Travelling Alone

They say that when you travel alone, you are really not alone because you'll meet a lot of people along the way. Just last week, I traveled alone to the capital of China, Beijing. Well, I actually did not intend to be alone. My ex girlfriend and I actually booked this trip. And since we were not together anymore, I decided to still push through with the trip alone. I really did not have any concrete plan about my itinerary in Beijing. I just did a little research on what are the must things to see and do there and had the rest of the planning when I landed in Beijing.

Some of my friends' impressions of Beijing are - It is a dirty city and the people are not disciplined. Well, I beg to disagree. I believe you really can't judge a country or a place when you haven't been there, in the first place. From what I saw, Beijing is clean and people are nice. Although you cannot communicate with them since looking for someone who can speak English is like finding a needle in a haystack. Your best bet are those western looking people who had settled in Beijing. About being not disciplined and spitting everywhere, I can't believe I heard this from my fellow Filipinos. C'mon, I think Manila has more undisciplined people and spitting in the streets is also quite usual here, huh.

I found Beijing a little laid-back. Well, probably because I was just expecting a busy city with myriads of people. It turned out that, although Beijing has around 20 million people, I only saw few people crossing the streets, considering I stayed in the city center. Maybe much of them were in their home. Besides, Beijing is also a big city in terms of land area, unlike, the super densely populated Manila. So even there were a lot of people, they were pretty much scattered around the city. I can see a big potential on their tourism industry. I believe they still can attract more visitors. They have interesting tourist attractions within the city, such as the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, and the Summer Palace. All of them were really grand and huge. And just around 1-2 hours away from the city, you can reach some parts of the Great Wall of China. When I checked out those places, I did not join any arranged tour so I can get hold of my own time.

Forbidden City

Entrance to the one of the Gates of Temple of Heaven

Great Wall - Mutianyu

Spring at Summer Palace

Summer Palace

As I was saying on the first part of this entry, you can meet some people when you travel alone. I stayed at the very nice Peking Yard Hostel. There, I met some nice people, mostly Europeans who share the same passion in travelling. I'll quote one of them when he said that "I do not travel to meet girls but to know and understand the country". Although, I think part of his statement was a lie, I agree with him about knowing and really understanding the country by observing its people, culture and place.

Living Area at the Hostel

Hostel's Courtyard