First stop: Beijing, China
September 16, 2016
HELLO! I can’t believe that we are really doing this! I mean it’s one thing to move to another country with a program or study abroad or something but we are just making up our own itinerary & winging it! LOL So hey if WE can do this ANYONE can! Also one of my goals for this blog is to try and show how to travel on a budget & what the cheapest things to do/see/ live etc….! Well anyways back to the good stuff, the adventure started when we packed up our stuff Monday, (September 12th) and drove to LA (we rented a car for super cheap online). Side note: I will probably regret not bringing some stuff (might I remind you I packed for four months in one suit case, YES I STILL DON’T BELIEVE I DID IT) but I will keep you updated on how my packing has been and what I should have/ shouldn’t of brought in the future.
So we got to LA crashed in a hotel and woke up at 6 AM to drive to the airport. We got through security and had about 2 hours to wait until they started boarding the plane. Luckily we had to wait because I needed to bust out two online quizzes before we left since they are due when we will be on the airplane. Next thing we know we are on the airplane and its not packed at all so we had the whole row to ourselves (SO AMAZING) we took some sleeping pills and passed out for the next 5 hours! We woke up and only had about 7 more hours to kill, they were spent watching movies, watching more movies and ummm did I say watching movies? But surprisingly enough the flight flew by (no pun intended… ;) We finally landed in China and we were so ready to get off the airplane and was feeling the leg cramps and jet lag.
Now advice for anyone ever going to Asia, visas are going to be a big pain in the butt to figure out, there are so many different websites that say one thing but then you’ve heard from your friend bob another and bottom line it gets confusing. So we have our 12 hour layover in Beijing and we were 99.9% positive that we could leave the airport and explore the city but we needed to double check before we bounced out of the airport. We found a line that said continuing flights so we hopped in that and filled out a paper for our return flight and the police officer put a 24 hour visa in our passport and rushed us along! WE DID IT!! WE COULD LEAVE THE AIRPORT! We hopped on the high-speed train to get to the other part of the airport where the Air BNB driver was picking us up!
Things were running super smooth and it was very comforting to know that it was all good. Clint pretended he didn’t speak Chinese so that the people at the help desk would call our driver to see where to meet him at outside… might I add that was HILARIOUS to watch because he has this huge part of him that is wanting to just speak Chinese to them but we don’t have a phone so we needed them to help us. The Air BNB host picked us up from the airport and took us to the hotel! We then hopped on a high speed subway to take us into Beijing city area. We got to see Tiananmen Square and walked the streets to this HUGE shopping center. I would say it's like Las Vegas shopping center big. IT WAS AWESOME! Also we were by FAR the tallest people in probably the whole city! There were sooooo many Asians there just taking pictures and Clint was in a couple of them! LOL It’s so funny too because Clint would hear what people were saying about us and tell me and we would get a good laugh. I was also a little shocked about how we were the only Americans that I had seen since we left the airport, I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess it was that there would be at least a couple of Americans walking around. NOPE!
Overall it was super fun and at the shopping center we grabbed some food and then hurried back to catch the subway back. Well the subways are a really long process here, first you have to hop on one subway and then get off and get a different ticket and then walk to a different part of the subway to get on different color one to take you to a different section and they have all of these stops and bottom line it took FOREVER. So we missed the last subway to get back to the hotel… OOPS! LUCKILY for us a lot of people miss the last subway so there was tons of taxi drivers ready to take us there! Clint bargained with one for a good deal and we were on our way! The next morning we went back to airport and were a little nervous if our 24 hour visa was going to work or if they were going to say NOPE YOU CAN’T LEAVE! But they didn’t and we were all good. They did take our portable battery charger in the security line, which sucked, but we made it through security and that’s all that matters! Now stay tuned for our arrival in Taiwan! Pictures below of our adventure in china for 12 hours!
So we got to LA crashed in a hotel and woke up at 6 AM to drive to the airport. We got through security and had about 2 hours to wait until they started boarding the plane. Luckily we had to wait because I needed to bust out two online quizzes before we left since they are due when we will be on the airplane. Next thing we know we are on the airplane and its not packed at all so we had the whole row to ourselves (SO AMAZING) we took some sleeping pills and passed out for the next 5 hours! We woke up and only had about 7 more hours to kill, they were spent watching movies, watching more movies and ummm did I say watching movies? But surprisingly enough the flight flew by (no pun intended… ;) We finally landed in China and we were so ready to get off the airplane and was feeling the leg cramps and jet lag.
Now advice for anyone ever going to Asia, visas are going to be a big pain in the butt to figure out, there are so many different websites that say one thing but then you’ve heard from your friend bob another and bottom line it gets confusing. So we have our 12 hour layover in Beijing and we were 99.9% positive that we could leave the airport and explore the city but we needed to double check before we bounced out of the airport. We found a line that said continuing flights so we hopped in that and filled out a paper for our return flight and the police officer put a 24 hour visa in our passport and rushed us along! WE DID IT!! WE COULD LEAVE THE AIRPORT! We hopped on the high-speed train to get to the other part of the airport where the Air BNB driver was picking us up!
Things were running super smooth and it was very comforting to know that it was all good. Clint pretended he didn’t speak Chinese so that the people at the help desk would call our driver to see where to meet him at outside… might I add that was HILARIOUS to watch because he has this huge part of him that is wanting to just speak Chinese to them but we don’t have a phone so we needed them to help us. The Air BNB host picked us up from the airport and took us to the hotel! We then hopped on a high speed subway to take us into Beijing city area. We got to see Tiananmen Square and walked the streets to this HUGE shopping center. I would say it's like Las Vegas shopping center big. IT WAS AWESOME! Also we were by FAR the tallest people in probably the whole city! There were sooooo many Asians there just taking pictures and Clint was in a couple of them! LOL It’s so funny too because Clint would hear what people were saying about us and tell me and we would get a good laugh. I was also a little shocked about how we were the only Americans that I had seen since we left the airport, I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess it was that there would be at least a couple of Americans walking around. NOPE!
Overall it was super fun and at the shopping center we grabbed some food and then hurried back to catch the subway back. Well the subways are a really long process here, first you have to hop on one subway and then get off and get a different ticket and then walk to a different part of the subway to get on different color one to take you to a different section and they have all of these stops and bottom line it took FOREVER. So we missed the last subway to get back to the hotel… OOPS! LUCKILY for us a lot of people miss the last subway so there was tons of taxi drivers ready to take us there! Clint bargained with one for a good deal and we were on our way! The next morning we went back to airport and were a little nervous if our 24 hour visa was going to work or if they were going to say NOPE YOU CAN’T LEAVE! But they didn’t and we were all good. They did take our portable battery charger in the security line, which sucked, but we made it through security and that’s all that matters! Now stay tuned for our arrival in Taiwan! Pictures below of our adventure in china for 12 hours!
Such a fun time in China, now on to Taiwan!