Monday, September 25, 2006

Count down to China

I think I have done the "I'm busy, over-worked and tired" thing to death of late, so here is the other side of the story. In less than a week's time, I'm off to China! The one thing that has caused me the most stress these last few weeks is also the one thing I am looking forward to most. I barely gave the trip any thought until a few days ago when I organised my Visa and purchased a Beijing guide book. Of course, this is not supposed to be a holiday. I am their to attend a robotics conference, and present a paper, but lets be honest, there are better ways to spend a week in Beijing than hearing and talking about bloody robots.

As part of my planning for the trip, I thought I would throw this question to my well traveled readers ?

What should I NOT miss given a week in Beijing ?

So far I have the following:

Great Wall
The forbidden city
Beijing (Peking) duck
Tiananmen Square
My conference talk

Any more suggestions and/or tips ?

1 Comments:

Blogger Frank and Sue said...

Hi Macca,
Never been to China but just spent a couple of weeks in Vietnam with a fair bit of time in Hanoi. What we loved the best was just starting to walk , with some vague destination in mind, and heading down all these dodgy side streets and getting to feel and see the way "normal" people live away from the tourist traps and "must sees".

Like the real wanker I am, I had my trusty GPS, and it meant we could go anywhere without worrying about following a map or trying to work out how to get back to the hotel.
The sights, sounds and smells where often overwhelming (who says meat needs to be refrigerated or chickens dead when you pluck them!!)but we loved every second of our long easy walks. Coming across Vietnamese people performing their everyday tasks was MUCH more interesting than any touristy spot so that is my recommendation. Long walks into the backblocks with a map, long piece of srting or (to cheat) a GPS.
Good luck with your paper. Go Aussie!

10/04/2006 02:10:00 PM

 

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