BEIJING

As a surprise birthday present for Landon, we traveled to Beijing and explored the historical city and surrounding areas for a full week!

We left on his birthday, August 29th, and returned on September 6th of 2019.

This was the most foreign trip we had taken to date, and it was nothing short of spectacular.

 

Accommodations

We stayed at The Emperor Tiananmen Beijing for the entire duration of our trip and we truly enjoyed it. It is a 4 star hotel and affordable - $950 for a 7 night stay and were even able to use points to cover the cost. It is very centrally located to the things we wanted to do and was not some boujee, out of touch skyscraper hotel in downtown Beijing. This small hotel is tucked away on Qianmen Street (a pedestrian street with small shops and restaurants) and is only accessible by foot. We were basically staying in a slightly nicer version of a Beijing hutong, very local and intertwined with the DNA of the area - exactly how we prefer to travel. Despite being a smaller, more local hotel, the rooms are nice and modern. They were cleaned regularly and service was fantastic. The hotel offers a continental breakfast package included with your stay and has a rooftop restaurant near the pool, all of which we enjoyed. After spending the majority of our meals eating locally and trying native foods, it was nice to have some options at the hotel that were a bit more catered to Americans.

As briefly mentioned above, the location for this hotel was everything. We were able to walk basically anywhere we wanted, use the hotel’s complimentary bikes to get places a bit further away, or grab a taxi/Didi very easily from the nearby cross streets. Tiananmen Square is literally 2 blocks away, and you can see the Forbidden City from the rooftop areas. We were about 45 mins from the airport and had no trouble getting anywhere we needed to go.

All in all, we would highly recommend this hotel for anyone interested in staying more local.

Transportation

We flew United Airlines both directions for this trip. We found an AMAZING deal at $275 per person round trip, and used Chase points to book. It felt like an absolute steal! We flew from Denver to San Francisco where we boarded the massive plane for our cross Pacific trip. We booked Economy Plus seats so that we had extra legroom and purchased the aisle and window seats hoping that no one would grab the middle seat. This plan failed😂 But the passengers had no problem switching to the aisle so the two of us could sit together. If you have never flown long international flights like these, they can be very draining and cramped, so we highly recommend upgrading seats if you are able to. The good thing is that they will serve you full meals and help you try to get accustomed to the drastic time change. For example, we boarded in the afternoon but they turned the lights off in the plane almost immediately and later served us a breakfast meal. Another fun thing to look forward to is the free wine and beer! All drinks are free onboard, but we really loved getting a little buzz on to help us knock-out for a few hours. We also both took some Emergen-Z to help sleep, too. Booze and a light sleep aid - our fail-proof combination. Going through customs was super easy going both directions - nothing different than anywhere else, besides ensuring our VISAs were good and valid.

As with most countries we visit, we booked a private transport from the airport to our hotel. We did this through the travel agency we used for our excursions, but there were many other options available as well.

As mentioned above, walking, biking, and Didi were our best options for getting around the city once there. We didn’t use the hotel’s complimentary bikes until one of our last days, but it was by far our best move. Highly recommend if available to you, as the city is very biker friendly. There are more bikes and mopeds on the roads than cars in many areas!

Explorations

When we tell you that we could not have had a better travel agency… there is nothing that could be more true. We used “The China Guide Private Tours” and they provided the absolute experience of a lifetime. Their assistance hands down made our trip everything that it was and could have ever been.

Kylie worked with Mia Tsai in the planning stages and she made every wish of ours come true. The China Guide has packages put together already for purchase based on your length of stay and types of activities you’re interested in pursuing. We wanted to do it all, so Mia worked with us to put together our own custom itinerary. It had everything we wanted and more. Basically, we did the “Customized Relax and Unwind Tour” base package with customizations to add on their “Camping On The Wall” overnight package with a sunrise hike, and their hutong rickshaw tour with visit to Houhai Lake. To be completely transparent - this was the most expensive aspect of our entire trip. This customized tour ran us $13560CNY (about $2100USD) total. We felt comfortable investing here though since we used points for our flights and hotel.

Before our travels Mia sent us an entire handbook crafted by The China Guide that walked us through many aspects of visiting China - things to prepare for, be aware of, etc. Although we had done extensive research on the front end, this was a helpful final checklist from someone native to the country.

The following was our itinerary for the trip, with links:

Arrival day: Aug. 30th, Beijing

Arrive in Beijing (at 2:20 pm, Flight UA888)

Pick up at the airport and transfer to your hotel - only by the private driver

Day 1: Aug. 31st, Beijing

Pick up at your hotel

Day 2: Sep. 1st, Beijing

  • Return to your hotel

Day 3: Sep. 2nd, Beijing

Pick up at your hotel

Day 4: Sep. 3rd, Beijing

Pick up at your hotel

Departure date: Sep. 6th

Pick up at your hotel and transfer to the airport - by your private driver

Drop off at the airport (around 9 am)

End of the tour

As you can see, we were jam packed for the first few days but we would not have had it any other day. We then had two days before we flew home just to ourselves to explore a bit more and do some things without an official guide. This was also something we really enjoyed! Spacing things out in this way made us feel much more comfortable by the time we were on our own, and we knew exactly what we still we wanting to do.

Here are a few notes about what we enjoyed most about each location and things we may have done differently:

Language, Currency, Etc.

The predominant language in Beijing and northern China is Mandarin. Our guide spoke a good bit of English, but communication was pretty tough when we were on our own. We made the naive assumption that finding English speakers would be easier than it was, and we were very wrong. Translation apps only worked about half of the time.

People are generally very loud naturally when they speak in this part of the world. It is absolutely normal and not an indication of anger or aggression.

The primary form of currency is the Yuan (Chinese Yuan Renminbi). Most places did not accept our VISA cards, so we had to pull out cash a few times. ICBC bank is by far the best move for this, if withdrawing in the city. Our recommendation would be to use a currency exchange in an American airport before flying, just to make things easier. It is helpful to note though that things are much, much cheaper in Beijing than in the US. So food, souvenirs, etc. all will feel very affordable. At the time of our travel, the exchange rate was 1CNY : 0.16USD.

This is the first country we visited where the outlets were different than those in the United States. We found a simple converter on Amazon that worked just fine.

Do’s and Don’ts

You will need a VISA to enter China! It cost around $130 per person for us at the time, and took a couple weeks to complete. Plan early for this so you can get it done with time to spare! You only need the “L” tourist visa, and it should last for 10 years.

VPN, VPN, VPN! Do not forget to get your VPN before you leave the US, otherwise you will be stuck without internet for your entire trip. China is very strict about internet usage, and even with the VPN it can be a bit difficult to access. So come prepared!

Didi is China’s version of Uber. We found success in using this as a means to get around, much more than the taxis (although we did try these as well). For us, it provided an easier way to communicate with the driver as we could show and put in addresses ourselves rather than try to communicate with drivers while having such an extreme language barrier. Don’t forget to download it before you arrive in China!

We felt very safe in China. There of course is crime everywhere, but as long as you are aware of your surroundings you will be just fine! We did not encounter any hostility anywhere we went, despite being some of the only white people we saw on our entire trip. In fact, many people actually asked to take pictures with Kylie.