So… remember how I said that my partner set their alarm for 5:10 am? Just to be safe he also set one for 5:20. When did he wake up? 5:40. Do you remember what time the flight was at? 7:40. Yep… he woke up 2 hours before his international flight, and we were in the middle of downtown Hong Kong. Let’s just say I have never seen someone shower and get ready as quickly as he did. Before I had any time to do anything, we were out the door towards Hong Kong Station. Be sure not to run too fast, it’s just too hot. We still took a few pictures while running. Just for you, our reader.

Hong Kong Station has something very cool where you can actually check your luggage in from here for the flight rather than at the airport. That’s pretty cool considering that the train takes exactly 24 minutes from station to the airport. My partner’s logic was if they took his bag at the station, they would know that he was checked in and do lots of last second calls at the airport. Well… since nothing else is going to plan, why would this? He couldn’t get his itinerary up in time so the attendant told him to just do it at the airport because it would be faster, and make sure to have your itinerary ready. So we went to wait for the train. Time is ticking and every minute that goes by we think we will miss our flight. We wait exactly 9 minutes to board our train to the airport. Now we have to just sit here and wait 24 minutes until we get there… It is now 6:20 am… For a 7:40 am flight…

We finally make it to the airport. The start of the trip was entirely trying to get the itinerary up on his phone to be able to show the airline to be allowed to quickly check in. We will explain in a bit why this is absolutely necessary for us. We get to the check in counter and it is now 6:55 am. There are signs everywhere that says that the gates close 40 minutes before flights. Our flight is still on time… My partner asked the airline staff if we could wait in the standby line rather than the regular line. “No”. Sweet. Regular line it is. A few minutes later our flight got called. We were the only ones! Not great. We showed our itinerary along with our passport and were given a boarding pass. On to security! Scan the passport and we are through security! Jumped on the train between terminals. We finally look at our boarding pass. Very clearly says that boarding is at 6:50. It is now 7:10. Get off the train and run… get to the gate at 7:15… and… they haven’t started boarding! What pure relief!

My partner decided to go spend the few Hong Kong dollars he had left. Then it was onto our next flight, and we got our window seat! Next stop, Beijing! Thank you, Hong Kong, for not leaving us stranded!

Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy the view! 

Now… why have we mentioned our itinerary so much for this one flight? Well, as we didn’t know our flight schedule or where in the world we would be today until two days ago, you can imagine we did not have time to get a Chinese visa. So, what to do? There are locations in China that you do not need tourist visas for. One of those regions is Beijing. The rules are simple. You must fly into China from country A (Hong Kong in our case) and fly out to country B (cannot be the one you entered from) within 144 hours. The airline must check to make sure you have a visa to enter China (or else they will be liable to fly you out of China) and when we did not we had to prove that we had flights out of China to a third country. If you don’t have set plans but would like to visit China, this is a very easy way to do it. The only caveat is that you may not leave the region you land in (Beijing for us) and you may not fly to a second Chinese city/area. This visa is also free and immediate, so it doesn’t seem like there is any downside!

As we got closer and closer to Beijing… the buildings just started showing up. So many big buildings, and we’re not even close to downtown Beijing at this point nor at the airport.

Well, we made it! We got off the plane and went to a special desk for this 144-hour visa. We again had to prove that we had a flight out of the country and then were quickly allowed into the country. We made it! Funny to think that 5 hours ago we thought we would be stuck in Hong Kong!

Welcome to Beijing!

Now we jumped onto another train to get to the local subway system. Very easy. Pay 25 yuan and jump on the airport express until the last station. Make sure to grab a window seat.

Then pay 3 yuan to change to the local subway system. Just make sure to have a map and a small idea of where you want to go to ask directions. Our pronunciation of Mandarin could use a little work… so pointing was key. Something very cool that we saw on the subway were moving ads. We had never seen this before, and some readers may not find it interesting, but as the subway sped by there were signs on the walls that moved at our exact speed so that we could see commercials while moving. So futuristic!

So we got off at our station and headed up to the street. We have no pictures of this because my partner thought it was more important to find our hotel than take pictures of me. We got out into the hot air and there were so many people and vehicles everywhere. We had our hotel information on our phone and a map. The hotel was clearly marked around the corner. Easy, right? So we walked there. Nothing. Ask people. They have never heard of this hotel. We show them the hotel information in Mandarin. Nothing. We finally find a fancy hotel and ask them. They point in a direction and move their hand a lot. We make the motion of walking, they nod. Off we go.

A few blocks later and we are in a residential area. There are small restaurants everywhere without any sign of a hotel. At the next large boulevard we enter a restaurant and ask them. They come outside and point in the same direction. At least we are going the right way. And then we made it. Finally! 

We go inside, check in, drop our stuff off, and are out of there immediately! If you think 144 hours is a short time to see Beijing… we were planning about 48! No time to sit around at the hotel! We picked this specific hotel because it was so close to…

This was our first glimpse of the Forbidden City. This is where we wanted to be! So many people swirling all around! Absolutely packed. But it is a very nice walk between the water and the huge walls.

Only problem? The tickets were sold out and we weren’t allowed in. So, we turned around and went to our next destination which was only a little further. After waiting in a short line, we were in. Time to visit Tiananmen Square!

Although the square is on our left, we first stopped to look at this gate on our right. This gate leads back towards the Forbidden City, but it is only for one-way traffic towards the Forbidden City, so we couldn’t use it to save time. This gate lends its name to Tiananmen Square, since this is the Tiananmen (the Gate of Heavenly Peace). We did go in that way to see if we could make it into the Forbidden City, but we weren’t. So instead we looked at an art exhibit by a local university that specializes in traditional Chinese art. It was actually very cool, and we got a personal tour of the exhibit by one of the artists/students.

Then it was back out onto the street to the square.

It is so cool to think that we are standing in one of the largest squares in the world! Even if there wasn’t any shade to escape the heat other than a pole here or there, haha.

There’s more to the square than the square itself. There is the Monument to the People’s Heroes:

As well as the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong:

And finally, the actual gate of the inner city of Beijing: Zhengyangmen (Qianmen), the biggest gate within Beijing:

As we leave Tiananmen Square it is important to remind everyone that we are conscious of what happened here with the 1989 protests, but as you can imagine there are no signs or memorials commemorating it. 

After leaving the square we continued walking towards something else we had read about, the Ming City Wall Ruins. This wall is part of the ancient Ming Dynasty city wall that was built over 550 years ago. 

And just as we rounded the corner… is that the Trans Manchurian?!

Could that be the same train route that we took from Ulan Ude to Ulaanbaatar? Let’s just say yes.

And then the sun started going down over the Ming Dynasty’s wall. It was pretty cool! We have seen so many great sunsets across so many countries on this trip!

A little further we found the Beijing Ancient Observatory! The original observatory was established in 1227 with the one we see now being built in 1442 during the Ming Dynasty. As such, it is one of the oldest observatories in the world. As you can guess from the sunset of the other picture, it was a bit late to enter. But! We were able to see some of the ancient instruments as they are housed outdoors. Just look up on the roof!

And just a bit further, we saw the Beijing Railway Station. It’s almost like we took the Trans Manchurian from Moscow to Beijing, right? Almost.

Then it was getting pretty late so we started slowly walking back towards our hotel… very slowly. There were things to look at everywhere! And you know we always find something soccer related!

We decided to walk back to Tiananmen Square. For two reasons. Reason #1: That’s the only place we were sure how to get back to the hotel from. Reason #2: Maybe Tiananmen Square looks really cool at night? On our way we figured that the city must just never sleep. There are cars and people everywhere.

But we finally made it back to Tiananmen Square. Apparently we weren’t the only ones to think that Tiananmen Square at night would be a good idea… But I mean, we’re not in Beijing every night, so we might as well wait.

And it was pretty cool to be honest. The Tiananmen had coloured water fountains in front of it:

While the Square itself was completely empty, which made it look super cool:

Now it’s really time to get back to the hotel. We decided to take another less direct route than we took this afternoon just to see a bit more before we had to sleep. These pictures don’t have much information attached to them as it was just as we were making our way back to our bed. So first off we saw a mall (one of many, many):

Then we saw a church (the only one we saw, apparently they are not as religious as Russia):

Saw a really cool laser show:

And wished that this was a real man that could take us back to our hotel as we were getting a little tired of walking so much!

And with that we made it back to our hotel. Time to get some sleep and we will try to get into the Forbidden City tomorrow bright and early. Goodnight from Beijing!