An ensuing super (take note: SUPER) typhoon was threatening to cancel my plane ride but after spending 6 hours in the airport and finishing half a Stieg Larsson novel, I finally boarded the plane bound for Beijing. A trip to China isn't exactly at the top of my bucket list (maybe not even at the bottom) but this is the first time I'm travelling with my parents, titos and titas - meaning there's a big chance for this trip to be a free ride, so what they hey, I was up for it!
The Chinese embassy made a huge deal with the fact that it's my first time to go to China and decided to reduce my validity to just 7 days. The nerve. Even though I have US, UK, AU and Japan visas, they still feared that I become an illegal alien in their country. Pfft. I had to miss the Guangzhou leg of the trip which should have been interesting because the older folks and I were supposed to visit the town where my grandfather was born and grew up in.
So anyway, I landed in Beijing on my actual birthday! Yahoo, my mom and dad woke up in the middle of the night when I arrived at the hotel just to greet me "Happy Birthday" and offer me Skyflakes. Hehe. I willed myself to sleep right away because the next day should be exciting - we were going the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven.
The following day, I froze my butt off in 6-degree Beijing ambient temp. I was ill-prepared for the cold. I camped in Pulag at the same temp with drizzle but I was wrapped like a spring roll then. I underestimated the nearing winter in China and did not even bring thermals. Yikes. But the Forbidden City was awesome and I was amazed at how the Chinese mastered the art of twisting tree trunks and branches into pretzel-like shapes that surely don't exist in nature.
On Day 2, we were bound for the Great Wall. This should be the highlight of the trip - I mean if you've gone to China and did not see the Great Wall, you ought to kick yourself. It was freezing again and we were in the mountains! However, the sun was shining really brightly that day, no clouds, no drizzle so it was a comfortable 9-dgerees that day. I made it to 4 or 5 towers before my tito, my fittest tita and I decided to hit home. My dad and the other ladies opted to stay behind and enjoy the view in a less strenuous manner. My dad actually has a chronic knee problem so the fact that he was even there - hats off! Hey moon man, can you see me now???
That night, my tito (a well-known restaurateur in Cebu) took us to Da Dong, a somewhat pricey restaurant in Beijing that boasts of the best Peking Duck. And true enough, the duck doesn't just melt, it disintegrates in your mouth! Oh, and Da Dong has these really cool interiors straight from a James Bond movie.
Our third day in Beijing was spent going around the Summer Palace and a Beijing Hutong (aboard a rickshaw).
Mom: So how do you find the trip so far?
Me: It's different when you're with older people. Relax lang. Not like when I travel with friends, we rush, try to cram in as many things as possible and we stay at the cheapest places. Unlike now, we're in a service apartment. So yeah, I'm having a good time!
I missed the Olympic Stadium leg of our Beijing trip (thanks to our friends at the Chinese Embassy in Manila) but the remainder of the trip almost made up for it. And so we're off to Shanghai.
Shanghai was more cosmopolitan than Beijing and with a friendlier temperature too. We arrived in our hotel a little before noon to dump our luggage, take quick showers and eat lunch. Now we've been gorging on Chinese food for days already so when my tito found out that there's an Italian restaurant in the hotel - I died and went to tomato heaven. The assistant manager was Pinay so we got a complimentary bottle of wine. Yeah!
Our first day in Shanghai took us to the TV Tower and to the museum at its base and of course, the requisite river cruise which I absolutely loved. I saw for myself that building which Tom Cruise scaled in M:I III. I've always found skyscrapers to be breathtaking so Shanghai was a dose of pure oxygen for me.
Our first dinner in Shanghai was in this upscale-ey restaurant called Din Tai Fung which, according to my tito, served the best xiao long bao (soup dumplings) and was well-renowned even in the West. Slurp. Yum.
The second day in Shanghai was spent in the World Expo. Guess what, the Pinoy expo won the Most Relaxing (or something like that) award - it offered massages. I wanted to go into the German expo but the queue was four hours long! I will not subject my parents to such torture (alright I tried, we stood in line for about 20 minutes then gave up) so we walked around instead, taking pictures of the exteriors. At this point, I've already had it with the Chinese people's bump car mode so I decided, "What the hell, I can play bump too!". And the World Expo was the perfect place to start haha! I probably walked 10 kilometers that day (in circles) with my parents so we congratulated ourselves with a nice Thai dinner in Xintiandi.
Our last day in Shanghai was spent - you guessed it, shopping! Alright, I'm merely mirroring the excitement of my titas since I'm not really a big shopper myself. I suddenly panicked when I realized that I have not bought any pasalubong yet (yup, obligatory). Thankfully, a half-day at Yuyuan Garden will fix everything. I grabbed a couple of stuff for myself and for my friends. I realized it's green tea palooza in this place! My dad, bought himself a mahjong set which spelled "excess baggage"! Heheh.
We left Shanghai amidst a raging storm - yup, that same typhoon that attempted to foil my trip followed me all the way to China!
My first trip to China was different in many ways. I was travelling with older folks so the pace was more relaxed. There was none of those eat-while-you-run scenes. Photo-taking was kept at the minimum (waaah!) and we stayed at really nice hotels, dined at the fancier restaurants and enlisted the services of tour guides (something which I've never done in my previous travels). In fact, I enjoyed it too much, I can't wait for the next time I'd travel with the oldies again!
