both worlds; the most fascinating history & rich culture moulded together with international standards of hotels, restaurants, bars & shopping malls. I wanna go back and live there one day (fingers crossed). I guess that's another thing on the "waiting" list.

What's so good about planning anyway!

It's back to my usual procrastination. Got back to Brunei a few days ago and trying to settle into my routine and reality but holidays really throw me off and it takes awhile to get adjusted hehe! I don't even know where to begin as 2010 is off to a busy start, so I thot maybe a follow up from my last entry to let ya know how much lotsa planning....DOESN"T necessarily pay off peeps!! HA!

So what went wrong on the trip?

Firstly we arrived in Spore & waited patiently at the baggage belt only to be told that our bags were already on their way to Beijing kinda. I thot I told e lady at check-in that we were stopping in Spore for a night!!! sheesh! Not only were we rushing to get to late dinner reservations for jin's bday but now we had technically lost our bags. Thank goodness for e Lost & Found dept who promised to retrieve our suitcases & deliver them to my house. Great service. They arrived about the same time we had finished dinner & taken a cab home. whew!

Second mishap - while I was taking some clothes outta my bag for my return Spore stay, it suddenly hit me hard that I had left my one & only winter jacket in my closet in Brunei. shit! After all my careful packing, I still forgot the most important item of clothing for e entire trip. Boy was I mad wif myself.

Shortly after that, upon checking our bags in for the 1am flight to Beijing, we were informed that our names could not be found in the system. The guy nicely asked to see our itinerary and then told us our flight was actually the night before! We had missed our flight!!! So much for my careful coordination of flights and dates. Big whoops! All I can say was that we were truly blessed & looked after & SQ put us on the flight going out the same night free of charge (waiver of a $300 fee). double whew!

On the bright side, I had the best excuse in the world to buy a gorgeous new jacket from Zara and on sale too - BONUS! Couldn't stop there, Uniqlo had some great buys hence leading to a second down jacket purchase for like $50 bucks, some thermals, a new cashmere scarf & a couple of very comfy fleece hoodies to help brave temperatures ranging from -4 degrees to -17 degrees.

Will try to narrow down what were the major highlights of Beijing and post some pics soon!