Shnamghai

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shnamghai — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 10:15:37 +0000

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Gong’An County, Hubei Province, China 2010

shnamghai — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:45:40 +0000

Here are some pictures of my trip to Karen’s hometown, Gong’An, Hubei Province, China. It’s a relatively small county with about 1 million residents.

As the indoor heating system of all housing not in the North of China is not great, they have this nifty little electric gadgets to keep your feet warm.

Our hotel room with western style toilet and a mahjong table. Room 8888!!! (8 is a sign of fortune in China)

Typical playing with fireworks during Chinese New Year:

Chinese pedicurist are hardcore when repairing nails! Those are not my feet btw.

Me playing mahjong with the neighborhood’s most feared player, Karen’s grandma!

Typical meal on the left with 2 different hotpot and various other dishes. On the right, the Gong’An pizza which is cooked inside hot barrels (the pinkish thing is a pita getting cooked). Probably wouldn’t pass hygiene safety protocols but still good tasting nevertheless.

In-house meat and fish storing methods:

Inside the neighborhood:

Scenes from Gong’An downtown:

New Hood

shnamghai — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:15:55 +0000

Our new apartment in Xujiahui. Between Grand Gateway and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. 64 meter square, one room, one living room and one small bathroom.

We live in one of the buildings of this alley, with a conveniently fruit shop at the entrance.

About 10 minutes walk from our place is the center of Xujiahui with 4 big shopping malls and one big electronic market and one Best Buy. The third picture is inside Grand Gateway shopping mall with the decoration for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

In front of the main entrance to our alley is this cheap massage place where I got my VIP card 2 days before moving in. =)

If anyone in the neighborhood realizes that they don’t have clean underwear for the next morning, they can just wait for this guy to set up his rack each evening. With no package, straight from the rack, it’s “pret-a-porter” underwear.

2009 Toray Cup Shanghai International (half) Marathon

shnamghai — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:44:17 +0000

This morning, I participated in the 2009 Toray Cup Shanghai International Marathon by running the half marathon (21.097km/13.1miles). 7 weeks ago, I had never run by choice before. I actually was not interested at all in running and thought it wasn’t fun. After training and running the half marathon, I still don’t think it’s fun! It’s mainly to keep in shape since I couldn’t do summer time sports anymore and there’s no such thing as winter sports in Shanghai. 7 weeks ago, I didn’t know if I had enough time to train to finish the half marathon but now that I’ve done it, I must say, it was kinda easy. Easy to finish but the difficulty lies in doing it fast, which wasn’t so much my priority as it was my first running event. I finished in 2 hours and 3 minutes, which placed me in 1929th position out of 4996 male participants in the half marathon. That’s good enough for me.

My training consisted of 3 runs per week: twice during weeknights for about an 45-60minutes and once every Saturday, trying to extend my run endurance by running longer than the week before. Those long runs went from 10km, to 13km, to 15km, to 17km, to 19k and finally the race itself. A bit surprisingly, not only did I run longer distance each week, I also ran at a faster pace.

As for the equipment, I already had some Nike running shoes but I bought Nike+ gadget to track my runs. One part goes into a special socket in the sole of the Nike+ shoes and the other part connects to my Ipod nano.

Not only does it tell me the distance/time/pace while I’m running, it also uploads the results to the Nike+ website where I can keep track of all my runs and progression.

Running with music helps a lot to keep it not too boring but having Nike+ also made running much more interesting. The website also had a specific running programming for beginner runners for the half-marathon that lasted for 12 weeks that I followed for the last 7 weeks. One bad thing about the Nike+ gadget is the default setting may not be precise for everyone. I never got a chance to run a known distance to calibrate the thing so I always used the default settings. Unfortunately, as I discovered during the race, mine was giving me distance bigger than the real distance which led me to believe that I was running longer and faster than real during all my training runs. After I finished the 21km race, my Ipod was showing me 23.5km.

The even itself had the full marathon (42km/26miles, 3500 participants), half marathon (6000 participants) and fun/health race (4.5km, 10000 participants). It started at People Square, the most crowded spot in Shanghai, then we ran along Nanjing Road, then Yan’an Road, then roads that I’m not familiar with that took me to somewhere not in the city center.

It was nice to able to run on the streets of Shanghai, even though some portions of the race were next to ongoing traffic. It seemed like some residents didn’t know about the marathon and got stuck watching everybody going by before being able to cross the street. Must suck to be them! Throughout the race, there was people on the side of the road not only watching but encouraging us. I never thought I would say this, but I actually appreciated the many 40 years and older Shanghainese women yelling at us! I saw a lot of group of them knowing about the event and preparing some drums or others to encourage us. They had drinks every 3-4km and taking a glass, drinking half of it, then throwing it in the ground while running is as cool as it looks during the Olympics. If it was hot weather, I would’ve splash one over my head just to feel awesome.

As for my race, I got to the starting line to warm up around 7am. At about 7:10am, it started to be full so I couldn’t really move anymore and was stuck there in the not so hot weather for 20 minutes.

At the start of the race, with so many people, we all started a bit slowly until everyone had a bit more space to hit their normal stride. The first 5km was pretty nice as we ran through famous Nanjing Road and passed through my district (Jing’an). It was nice until I saw a bunch of male runners go take a piss in the bushes at a park on the side. I thought it was totally disgusting and despicable until I needed to go badly myself. I feel ashamed but it was totally worth it. The first 10km was great and I felt like I could ran the full marathon but that feeling only lasted until oh, the 11km. My pace was getting slower even though I thought I was running as the same speed so I had to push a bit just to keep the same pace. That worked until the 15km where giving that extra effort was much more difficult and not so efficient. Then at around the 17-18km, I felt like they played a joke on all contestant by extending each kilometer to 1.5 kilometer. Each kilometer felt so much longer. Finally, I was able to give an extra effort for the last kilometer so that I wouldn’t look like a fool for the spectators and cameras at the finish line. I finished in style! All in all, I’m happy with my race. I managed to run at a faster pace and longer distance then my previous longest run. My only regret might have been that I forgot to eat a banana before my run like I usually do. I think I could’ve ran below 2 hours with that extra energy. Oh well.

Now let’s talk about Karen’s performance. Not her race, because she didn’t run, but her support for me during the race. It started well with her being at the starting line and taking pictures. The route did a U-turn of sort, which gave her a chance to see me again run but she failed to capture any pictures. Maybe it was like trying to capture a F1 car driving by, maybe I was jogging by too fast? Then, after that point, I actually managed to run faster to the finishing line then for her to reach the finish line through taxi/metro/walk. EPIC FAILURE KAREN! So to all my readers, that’s the reason why you don’t have pictures of me finishing the race in style. In her defense, there was a lot of traffic due to roads being blocked and she didn’t really know how to get there without taxi. She actually met another girl in the same situation as her while her husband was running the full marathon. pfffffft, women. Maybe next time, while we practice running, they should do practice session on how to get to the finish line by taxi.

More pictures HERE.

Thailand revisited, October Holiday, 2009

shnamghai — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:46:30 +0000

October 1st-8th 2009

For the 60th year anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, Karen and I decided to celebrate by going to Thailand .

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s my recap in 59 000 words:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nambo/sets/72157622493108387/detail/

Enjoy!

Nam

Seoul, South Korea

shnamghai — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:20:11 +0000

April 28th-31st, 2009

What a nice short trip! The food, including street food, was very good for the most part. Besides kimchi and barbecue bulgogi stuff, we tried a few Korean staple food such as bibimbap (rice in hot pot topped with vegetables, meat and egg), japchae (similar to bibimbap but with cold transparent vermicelli) and samgyetang (whole chicken stuffed with glutinous rice). Seoulites are very friendly and it was much appreciated since we didn’t speak the same language as them. People speaking English were pretty scarce but luckily for us, some of them spoke mandarin fluently. More than once did our waiter go look for a mandarin speaking colleague, sometimes from the kitchen, to come help us order. The shopping is much better than in Shanghai but we didn’t find any plastic surgery centers that we here so much about. They have a university area (Hongdae) that pretty big and very lively on the Friday night that we were there. Public transportation is top notch with an extensive subway networks similar to Tokyo. Taxi rides are pretty cheap and they even have a public bus covering all major attractions spot around the city for tourist. Oh, and the internet there is blazing faasst! On the down side, Insadong, the supposedly cultural and traditional place to visit and Itaewon, Seoul’s international district were disappointing. Most likely because there are similar places like it in Shanghai.

Coming from Shanghai, I guess I appreciated some things more than tourist from other parts of the world. For example, the friendliness of the people encountered, the cleanliness of the air and streets and the lack of honking and cars/bus wanting to run over pedestrians. Overall a very nice city!

Pictures HERE.

Yunnan, China 2009

shnamghai — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:34:35 +0000

April 11th-19th 2009

Pictures can be viewed HERE.

Yunnan (south of the clouds) is a province in southern China, bordering Laos and Vietnam. I had never really heard about it but Karen wanted to go there so we did. Here’s brief recap of our itinerary:

Kunming, capital of Yunnan province:
Kunming was very unexceptional to me, except for the cross bridge noodle (guo qiao mi xian) which was a noodle soup resembling a Vietnamese noodle soup called bun bo. It was very good and that is why we went to the famous The Brothers Jiang restaurant 3 times in 2 days.

Stone Forest, one hour bus ride from Kunming:
I was told that this was a nice place if one likes rocks… and I guess I like rocks because I found it pretty nice for a 2 hour walk. We rented a local tour guide for 60rmb for 2 hours and she was well worth it. Maybe just due to being in fresh air and beautiful weather made it nice because it’s a welcome change from the conditions of Shanghai. Cost 120rmb per person.

Lijiang, 45 mins flight from Kunming:
I had now idea what to expect from Lijiang but I was surprised that it was so touristy. Lijiang Old Town, the place we stayed most of the time, is only tourist, foreign and Chinese. It’s just stores for tourists and restaurants and once you’ve seen a street, you’ve seen them all. For those familiar with Shanghai, it’s like 5 or 6 Yu Yuan glued together.

Naxi orchestra, Lijiang Old Town:
For our first night in Lijiang, we got tickets for the Naxi Orchestra, which was apparently a good attraction. I say apparently because it wasn’t. It was old people, some 80 years old playing music with ancient instrument older then them. Very cultural but not very good, especially for 120rmb. I’m not proud of it, but once the show started, Karen and I moved to more expensive seats like Chinese usually like to do. I felt cheap to do so… until I realized how crappy the show was.

"Lijiang impression" show:
After our dissapointment with the 120rmb rip-off that was the Naxi orchestra, we almost canceled our booking for Lijiang Impression which was 190rmb. 190 rmb for a tourist show?! There’s no way it could live up to that price was what I thought. Well, it did…almost! The show was on a beautiful days at the base of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, with the mountains in the background. It was performed by 500 locals of Chinese minorities with dancing, singing and even some horse riding. The price was still expensive but still worth it. Probably because it was produce by the same guy who produced the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony.

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain:
We hired a driver for the day to come here. She cost 120rmb for the whole day. The cost just to enter mountain area was 160rmb then we have to pay another 170rmb for round trip on the cable car. That’s 390rmb per person! Everything near Lijiang is very expensive! So after emptying our wallets to get in, we actually first have to wait an hour for bus shuttles to go to the cable cars, then wait another 45 mins in the lineup to get in cable cars before finally arriving at the top of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain at above 4500m of altitude where it’s covered with snow. Although nice, it wasn’t "I just spent 390rmb for a Chinese attraction" spectacular. Actually, that’s not including the oxygen bottles we bought in case we needed from being in such high altitude. We bought 3 at 60rmb per bottle and we ended using only one of them. Actually, only Karen used it as I didn’t need it. Once we escalated to the top with a 45mins walk and got our "we tried our best to make the most of 390rmb by climbing the stairs to the top" pictures taken, we got back down, waited another 45mins to get in the cable cars and that was it. Overall, it was nice but way overpriced, especially considering all the waiting time and maybe because I’ve seen similar mountains before.

Shangri-la 2 day tour:
For this tour, we were accompanied by a Tibetan tout guide and 20 or so Chinese tourists. We got to see a part of Tiger Leaping Gorge, Potatso National Park and Shangri-la. We also got to see how they subtly try to scam tourists everywhere. We visited a museum of Tibetan medicine in which we got a free tour guide and even a free palm reading by a tibetan "doctor" which was cool until the doctor offered us some of his medicine even though we were fine. Then for the walk in the national park, the tour guide strongly suggested to rent overcoats to keep warm and some oxygen to help with the altitude, which in the end, was useless for most people who got them. We also got to visit a Tibetan museum in which Tibetan monks gave us free reading of our palms once again and in the case of "sensing" some bad things for our future, encourage us to buy some things related to Buddhism in the range of a few hundreds RMBs to a few thousands of RMBs. Finally, at our last souvenir shop bus stop, the driver explicitly told us for every 100rmb purchased, he got 8rmb commission… but it was the "cheapest place to buy souvenir in the area", or so he told us.

Tiger Leaping Gorge:
We came back to Tiger Leaping Gorge, but at another section, for a 1 day trekking tour. The trekking lasted 3 1/2 hours and was one of the best thing that we did during the trip. Definitively recommended if the weather is nice.

I wrote mostly about the bad stuff and skipped the nice stuff because they’re better seen through the pictures HERE. Don’t be fooled by the text, all in all, it was a very nice trip.

Harbin, China

shnamghai — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:08:22 +0000

January 26th-28th 2009

Pictures of Harbin can be viewed HERE.

Pictures of Chinese New Year in Shanghai HERE.

As you may or may not know, Shanghai is a cold place to live during the winter. Not only is the humid cold bone chillingly cold but indoor is even worse due to poor heating system and poor isolation. In the appartment, it’s not uncommon for me to have 3 layers on or to see my breath vapor trail in the bathroom in the morning. Why is a modern city like Shanghai yet to have proper indoor heating system? The answer is the same reason as why plane boarding passes are too big to put them in your pockets, which is "I have no idea but it’s retarded".

Anyway, no better way to escape the cold Shanghai winter than to go to Harbin, an even colder place in China’s northernmost major city. However, I’ve heard that indoors was warm and comfortable so it was well worth the try. Oh, and there’s also the Harbin International Snow and Ice Festivals. Karen was afraid of the cold weather but ~~who cares what she thinks~~ I managed to convince her that it wasn’t going to be that bad and it would be ok, which of course was a huge lie. Damn right it’s going to be too cold! But preferbly, I didn’t want to stay in Shanghai for Chinese New Year holiday as it’s quite boring and travelling outside China during that time is expensive. Therefore a 3 day trip to Harbin was what the doctor prescribe.

For reference, Harbin’s winter is very similar to Montreal’s winter, with temperatures easily going down to -20, -30 degrees Celcius. However, when it’s cold in Canada, I never stay outside for more than 5-10mins to go from car to destination and vice versa. As for Harbin, the main attractions needed us to stay outdoors for a few hours at a time. I was probably more afraid about the cold than her as I’m pretty fragile, that’s why I wasn’t reluctant to buy warm gear just for those 3 days, including really ugly big winter boots at 159RMB that I donated right after coming back to Shanghai. Even with those boots, my toes were still cold when staying outdoors for too long. Oddly enough, Karen had no problem with her usual Shanghai winter boots costing a mere 70RMB. As you will see in the pictures, we were well prepared by wearing multiple layers and didn’t encounter problem with how cold it was. Karen was wearing a mask (usually used to prevent breathing dusk) and TWO big and long scarfs. We could only see her eyes and she could barely rotate her neck because that area was very bulgy. She looked like a winter ninja with a stiff neck but that’s ok, as long as she’s warm, that’s what matters.

As for Harbin, 3 days was just right. We saw the huge illuminated ice sculptures at night, saw the big snow sculptures during day, had bad dinner at a fake russian restaurant which looked really authentic (Harbin is near Russia and has russian influence, so we wanted to try a russian restaurant), had the best jiaozi that I’ve ever tasted, saw a sea lion doing situps, 2 chineses trainers kissing beluga underwater to the tune of "My heart will go on" by Celine Dion and lastly, had a hotel room with warm temperature, yay! All in all, a good 3 day trip.

For reference:

Shanghai <-> Harbin round trip during Chinese New Year: 2450RMB

Ice Sculpture entry fee: 150RMB

Snow Sculture entry fee: 120RMB

Aquarium with sea animals performance: 100RMB

Fake russian dinner for two: 250RMB

Best jiaozi meal ever for two: 34RMB

Winter gear for two: 400RMB

Extremely well located Gloria Inn hotel room with friendly tourist guide not trying to rip us out: 400RMB per night.

Seeing Karen with big sloppy ass Carrefour pants with flower embroidery along with eskimo ninja look: priceless!

That is all, enjoy the pictures.

Vietnam, Act III, the North

shnamghai — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:07:45 +0000

September 27th – October 5th 2008

Pictures HERE.

Karen and I went to the North part of Vietnam last week during China national holiday week. We didn’t fly to Hanoi because it was too expensive so instead we flew to Nanning in the south of China and then took the bus to Hanoi.

First, whenever you book a flight online and they send you that confirmation email, make sure to check it! Our flight was supposed to be for September 27th but while I was checking at the exact time at 2am the night before, I realized we booked for September 7th instead of 27th! Fortunately, we were able to change the flights by paying some fees.

Once we arrive at Nanning, we were lucky to discover that direct buses from Nanning to Hanoi were available on that afternoon. Else, we would’ve had to take a bus to the city nearest the border, then taxi to the border, then walk through the border, then taxi to the next city nearest the Vietnam border, then bus to Hanoi. With this "direct" bus from Nanning to Hanoi, it’s one bus to the border, go through border, then hop into another bus on the other side to go to Nanning. The bus were comfortable, with snacks and water and the organization of the bus transfer very efficient. 3 hours to the border, 45mins to cross both customs and another 3 hours to Hanoi. Something like 160rmb per ticket. BUS COMPANY.

We arrived in Hanoi around 8pm local time and got greeted by a horde of taxi drivers. I asked one of them for the price to our hotel and he said 10 050vnd. Our hotel hostess said it should be around 40 000vnd to 60 000vnd so the price given by the driver was suspicious, especially for that extra 50vnd. So I confirmed with him in Vietnamese about THREE times before going with this guy. My south vietnamese canadian accent and hearing of north accent might not be great but Nam knows his numbers! I know we agreed on 10 050vnd! Even though we didn’t use the meter, I looked at it and got suspicious when it started at 13 000vnd. I didn’t say anything during the ride because maybe then he would take a long route or whatever. Upon arrival, he unsurprisingly announced that it was 150 000vnd. I refuse to pay because we agreed THREE times that it would be 10 050vnd. After some arguing, the hotel hostess came out and help us settle the argument. We agreed on 100 000vnd. The meter indicated 75 000vnd so it wasn’t so bad.

Our initial plan was to go to Halong Bay and then Sapa but the hotel hostess said that it would be better the other way around since the weather was bad in Halong bay at the start of the week so we booked our Sapa 3 nights 2 days trip (sleeper train to Sapa, 2 days 1 night in Sapa, sleeper train back to Hanoi). Sapa was beautiful and the 1 1/2 day of trekking was good. The hotel, the Summit Hotel, was very nice but the food included with the hotel was pretty bad.

We came back at Hanoi at around 4am and had our Halong bay tour start at 8am. We booked a 3 days 2 nights in Halong bay. The tour included a visit of 1 forgetable cave, some swimming at a public beach, kayaking, lunch and swimming at private beach, trekking, 1 night stay on boat and 1 night stay in a hotel. We upgraded the package for better hotel, the Sunrise Resort, which was an extremely nice hotel with great view from room, swimming pool and massage service but might not be worth the upgrade cost considering we were there only from 5pm to 8am the next morning.

All in all, it was a good Halong Bay tour except for the traverller’s diarrhea (diarrhea + fever) that affected me for most of the tour. Thanks to the New Zealanders on the boat with us for the medecine that help me recover. The boat was nice and each room had it’s own clean bathroom. The other tourists on the boat were friendly, especially 2 Israelian guys we spent most of the time with.

In Hanoi, we stayed at the Hanoi Guesthouse, recommended by my Swiss cousin. The rooms were ok and the service was extremely friendly. We booked all our tours through them and all went smoothly. I was mainly concerned by scams tours but the tours provided were as advertised and good service in general.

All in all, it was a great trip, the few letdowns being the food and the diarrhea. I was warned that the food isn’t as good as the South and it’s true. Too bad most of our food was provided by the tours because thoses are somewhat expected to be not so good. As for the language, I think it’s pretty friendly to people who speaks english as you will get by fairly easily. As for my Vietnamese, I think most of them had a hard time understanding me and I didn’t understand them quite well either. Sometimes, I think they were wondering what language I was speaking. "hmmm, it’s not Vietnamese, not French… I will reply in English to this handsome tourist".

Again, here’s the link to the pictures. CLICK.

Beijing 2008 Olympics

shnamghai — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:55:06 +0000

August 22-24 2008

For pictures, click HERE.

I always thought I would stay away from the Beijing Olympics because it would be too crowded and I don’t really like Beijing. However, after watching the Olympics for more than a week and realizing that my chances to easily access any other Olympics would be slim, I decided to go have a weekend trip to Beijing with Karen, even without any Olympics tickets in hand. So on a Wednesday night over dinner, we made the decision to go, on thursday we bought train tickets to go, plane tickets to return, booked the hotel and on Friday night, off we went!

On Saturday, we arrived at 7am at the train station. After a few hours there, it didn’t feel like Beijing or any major city in China. Sky was perfect blue, streets/subway were clean, no traffic, friendly volunteers all over the place and not crowded at all. Blue sky was in part due to factories on the outskirt of Beijing being completely shut down for the Olympics, no traffic because on any given day half of the cars were prohibited from being driven, no huge crowds because lots of tourists got their visas denied and also many Chinese were relocated (migrant workers, beggers, prostitutes) by the goverment in orderto give out a better image.

Since we didn’t have tickets and didn’t want to pay huge money to scalpers, we tried our luck at lower profile events. First off on Saturday, we went for canoe/kayak competition. We needed information on how to get there and we had a few encounters with the volunteers. They are very friendly and try their best but not always very accurate on information provided. It was not uncommon to get different answers from different volunteers for the same question. Without too much difficulty, we arrived at the canoe/kayak venue some 45minutes away from downtown Beijing. It was about 1 hour before the start of the event and we didn’t have tickets yet so the hunt for tickets began. Face value was 80rmb and some of the scalpers were trying their luck by selling them from 400 to 1000rmb. The frustrating part was to see a bunch of school kids disembarking from buses all with tickets in their hands. I’m guessing this might be the unsold tickets that were giving out to them to make all events "sold out" and have stands filled out. I thought about bullying some of the kids but my mandarin is not good enough to say "give me your tickets you little punks before I beat you up!" In the end, we bout tickets from a guy at 150rmb then exchange that ticket + 200rmb for a pair of tickets from an old lady. Bottom line is 2 tickets for 350rmb, face value being 160rmb which isn’t that bad considering we got in the event just in time for the start of the event. Seeing canoe/kayak live is pretty boring and athletes are too far to really see them clearly. Aside from being an Olympic experience, I don’t see why anyone in their right mind would want to go see canoe/kayak except for cheering for someone.

Saturday night, we tried to get some tickets for track and field to get inside the Bird’s nest. Unfortunately, all we found were scalpers selling the tickets at around 2000rmb a piece. We could’ve tried harder but Karen and I were both tired and hungry and plan B was Beijing roasted duck so we didn’t hesitate to fallback on that plan. I read from a few places that Da Dong was the best place for roasted duck and it lived up to the expectations. It is simply the best roasted duck Shnamghai has ever had, bar none.

Sunday we tried for handball. Again, lots of tickets going for between 1000rmb and 2000rmb but we managed without too much difficulty to get tickets worth 300rmb at face value for 400rmb (2 for 800rmb). These tickets were for the bronze medal match followed by the gold medal match. I always thought handball was a boring sport to watch on TV and let me tell you, now that I’ve watched it played live at Olympic level, I can confirm that’s indeed very boring. We didn’t even stay for the gold medal match. It doesn’t really matter, it was fun to be there and having tickets gave us access to the Olympic Green which contains the Bird’s nest and the Water Cube. The Olympic green is huge and with only people with tickets allowed on it, it makes it a bit empty and not very festive. It was the day of the closing ceremony so security was tight and we couldn’t even make it within 50m of the bird’s nest.

All in all, I had a very good trip and albeit the competitions I saw were not the most exciting ones, living the Olympic experience is quite cool, especially when Beijing was transformed so radically for the games.

Train: 480rmb

hotel:400rmb (for 2)

Plane to come back: 1100rmb

Tickets for 2 events: 450rmb

Beijing Roasted duck: 198rmb (for 2)

Beijing Olympic experience: ~~priceless~~ around 2628rmb

For pictures, click HERE.