Liza and I went to Beidaihe last weekend for a day (or two) of fun at the beach. We've been really missing the very accessible beaches and shores of the Philippines.
This trip is a learning experience for me because for the first time I went to another city without a translator (bahala na si batman!). I also booked our train tickets and hotel on my own (nevermind that I used elong.net to book the hotel - I still did it on my own, hehe). My main concern was how to book the train tickets without going to the train station (I don't speak that much Chinese yet...). I inquired from several travel agencies but they only book plane tickets, so I tried the train's official website (I think) - www.huochepiao.com. With the help of my limited chinese and the trusty google translation site - I was able to book the tickets and request it to be delivered to our place with a delivery fee of 10 kuai per ticket.
I booked the ticket Friday morning, it was delivered around 11 am Saturday. I got the hotel confirmation Friday morning. We boarded the D11 train from Beijing Railway Station (Beijing Zhan, not to be confused with Beijing West railway Station which is Beijing Xi Zhan) at 1:55 pm.
Beijing Railway StationThe D11 train waiting room is at the second floor. There's a lot of chairs but you would need to order a drink before you can sit. Liza and I both asked for an 18 kuai iced lemon tea so we can wait in relative comfort. Little did we know that we could have walked a little further in and saved ourselves 18 kuai... the (real) a waiting room is just near the check-in area.
order a drink if you want to sit...The train is quite nice... clean with relatively comfy seats - we got second-class tickets so I'm thinking first class is way better.
inside the train...
on our way to Beidaihe
He Xie Hao (D11 train) at Beidaihe station
in front of one of the carsI bought our return tickets to Beijing right after we got off the train. There's a very helpful cab driver who pointed me at the right direction - the tickets are sold in the area at the right of the exit. I got us 90 kuai, 3:25 pm tickets for tomorrow.
I asked the cab driver to take us to our hotel (by pointing at the address I printed beforehand), he said he knows a much better place at a much cheaper price. He took us to this hotel that's around 500 meters from the beach (the beach can be seen from the lobby) but according to description in elong, the hotel I booked is much closer to the beach so we opted to go there instead.
I asked the cab driver to take us to our hotel (by pointing at the address I printed beforehand), he said he knows a much better place at a much cheaper price. He took us to this hotel that's around 500 meters from the beach (the beach can be seen from the lobby) but according to description in elong, the hotel I booked is much closer to the beach so we opted to go there instead.
our hotel room
in front of the hotelAs it turned out, we should have listened to the cab driver - our hotel (Yanshan Dasha or Yanshan Hotel) is like a kilometre from the beach!
200 metres daw!After walking a kilometre, we finally arrived at the beach. I've forgotten that beaches can be a lot crowded during Sundays...
never
ending
crowd.
can't make sand castles with this sand...We stayed at the beach til past 7 pm, went to our hotel to wash the sticky sand and then went out to eat. We had some trouble getting our food orders understood - they only have Russian & Chinese menus, no English.
no English menus, just RussianThe next day, we checked-out of the hotel around 9 am and took a walk along the beach.
leaf hat
flower garden by the beach
flower garden by the beach
too high for me...
lots of seaweed
Playing a traditional Chinese instrument
Beidaihe spelled backwardsAt 10 am, we got tired of walking in the sun we took a cab to Shanhaiguan (which is another story).
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