23-hour layover in Beijing

I had 23 hours to wait for my connecting flight at the Beijing Capital International Airport recently, and here is what I did.

Cleared immigration, took out cash and exited the airport
Took the Airport Express train to Dongzhimen (东直门)
Took Subway Line 2 and the BRT 1 bus to Tiantan (天坛)
Reached RJ Brown Hotel
Took a shower and slept
Went to see the Forbidden City (故宫博物院)
Ate Spicy Hot Pot at the food court near Dongzhimen (东直门)
Went back to the airport on Airport Express
Did all above with buses and trains only (no taxi)
Spent 564 yuan (roughly $90 or €73 or ¥9,500 or PKR10,400)

Let me go into the details.

Cleared immigration, took out cash and exited the airport (17:15-18:00)

Once I landed at the Beijing Capital International Airport and cleared immigration, I asked around for an ATM you can use with a foreign card. They told me international ATMs are available at ABC (Agricultural Bank of China) and ICBC (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China). The ABC ATMs were closer but they looked a little old, so I used the ICBC ones, just in case. It's good to be paranoid in foreign countries, right? They seem to accept Visa (which mine is), MasterCard, American Express, JCB, Discover etc. I took out 600 yuan, bought a coffee at Maan Coffee and headed towards the Airport Express. The ICBC ATMs can dispense cash in 500-yuan and 100-yuan denominations.

Took the Airport Express train to Dongzhimen (东直门) (18:00-19:00)

By Jonas to Receive [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons, with modification

I took the Airport Express (机场线) to the Dongzhimen (东直门) station. Dongzhimen is the last stop on Airport Express, and it's connected to various other places in Beijing. The cost of Airport Express is 25 yuan, which is around one quarter of the taxi price. If you only have a carry-on luggage, this is an option worth considering. I was traveling with a daypack, so it definitely made sense to me. Airport Express is comfy to ride, and it gets you to Dongzhimen in an hour.

Took Subway Line 2 and the BRT 1 bus to Tiantan (天坛) (19:00-19:50)

From Dongzhimen, I took the Subway Line 2 to Qianmen (前门). The subway ticket costs 3 yuan. Then from Qianmen, I took the BRT 1 bus (快速公交) to Tiantan (天坛) which is where my hotel was. Here's the route. The bus ticket was 2 yuan. Altogether, my cost of transport from the airport to the hotel was 30 yuan (4.8 dollars, 3.9 euros, 508 yen). I had a hard time finding the hotel after getting off the bus because I didn't have a SIM card that works in China. Should have checked if it's available at the airport. I took a couple of wrong paths as the result, but eventually someone kindly found out my route on her phone using Baidu.com (百度).

Reached RJ Brown Hotel (20:15)

I found RJ Brown Hotel on booking.com. I had no luck finding a place near the city center on AirBnB, so I took the hotel option. I don't know why, but all the search results on AirBnB are either at the eastern or northern outskirt of this big city, and that was a problem for a time-poor visitor. It cost 269 yuan for a night to stay at RJ Brown. I just booked a room for myself, but they gave me a family suite because it happened to be unbooked on the day. The room was clean and shower worked fine, although I wished it was a little hotter. The bed was good and there was a hair dryer in the room. The staff spoke reasonably good English, or so I thought.

Went to see the Forbidden City (故宫博物院) (07:00-11:00)

I thought a lot about whether I should see the Forbidden City or the Great Wall. The latter seems more popular and it might give a deeper impression, but the problem is, it's not in the city. With the limited time that I had, I chose to see the Forbidden City and see a bit of the Beijing city too. The Forbidden City is also called the Palace Museum, by the way.

You need to book a ticket to the Forbidden City in advance. This is so they can limit the number of visitors to 80,000 per day. There is a booking site linked from the official site of the Palace Museum, but it's in Chinese only and I also didn't have a Chinese mobile number which seems necessary, so I asked the hotel to do it for me when I arrived. The cost of the ticket was 40 yuan for a simple entry without any add-ons. You'll need add-ons to access some places in the palace, such as the Treasure Museum which contains the Nine-Dragon Wall, for example. The add-on for Treasure Museum was 10 yuan. My cost of experiencing the Forbidden City was 50 yuan (8 dollars, 6.5 euros, 849 yen) in total.

The Forbidden City opens at 8:30, and I was already there to cue up at 8:00. This meant that, when I entered, I almost had this huge palace to myself. I explored untill around 10 and headed towards the exit, and people were starting to arrive in hundreds. That looked horrible, to be honest. If you wanna enjoy the Forbidden City and its magnificence, please get there early.

After seeing the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Nine-Dragon Wall and other palaces and gates, I went back to my hotel and took another shower. The palace is such a huge place and I was walking a lot, and fast, so it was a good idea to freshen up before catching a flight later in the day.

Ate Spicy Hot Pot at the food court near Dongzhimen (东直门) (13:00-13:40)

This was the highlight of my eating in Beijing. It was in a casual food court where you share the table with strangers and eat without napkins, but it was incredible. And I only spent roughly half the money as what I spent in a restaurant the night before.

The food court is inside the building where there's also a Family Mart convenience store. As I see it on Google Map today (March 30, 2018), the name of the food court appears to be different from the one I saw, but I guess it won't matter. Just go inside and find the sign you see at the top of the photo (川香麻辣香锅). (Or, if the restaurant is already gone by the time you do it, just find something similar...)

When you're there, go ahead and pick up an empty bowl, and start collecting ingredients for your hot pot. Aside from various vegetables and meat, shrimps and squids are also available. When you're done picking up ingredients, hand over the bowl to the register and they'll calculate the cost. They'll separate the meat/seafood from vegetables, and figure out the cost of each based on the weight. It's so efficient and freestyle. You'll love this.

My hot pot is at the bottom of the photo. I put in shrimps, squids, sausages, qing-geng-cai, kelp, chrysanthemum and so on. It came with a free bowl of steamed rice and it cost me only 42 yuan. Just amazing.

All in all..

The total cost of my 23-hour layover in Beijing was 564 yuan, which is roughly 90 dollars, or 73 euros, or 9,500 yen, or 10,400 pak rupees. This experience was quite an eye-opener for me because I realized one could actually enjoy a new city within such a short time, and without much budget. I was traveling extremely light and my only luggage was a daypack, but you could do the same while traveling with big luggages if you're in Beijing for transit, which doesn't require baggage pick-up. I highly recommend exploring a city during a layover, in Beijing and elsewhere.