Day 1 & 2 Sydney-Hong Kong-Macau-Beijing

Day 1 & 2

At 10:45 am I was sitting on the Qantas Jet, it’s going to take off in any minute. Goodbye Sydney. Everything went well, I arrived in Hong Kong at 5:45pm and took a ferry to Macau and arrived at my grandparents place at 7pm, just in time for dinner. I had a short half-day (and overnight) stay in Macau before flying to Beijing with my cousin, Jack. We would team up with Andrew at Beijing. During my stay in Macau I converted my Australian dollars to RMB (¥), the exchange rate is always better here. We had lunch at my favour restaurant, O Santos, we had Bacalhau (cod), fried game sausages and Galinha a Portuguesa (Portuguese Chicken). I had no room for dessert.
We were on a plane again at 2.10pm flying to Beijing. I had no memories of my journey across the skies. I was so full and tired, I was out the whole 3.5 hours.

When we went through the customs, Andrew was already there waiting for us. I met Andrew when I was touring Singapore last year, we have been keeping in touch via facebook. When I told him my plan, he decided to come along. In the 21 century, we are all global citizens, there is no geographic boundary between us.

OMG, the minute we stepped out the airport, we were walking into an oven, we were being baked by the excessive heat, it was 38℃ !!!


We caught the airport bus to our hotel, lucky it was air- conditioned. By the time we finished our check in, it was already 4pm. We contacted the travel agent whom we booked our Tibet trip on internet. All our travel arrangements went well. As foreign visitors are not allowed to travel individually to Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), a tour must be booked in advance before you are allowed to go into Lhasa. There are different tours to choose from and they are very flexible. Our tour was very simple, the travel agent organised our Tibet travel permits (TTB & PSB), a guide would see us off at Beijing train station, and another representative would meet us on arrival in Lhasa. After that, we would be on our own.

It’s dinner time, decision! Decision! There is a Chinese saying, no visit to Beijing is complete if you miss seeing the Great Wall or dining on Roast Duck. Jack and I were here four years ago and did both, but it was Andrew’s first visit so we gave him the privilege. He’s not keen on Peking Duck, so we opted to be a bit adventurous to experience some new taste. Personally, I think the Peking Duck in Beijing tastes the same as the one I ate in Sydney.

We caught a taxi to Donghuamen Snack Night Market (东华门夜市). The street is crowded with food stalls. The stalls are along the side of the pedestrian area, in a long row with coloured lights and Chinese lanterns hanging on top. They sell all manners of food. There are lots of creepy foods, such as snakes, scorpions, crickets, locusts, seahorses on a stick and heaps of pig and also testicles. Of course, there are sensible food like stir fried noodles, dumplings, dim sims, buns and Uighur kebabs.... What the heck ....we were being brave, we tried the crickets, snakes, scorpions and locusts, except for the snakes which had no taste and tough, the rest were very crispy and tasty (if you don’t know what they are). They were deep fried in front of us and then seasoned with herb and salt. We also had dumplings and noodles, again absolutely delightful. We ended our meals with another famous stick – San Char, it was a small red sourish fruit coated with candy, wow, refreshing.

It was a fun and adventurous night out except that we had been ripped off by the taxi driver, our hotel was just couple streets from the market.