Traveling to Beijing, Part 1

Last March I had the chance to re-visit Beijing, China during the Holy Week season. Traveling is always a fun and fascinating adventure for me. It was 10 years ago when I last visited and studied Mandarin at Beijing Meiya School together with a study tour group arranged by Philippine Cultural High School.

Our trip day began with going through Ninoy Aquino International Airport, also voted as the “World’s Worst Airport of 2011!” (lol)

worst-airport-naia — NAIA – Ridiculous exploitation of airport terminal fees and shit management

Glad it’s a major wakeup call to the country and some improvements are being made to make the airport truly world class in line with our Asian counterparts.

Immigration officers were grumpy that day and interrogated ‘we want to make sure you come back’ questions than their usual carefree routine. It was even the first time in my entire travel life they requested to see my return ticket. I understand that it could be part of their procedures when needed, but still, they were stricter somehow on that day.

Our actual flight to Beijing starts at Hong Kong International Airport.

and in less than 4 hours later, we arrived at Beijing International Airport.

It was already almost night time when we arrived, so we headed to our hotel to get some rest for a tour-filled week. Spring season’s cold with temperatures ranging from 10 to 17 degrees C.