Beijing, the cheap and IT way

Don’t worry if you don’t have deep pockets. Wowed by the technological conveniences available, JASON TAN shows how you can still have a good time in Beijing


GREAT Wall, Summer Palace, bird’s nest... Yes, the Olympics fever may have receded from Beijing, but it doesn’t deter me from experiencing the China capital for the first time.

I am wowed by not only the magnificent ancient and Olympics architectures, but also the technology convenience in place, which enables me to travel two weeks within my budget.

It is a relaxing, no-frills trip and travelling within my limited budget is the priority of my first trip to Beijing. As I am travelling from Macau, using www.ctrip.com – one of the largest travel booking websites in China – solved the flight and accommodation issues. (Other major sites such as Elong.com are another option).

Ctrip, for one, offers tremendous useful information such as discounted domestic flights, hundreds of hotel choices and introduction on hot destinations. No wonder its business is prospering with a base of 20 million members.

Thanks to tie-ups with 28,000 two to five-star hotels worldwide, Ctrip members enjoy discounts with online hotel bookings.

My decent, neat single room at the busy Guloudongdajie is at 170 yuan (RM88) a night — far cheaper than the walk-in rate of 230 yuan.

The website’s search engine also allows you to easily narrow down hotel choices by choosing areas to stay in, preferred pricing and members’ ratings.

Cheaper Connection
Buy a local SIM card... outside of the airport. Using a local SIM card will save us money compared with international roaming.

You need not hit the telecom counters as soon as you set foot in the airport where the China Mobile SIM card on sale is 120 yuan (with stored value of 50 yuan).

If you can patiently wait until the bus rolls into the city centre, you can easily get one for 90 yuan (50 yuan stored value) or even lower at most news stands/grocery stores/convenient stores, etc. Top up your card when the credit runs low as incoming calls are charged a fee.

Getting Around
Another way to travel real cheap is to hop onto the local transport. Taking a cab (flag-down rate is 10 yuan) to the Great Wall is convenient and comfy, but it will not allow you to get a taste of local life (like getting used to people shoving and being sandwiched against one another during peak hours).

Get yourself the IC transport card. With this card, I pay only 4.8 yuan for a one-hour bus trip to Badaling of the Great Wall (fare is 12 yuan without the card). It also allows you a cheaper fare of 0.4 yuan on public buses compared with one yuan in cash payment.

There are eight subway lines (including the airport express) crawling around Beijing. Signs and broadcast of each station are in Chinese and English, so it shouldn’t be a big issue to navigate around these lines after a few rides.

And the plus (or minus) side is that you can experience the “post Olympics” feature if you take the subway. All commuters are required to have their bags go through the electronic security machines – exactly the same as the one in the airport – a measure set up in June last year for Olympics. There are at least two staff members manning each entrance to make sure no explosives or radioactive materials make their way into the trains.

Swim Like Phelps
Speaking of the Olympics, you can dip into the pool that Michael Phelps swam at the 2008 Beijing Games. National Aquatics Centre, aka Water Cube, boasts the latest in green technology currently used to save significant amounts of energy.

Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) is a light-weight polymer foil, around 250-microns thick. It is stretched thin and then folded to create giant air pockets that allow light to pass through while trapping and storing heat. Some 3,000 such air bubbles have been created in three layers for use in the walls of the Cube.

One of the pools – so called a warm-up pool – is open to public for a “test swim”. So I join the locals and expats for a dip, hoping to relive the Olympics excitement. The admission ticket is 50 yuan but loitering in the facilities after two hours will incur a penalty.

After passing through security checks (again), we are required to pay another 20 yuan to get a deep water pass. In Beijing, swimmers have to go through a 200m swim test to obtain the pass if they want to swim in deep water pools. This warm-up pool is two metres deep.

The sensor technology of the lockers is fairly impressive. The elastic band you carry has a number to the locker. There is a small magnet-like button on the band and its built-in sensor will open up the locker door for you. Much cooler than the common key-lock system!

Swimming buffs, hurry though. The Cube’s test swim ends in mid October. No official word on what will happen after that.


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