Beijing // Day 5 - Old & New Summer Palace

I NEED HUMIDITY SO DAMN BADLY RIGHT NOW I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M SAYING THIS BUT I NEED SINGAPORE’S WEATHER BACK LIKE, RIGHT NOW. URRRGH. IT’S SO DRY HERE MY SKIN IS ITCHY FROM DRYNESS AND MY MOISTURIZER DISAPPEARS 15 MINUTES AFTER I APPLY IT :<

Anyway, Day 5 was a rather fun day. We visited the Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace. Personally, I think the old one is waaaay interesting than the first! Today is already Day 6 so I might have missed out some parts but I’ll try my best!

My day started off with breakfast made by my aunt (yay!) and it was yums! We left the house at roughly 10am again and headed for brunch. We went to the mall behind shuangjin station and had sushi! Sean got beef and I got radish (kimchi). The sushi was really good and really filling! I only managed to finish half the box and so did Sean. We then put both together in one box and carried along~

Next up was to the Forbidden City. We were suuuuuper pissed when we found out that it was closed on Mondays(!!!) In addition to that, we spent so much time finding our way and walking from the entrance of the entrance to the real entrance that indicated that The Forbidden City was closed. Siiiigh. After much consideration, we decided to visit the Summer Palace which was scheduled for another day. We took a cab down because the subway would take forever, especially if we include all the walking!

When we got to the Summer Palace, we took a long walk around the parks because the buildings were closed! Monday is definitely not a good day for sightseeing here in Beijing :/ to our left, we walked through the famous long corridor before turning out and roaming around the less crowded part of the park. It was a really fun experience as we both climbed all over the place including ‘no visitors’ areas because it was dangerous and most of the steps were either uneven or broken off.
Next up, we walked to the right on the entrance we entered from and gosh was the wind strong! We walked over to this really long bridge which is known to be the longest bridge in a imperial garden. Sadly, half of it was cordoned off, along with the small island that it led to.

 This is the wrong entrance! 

At around 3pm, we left for the Old Summer Palace! We walked, tried to catch a cab, and walked even more. We started getting annoyed (again) when I decided to ask a guy where it was and turned out, WE WERE SO NEAR TO IT. We entered from the entrance further away from the main palace but there was a car there available to fetch us down. I have no idea if we were cheated or not but we pain 2 entrance fees and another fee for the car. It was a total of 35yuan each! When we eventually got to see the old Summer Palace, I was so satisfied with what I was seeing! It was literally ruins. Here, I shall let the pictures do the talking because really, these pictures speak so much more than words can say. In addition to that, each ruin was displayed with a sign describing how it used to look! Really interesting, I love it! A must visit. We decided to take a longer route out so we could see more things and we saw cute ducks! Hehe.

 Love how it's so detailed!

 Where the emperor used to sit to look at his wives run around in the maze LOL

We headed back to shuangjin to find my aunt for dinner but before that, we sat outside the subway station to finish off our sushi because we were staaaarving from all the walking! We had countless weird stares from locals and we couldn’t tell if they were because no one does that here in Beijing or if it’s because it’s winter LOL. We initially wanted to take a cab but we asked our aunt and she said that it’d be 100yuan or more! Soooo expensive :/ anyway, the trip was about 30-40 minutes? Roughly 2 minutes per stop! Quite fast ^-^

While waiting for my aunt to arrive, we roamed around Viva, a mall just across the subway station and it was….. horrible. To me, at least. Most of the things sold there were branded and nothing much I would really look at. It does, however, have a theatre at the highest floor of the mall. Personally the only place I would ever visit if I were to visit Viva again. My aunt arrived not too long after and we went to a small restaurant nearby. The food we ordered was something similar to the fried mala sold in Chinatown in Singapore. Loved it! We ordered too much but we still enjoyed it a lot :>

 LOOK AT THAT AMOUNT OF CHILLI

After dinner, we headed home and I guess I didn’t really do much, haha!
Goodnight, now.