Holidaying in China

China. We have all heard our own share about this place. Basically everything you come across on a daily basis has a label saying ‘MADE IN CHINA’. However China was a far different experience from what was expected. Insightful, yes, but unexpected. Unexpected, probably cause I was  majorly under-prepared for this trip.

EXPECTATIONS: 1.Great, affordable shopping (considering every part of the world sells products made in China). 2. Easy transport 3. Getting to visit one of the Great Wonders of the World along with many other locations of high historic value. and finally………. 4. Exposure to different food, different traditions and amazingly different culture.

REALITY: 1.  Extremely expensive shopping. 2. Major communication issues. 3. Hard to catch a taxi. Subway however being a good but complicated option due to the evidently existing communication gap.

and once again i mention this – a bad shopping experience.

However, I have to admit, The Great Wall of China is truly brilliant and we were exposed to a wide variety of food, interesting traditions and tasteful culture.

Let me start at the communication issues as I am inclined to believe that the other downsides of this trip were mere side effects of this. Communicating was harder than expected. It was incredibly hard finding anyone who could speak enough English to at least be able to direct you to the washroom. However, a vast majority of the Chinese natives we came across were undeniably friendly and tried their best to be helpful…… except taxi drivers… which leads me to my next point.

Catching a taxi- incredibly hard. On one of the very few nights we spent there, we decided to ditch the tour guide and set out to explore the city and do some heavy shopping on our own. This mostly turned out to be a terrible idea. By the time we walked from the location where we were dropped, to the mall, most of the shops were closed. So we decided to get back to our hotel considering it was not exactly advisable for tourists to roam around on their own in a foreign city at night. we spent a good 50 minutes trying to accomplish this task, roaming around from one end of the street to the other gravely hoping that some taxi driver would have mercy and stop to take us back to the hotel. Even when they did stop, they refused to take us to our destination when we showed them the hotel card (which had the location written in Chinese as well) . This made us wonder whether the hotel was too far. But when we did get our taxi, this doubt was cleared as we realised that our hotel was only 15 minutes away.

Shopping- The shopping was what probably disappointed me the most. the standard brands were set at their standard prices itself. However the much awaited street shopping was disheartening.  Everything was incredibly overpriced, even the fake products. At some stores, the fakes were priced at the same rate as the original products or even more 😮 . When we did point this out in the process of negotiating with these shop owners, they did not happen to take it too well.  

Nonetheless, lets move on to the positives.

The food- Getting to try authentic Chinese food is indeed an experience. Considering I don’t eat any other meat other than chicken, my options were pretty limited, yet i’m glad I got to taste this sort of chicken preparation at least . :p

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA!

I’m sincerely thankful for the opportunity to visit The Great Wall Of China. Climbing The Great Wall wasn’t exactly easy, but the feeling of accomplishment when you do finally reach the top is truly exhilarating. Its a once in a life time experience and will definitely be a closely cherished one.

To conclude, I’l say that this trip had its ups and downs and it opened my eyes to a lot of views, and opened my heart to a lot of different emotions. China is an incredibly dynamic country and definitely worth a visit. (p.s. don’t forget to do your research though).

With loads of love and wanderlust

A deeply dedicated blogger :*