The Eastern Discovery Tour
Day 1

The first day of my trip started with a spectacular flight in to Beijing over a spectacular mountain range, then after getting through customs, and dropping my suitcase off at my hotel I headed over to the first amusement park of the trip, Sun Park.

After a couple of hours here I headed over to the Birds Nest Stadium, were I had hoped to do the Beijing Carnival funfair, but found that had already closed, but I still managed to pay a visit to the Birds Nest Stadium itself.

After that I headed over to the Wangfujing shopping district for the evening.

One of the first things I did on day one was look for my camera which I'd stored in the overhead locker, in order to get some photos of these spectacular views of these mountains.

These really were breathtaking.

Not that far now (at least on the plane) to Beijing.

My first park of the trip was Sun Park. The nearest metro station to which was Tuanjiehu (line 10), from which you follow the a main road East to get to it. There were Tuc Tuc's at the metro station if you don't want to walk, although it's only  a 20/25 min walk from the station, which you may have to do if you can't get a taxi on the way back.

A secret guilty pleasure I've always had is for rides with a homemade, built in someone's garden feel for them. I think that is why I liked this park, because a large proportion of the park had this feel to it. Stuff that felt like someone had made it themselves, rather than in a factory somewhere.

That giant ladybug is actually a toilet building. There are a few things to bear in mind about Chinese toilets. One is a lot of places use Chinese style squat toilets, not everywhere has Western style sit down toilets. One other thing you should do before you leave is buy an emergency box of toilet paper to keep in your bag, because most Chinese public toilets don't provide you with any.

This is a great example of some of the low tech home made rides at the park. It's two interactive rides were you go around shooting targets. In the bottom one you get in one of those cars and go around and shoot at targets.

You can also climb the stairs for this gloriously low tech ride, were you go around a walkway, shooting at the targets on those model army figures as they appear. It's like a film that's so bad it's actually a good laugh.

The ticket system can take some getting used to at Chinese amusement parks, and is particularly awkward at Sun Park. How it works at most parks is you have to find a ticket booth to buy a ticket of a certain value for that ride. For instance you need a 10Yuan ticket for a 10Yuan ride, a 20 Yuan ticket for a 20Yuan ride. Sun park is a little more difficult, as each ride had it's own tickets, so instead of all 10Yuan tickets being usable on all 10 Yuan rides, you had to find the booth selling tickets for the ride you wanted, and get a ticket for that ride. One useful idea I found was to take a photo of the ride with a digital camera, and show the picture to the person at the booth, to overcome the language barrier.

It must be said a lot of the rides around the parks were very well decorated. This is a simple kids roundabout they've spiced up by including water guns that can be used to shoot at the marine themed characters in the centre.