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flights to China from Finnair

Found a pretty good offer to fly to China (Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong) from Finnair for 1655 ron, which translates to 396 euro. The offer is a special deal, so it is available only to June 3rd. The biggest problem though is that in summer China can be pretty hot. These days Beijing enjoys a scorching 37C.

Having said that, the price is pretty hard to beat…

This is the second post in the series about sights in China which I did not have the time to write about when I was still in there. The first post was  Along the Great Wall – a description of that trip and a photo gallery.

Today the theme is the Forbidden City – with it’s countless palaces and gardens. This huge area contains a huge number of beautiful buildings and squares, a lot still not open to the public. Some of the smaller palaces have little museums opened inside (like the jade or bronze museums). The main series of palaces and courtyards – following the north-south axis – is the focus and highway for tourists, but the buildings on the east and west sides are also impressive. At the north entrance there is a beautiful garden complex – complete with rock formations, ponds and small wooden buildings.

You can find 50 more photos in this post.

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This post was long overdue, always in the making and always left for “another time”. Well, what with the weekend around the office corner I finally found the time to write about one of the “must-do” visits in China: a visit to the Great Wall.

I finally organized this trip on the last day I stayed in Beijing, right before going by train to Shanghai. It was not the smartest thing, as right after I returned from the Great Wall I had to go to the train station. However, this is my usual lack of planning. In the evening before I made a reservation to one of the two available tours to the Great Wall (available at my hostel).

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Before I write a more consistent blog post, probably with some photos as well, I wanted to share these 3 short video clips I had around. The quality is not great, but they are somewhat interesting.

The first video was shot on the last day I spent in Beijing, at the famous Lama temple. It is a moving prayer wheel, which Buddhist believers use to spin thus giving life to the prayer written on the wheel. The second video was also shot in Beijing, this time in Beihan park. The park had a lot of people singing, dancing and playing a lot of games. I went there on a weekend day, and the atmosphere was very pleasant.

The last video – shot at the Temple of Heaven – is of a group of people forming an impromptu orchestra. A lot of people joined as the music went on, either participating in singing or just enjoying the music.

There were a lot of sights and sounds that I could capture in video, however most of the times I either didn’t have the little digital camera with me, or I first thought in photographic terms and only as an afterthought in video terms.

Well, all good things must come to an end. Tomorrow at 11:40am I have a flight for Amsterdam then Bucharest. And I do not really hate the fact that I will fly for almost 19 hours (huge layover in Amsterdam) as much as the fact that I have to leave this beautiful country. But before leaving, I did have to visit a few more areas today. As there are so many nice places to see I had to skip a lot of places of course.

After checking in this morning, I took the subway to Lama temple, which is the second most important Buddhist temple. It is part working temple, part museum, part tourist attraction. All parts pretty interesting for me. Even though it’s Sunday there weren’t that many tourists, which was a welcome change. Lots of people praying at the temple, so it was a nice thing to see people really using this place of religion instead visiting it as just tourists.

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This is the second part of the post I have written regarding moving around in Shanghai, Beijing and in-between. If you are more interested about the trains and planes you can get to get from city to city you should check that post first.

In this post I will post a few pics from the subway and try to explain a bit how one should get from place to place. Maybe someone who was thinking about going to China but had concerns regarding the means of getting around. Well, all those concerns were definitely misplaced. I cannot tell anything about other places besides Beijing and Shanghai – but I do plan to continue the research. Until then – I have to do a bit of praising for the subway systems in these two cities.

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The post today is going to have more of an utilitarian purpose. I know when I started to plan for the trip to China I was definitely looking for this kind of info. And while it is true that usually it is not hard to find specific info – and probably more detailed than what I am going to write here – it still might help people doing research. Or those to scared to consider a trip to China because of language barriers and concerns about managing day to day tasks.

Sadly this post cannot shed any light on long-distance bus rides, nor metropolitan transit in other cities beside Shanghai and Beijing. However, as I traveled Beijing – Shanghai by train and plane and in the cities themselves by a few means of transportation I hope I can give a general idea what to expect.

I will start with the long-distance and then move to short-distance.

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This post could be about the huge crowds in Shanghai, or it could be about a beautiful evening spent in a exclusive restaurant on the Bund. It could even be about the nice art gallery at 3 on the Bund. Of course, in a chronoligical correct order it could be about the snaking qeue at Shanghai museum and how I skipped the visit. Or, of course, to have some fun, I could tell you how I got lost in a mall trying to find the subway. Or it can be about sushi and teaching English in China, or how I met two lovely Americans.

However, all that is for another day.

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In case you are wondering what the hell is that in the title, it is the name of a small water village near Shanghai. These are old villages that now survive in large part on the buses full of visitors coming to visit a slice of authentic village life. Visiting a water village is one of the main things one can do around Shanghai, and I was not going to miss this.

Of course, once I arrived I realised pretty quickly that the villages are maintained in their current state in order to attract visitors. The “new” villages, which are residential areas near the authentic ones are dead giveaways. Still, they are great photo opportunities.

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This short post is going to be a mere continuation of Lost in Shanghai, mostly bringing a few more pictures. Yesterday, because of the very late hour I couldn’t complete the photo album, so now this can be seen as a second part. While there are some photos from Shanghai proper, most are from the later part of the day – the trip to Pearl Tower and visiting the museum there. I hope you like it, even though there is no great story surrounding the photos.

Unfortunately at this time the WiFi works extremely slow, so I have no chance to write more. Though maybe later, or tomorrow morning the situation will improve.