Weekend @ Tianjin City, 1st - 2nd November 2008

DAY 1: Spent the 1st-2nd November 2008 (during the All Saints day and All Souls Day) weekend at Tianjn City, a Beijing nearby city. We took off from the Beijig South Rilway Station. When Esther and I arrived t the station, Zhang Dong and Mabel were already standing at the main entrance waiting for us. The Beijing South Railway Station is the World's biggest Railway Station. This is my first time using the newly opened station (before the Olympic) and indeed it looks very contemporary and sophisticated. At a glance I thought I have arrived at the international airport. It looks more than an international airport rather than a railway station. 4 of us took the 5pm express train from Beijing to Tianjin. Previously it took 2 hours to reach Tianjin but with this new bullet train with the speed of 326km/hr, it only took us 30 mins to reach Tianjin. The 1st class ticket only cost us 100 yuan per person. We arrived at the Ibis Hotel (by Accor) at around 6pm where we had our reservation. We were so anxious to check-in but were so shocked to learn that they did not receive our reservation and it is now fully occupied. They suggested us to stay at other hotel but we insisted to stay there since we had booked with credit card verification… after about 30 mins of this and that, the GM decided to transfer us to Home Inn and they will pay for everything!! Wow, we got our hotel room for FREE!! Hahaha…Hotel Room free of charge, hurray!! Once we’ve checked-in, we went to have our dinner at the Gou Bu Li where it is famous for Tianjin Chinese. We spent around 350 yuan for 4 pax, not too bad. This was follwoed by an evening walk at the cultural street nearby city centre. We called it a night with a late supper. DAY 2: We woke up at around 9am and checked-out at around 10am. Started our day with all the local food at the food market street where you can get all sort of local food. Yummy… then we decided to take a ride with cart (cost us around 25 yuan each) where they will bring u round the former British, Italian and French residential areas (where lots of historic buildings and famous people once lived). The buildings are now being used by the local government. We further explored the river boat where they will bring you round the city river with 20 yuan each person. I was very relaxing and enjoying as the autumn is not that cold. We took the 3.35pm train back to Beijing. Continued with Bowling session in Beijing for 3 matches and dinner around Zhang Dong and Mabel’s house. Concluded the weekend with a 58 yuan taxi ride (more expensive than the express train ride!!) back to our apartment.