Beijing Day 7

Last day in Beijing. We would be checking out at 9 a.m. this morning. Even so, we woke at 5.00 a.m., got ourselves ready and went downstairs for a leisurely breakfast at 6.30 a.m. .... The food at Maya Island Hotel was the same as usual. My friend W commented that he was already bored. Heh. C was missing ikan masin and sambal belacan. I wanted my kolo mee fix.

After breakfast, we checked out the swimming pool at Level 2 of the hotel, named Caribbean Pool ...

Nice decor 

Looked so inviting

And we regretted not taking the time to come for a swim over a past week. Sigh. No time to do so now. We had to go back to our rooms to finish packing. 10 minute before 9 a.m., we went downstairs to check out and got our room deposit of RMB100 back. 

The tour guide for that day was a man - I did not even get his name. He didn't talk as much as Apple did. For that I was glad. We were brought to a shopping outlet that sold products made from bamboo. There were towels, underclothes, slippers, food, etc. The setting was like a supermarket ... so we were free to browse along the shelves and pick out what we liked. I did not buy anything here, despite the prices being reasonable. 

Next up was lunch. It was mere 11.15 a.m. .... so early because there was nothing else on the programme.

Lunch

Lunch was quite enjoyable; the first dish to come was the steaming hot rice - somehow it smelled extra good that day, really aromatic. Singaporean Auntie laughed that I took a photo of the rice. Other dishes were soup, Kungpao Chicken - lovely, not overpowering with the smell of Szechuan peppercorn and I loved the roasted peanuts in there; cucumber, black fungus and egg; scrambled egg; mushroom and tofu hotpot; beancurd skin and chilli - I loved this dish too - spicy and sweet; steamed fish - Caoyu 草鱼- the meat was quite fine but there were lots of bones.

After lunch, we were brought to a shopping complex called 秀水街 Xiushuijie. This places sells clothes, and good quality counterfeits. And so there were fake Guccis and Pradas and Valentinos and Hermes and also fake Adidas and Nike ..... According to the guide, everything here was overpriced and we had to bargain till less than half of the original price.   Essentially, don't ask if you don't intend to buy.

We walked around ... browsed, but bought nothing ... till we chanced upon Miniso - a low-cost variety store, much like Daiso. With its price reasonable and fixed, we were more comfortable to buy things .... I bought a cute silicon purse and a stick massage hammer, each cost RMB10.

There was a supermarket at the top floor of the building ....

Neat display

The supermarket seemed quite deserted 

Premium fruits, nicely packed

There weren't many people at the supermarket ..... I bought little packets of pastries that I could give away to friends, and also a packet of dried rosebuds to make tea. The pastries were RMB6 per packet and the rosebuds were a mere RMB4. Nothing like the atrocious prices we were made to pay at the tea outlets that we were brought too.

We weren't interested to buy counterfeits .... so we sat down for snacks at Dunkin' Donuts ... 

Donuts, RMB 9 each

Coffee, special promo price RMB15 

The coffee was REALLY good - aromatic, refreshing, creamy and milky ..... so satisfying! 

We still had plenty of time to spare .... and the guide brought us to Vecchio Plaza; it was a big place - quite spreaded out I think; there weren't many shops in the building that we went into .. but we found Tesco. 

Tesco was HUMONGOUS. It was crowded. It was so NOISY. Both C and W said that it was the NOISIEST Tesco that they had ever experienced. Lol. 

 

Little sachets of snacks 

Plenty of fruits 

I did not buy anything at all here. Next, we went to OCT to watch The Golden Mask Dynasty. It was a musical that incorporated dancing and acrobatics. We had to pay RMB300 for the show. 

When Apple was promoting it to us the days before, I kept hearing the name Zhang Yimou. Apple said,

• "Zhang Yimou liked all things big!" She was alluding to the scale of the musical and would make a dramatic impact. 
• "Have you seen white pheasants? We all know it's difficult to find white pheasants. But Zhang Yimou has managed to find them all. You will see them in the show. So beautiful."

So it was only at the musical itself when I read the credits, that I discovered that it was not Zhang Yimou who directed the musical. Zhang Yimou's name hadn't appeared even once. Zhang Yimou had only casted the performers for the Beijing Olympics ceremonies in 2008. 

Urgh. I was annoyed. See. I did not like Apple. This was ANOTHER reason why I disliked her. She LIED without batting her eyelashes. How annoying it was that Zhang Yimou's name had been exploited to sell tickets ... If I were Zhang Yimou, I SHOULD SUE THE CHINESE TRAVEL INDUSTRY FOR EXPLOITING MY NAME! 

That evening, we watched the 4188th performance since its run. With our RM200, we were allocated the RMB480 VIP seating zone. Apple MADE SURE THAT WE KNEW THAT FACT. 

The pheasants 

The finale

Hmn .... though an acclaimed musical, the subtitles in English were not written accurately - causing meaning to be lost. This was essentially a love story between the Golden Mask Queen and the Blue Mask King; they were enemies and then lovers and then when there was tribulation, the queen sacrificed herself. Hmn .... not my kind of story ....  

What I liked was the effects, lighting, costumes ..... 

Everyone's favourite scene

When water splashed down from the stage, depicting a flood

It was an enjoyable experience - musical shows were always pleasant to the sight, sound. The seats, however, were very cramped - small seats, and there was not much of leg space. Nowhere to put the bags and everyone was hugging their belongings on their laps .... not comfy, if you asked me. 

Anyway, just search Golden Mask Dynasty in Youtube to find plenty of videos uploaded there .... 

Dinner time. Final dinner in Beijing. 

Dinner
Fragrant rice again; Wongbok soup - the fishballs were more like flour balls as they weren't bouncy at all; cabbage; soy bean sprout; cucumber and egg; potato slices; braised duck; meicai pork belly; kungpao chicken
I enjoyed the braised duck and the braised pork belly - both were very salty, but was nice to eat with rice; the pork belly also had a very strong flavour of fermented beancurd; the kungpao chicken was yummy too. 

After dinner, we said our goodbyes to the Singaporean couple; we'd talked to them more over the past 3 days and found them to be very pleasant. They would be staying for a few more days, and there was a van to drive them back to Maya Island Hotel.

We  then went to the airport. We would leave via the Beijing Capital Airport Terminal 2. The bus dropped us at the driveway. We each took our own luggage to enter the airport. As soon as I entered the automatic glass door and into the airport, I was ushered aside. A security lady swabbed my luggage and my arm ... and then I was given to ok. Huh? Testing for drugs? Explosives? Hmn .... I was not sure.

We went to one side of the airport, opened our luggage to put in all the things we'd purchased that day I hadn't buy much. My luggage weighed only 10.2 kg .... 1.2 kg more than I had come with.

After we were done, we proceeded to the check-in area. Our passports were checked before we were allowed entry to this area of the airport.  Since we were so early, the check-in counters weren't opened yet. Our flight was at 2.15 a.m., and the check-in counter would be only in operation at 11.15 p.m., that's 3 hours before. There were limited benches to sit down ... so we just sat down on the floor. We waited for about an hour before we saw a queue start forming. We dragged our bags and started queueing there for about 2 hours before we could check-in our bags. By the time we were done and processed at the immigration, it was already past midnight.