After visiting the World Park, we were on our 5 hours journey to Chengde. The ride was pleasant (the bus was playing "Theng Li Chin and Jacky Cheung songs as well as dance numbers for cha-cha, rumba, etc), with opportunities to visit the outskirts of Beijing city where the mountains and valleys are. We also had the chance to look at the farming life of the China people. It was still early spring, so there wasn't much vegetation to be seen. The scenery looked somewhat like what we saw during our trip to Badaling's section of the great wall of China.

The river was still dry (I think the gauge looked like a river). What came as an interesting scene was that the villagers have taken great effort to plant pine trees on the hills and mountainsides. According to Mr. Wong, they were encouraged by the government during a "plant-a-tree" campaign. White rocks were piled together to make a semi round border around the young pine trees to give soil support.

Halfway, we stopped and everybody scrambled down the bus to "ease" ourselves. Check out our toilet experience under the topic - Toilets.

Since we arrived at Chengde in the evening, our tour activities for the day was only to have a good rest. Fortunately, Mr. Wong suggested to take us for a walk at Chengde's town. I had planned to do that earlier but found it hard to find a partner to accompany me - although I had Mee Lan in mind. Mom needed rest as she hasn't slept well at all throughout the trip - having slept an average 2 hours per day.

The walk through Chengde town was most interesting indeed. I felt like a backpacker - able to see the everyday life of the locals here. There was a night market on one part of the town selling from clothings, bags, souvenirs, a bit of food. Well, knowing me, you know I'm one of the world's most bored shopper - so I hardly bought anything. The other tour members were having a shopping spree - buying big luggages as they so cheap - RM40. That gave our Xiao Kuok a big of headache as he was worried whether the bus could fit the lot!

We sorta got lost on our way back to the hotel - we ended up going through back alleys and a market area. There was a food stall where they don't have proper tables and chairs and yet there were people sitting on small stools having a meal on what looked like barbeque meat on sticks.

Anyway, we got back to our hotel safely and we were ready for our next day's outing.

Our following day's visit included a visit to an imperial mountain resort. They say this is where the 9pm show on NTV7 - 'My fair princess' ('man chu ka ka') is filmed. It is a pretty place with the usual Chinese architecture and well kept gardens with lakes and islands.

For those of you planning to visit China and have the idea of dressing up as emporers, empresses, prince and princesses, this place offers you opportunity to do so for free! The aunties and uncles of my tour are very sporting. Most of them took the chance and had a giggling time doing so. As for me, I wasn't in the playful mood - didn't mind watching their antics though.

We visited an exhibition area of Mongolia - but I find that it's littered with souvenirs and other products again. Instead I decided to befriend some goats outside! It was really hard to get hold of them even though they are tied up with a rope. I managed to unscramble the rope around one's goat leg and managed to give it a pat on the head. I tried to get hold of another but when I tried to pull the rope slowly towards me, one of the locals told me not to. Well, I guess I shouldn't frighten them.

After this place, we headed to two temples. Well, I can compare a bit to my Europe trip where we visited a lot of churches, here it's all temples, temples and temples!

Our first temple in Chengde contains the largest statue of the Chinese goddess - Kuan Yin. Made out of wood, it stands magnificently in the temple. Our next temple was a replica of Tibet's Buddhist temple. Some of the tour members, including myself took the opportunity to climb up to the highest point in the temple.

There, we found that part of the rooftops of this temple was painted with real gold! We could see scratch marks on them which was done by the Japanese during the war. By the way, most Chinese hate Japanese - due to the cruelty the Japanese had done during the war.

Around 1.30pm, we were on our journey back to Beijing.

Here's some pictorial explanations:

The view from the bus on the way to Chenge. There's a huge reservoir in the distance which supplies most of the water to Beijing.

With Mee Lan's sister on the way to a small boat to take us to the island across the lake.

Inside the boat.

That's the place where we're heading to.

This is a nice picture of a bridge (notice the perfect reflections) I simply took while waiting for the tour members to get into the royal family garments.

That's us with all the tour members in our group!

It's time to leave. The guy in the middle looks like my Section 14 houseleader. Actually, he's our Chengde local tourist guide.

Interesting goats in one of the exhibition areas of Mongolia.

Outside the Mongolian tent at the exhibition areas of Mongolia.

From the mountain resort of Chengde, we could see the rock structure which looks like a thumb curved to show a good sign.

The Kuan Yin statue.

This is an entrance to another temple we were visiting at Chengde - it's a replica of the Tibet's Buddhist temple.

With Pau Chu. Up at the temple, on the right - the gold painted rooftops.