Chengde Trip Jul10: The Stoopids are back!

Last July 24 and 25, we went on a spur of the moment trip to get out of the sweltering heat of Beijing to the equally hot Chengde.

We left the capital at around 8am via the train station for a 5-hour trip. It's been at least 7 months since we last traveled outside the city and it took a little getting used to riding long distances but the mere thought of being in a new place made it all worthwhile.

We arrived at Chengde around lunch time and considering that we still didn't have a place to stay, it was a blessing that a couple of local ladies spirited us away aboard a private bus together with other tourists to an overpriced hotel.

After checking in, we then rode a bus towards the Chengde Mountain Resort which was right smack in the city. It's sort of like the Summer Palace version in Beijing where past emperors have enjoyed summer and was considered as the largest existing imperial garden at 120CNY a pop. (To read more about Chengde Mountain resort visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengde_Mountain_Resort)

After a day of walking, renting an electric boat, sweating, playing around in the grass and exhausting ourselves silly, we headed to the train station again to buy our return tickets and had hotpot for dinner.

The next day we were off early to go to the Putuo Zhongcheng Temple. Considering that we only had less than a day to explore the Temple Disneyland of China, we chose Putuo because a: we are pretty sick of temples and will most likely barf if we see any more of them during the trip and b:this temple is a smaller version of the one in Lhasa Tibet. Entrance is 80CNY per person. (http://www.orientalarchitecture.com/china/chengde/putuo-zongcheng.php)

Our trip back to Beijing was a mere 5 hours but since we weren't used to travelling, the time was spent sleeping, looking at the surrounding sceneries, and eating.

Here's to more trips this year..hopefully.