Category — China

If you haven’t realized I am back in China writing my Beijing Olympics blog.

I won’t be writing much on this website for a while as I am too busy with my Beijing and Olympic website.

Just got a bit hit of traffic yesterday with over 6000 visitors! Be sure to tell your friends about my site – lots of fun things to come.

Beijing Olympics

Here are some pictures of my new home.

I am in Beijing now. It is a holiday this week in China so I decided to just fly up to Beijing. The hotel in Shanghai was a little expensive and I decided I am too old now to stay in dormitory rooms.

I plan to stay here for at least the next couple of months, despite the cool weather and I put a deposit on an apartment today. After about 6 months of living in bungalows, bamboo huts, cheap hotels, sometimes smelly hotels and hostels with shared bathrooms it will be nice to unpack my bag.

The apartment is one bedroom with a kitchen and living room. It is about US$500 a month. I know you can get cheaper rooms, but it is harder to negotiate if you are only staying a short time. The building is pretty new and it is fully furnished and includes internet access. It is about a 15 minute walk from a subway station and a short bike ride from central Beijing.

I made it China with a pretty uneventful journey on Air Asia. It was my first time flying with them and they were ok. They are your typical budget airline with no frills.

You can buy food from them, but no alcohol is sold. What I couldn’t believe is that they don’t have any first or business class and none of the seats are assigned. The flight was full though.

I had no problem not having an onward ticket. Lonely Planet only had a couple of expensive hotels and a youth hostel 15 km out of town. On the airport bus into Shenzhen the guide on the bus called and booked a hotel for me. After everyone left she waited with me until someone from the hotel came and picked me up.

The hotel is 170RMB a night around US$21 and it is a nice looking hotel, especially after some of the places I stayed in Malaysia.

I put in my application for a visa at the Chinese embassy yesterday. They said it would be ready by Wednesday. I wanted to get a move on, so I paid for the express visa and pick it up Monday morning. I booked my AirAsia flight to Shenzhen today for Monday afternoon. I bought just a one way ticket. It seems this is more of a problem with the airlines rather than the immigration.

The flight from KL to Shenzhen was just over $200 – not bad but it would have been cheaper if I booked it earlier. I watched Geelong beat Collingwood last night. I walked by an English pub and it just happened to be on. The pub was full so I sat down at a table with some English guys. They had no idea what was going on, so I had to explain a bit of the rules.