We booked a private tour guide to bring us around since the father was away on his business. The guide cost 300rmb per day, cheaper if we booked her directly instead of going through her company, but having an extra pair of hands to help shepherd the children around will help greatly.

1st day in Beijing and I thought I should entertain the kids first before boring them with temples, monuments and imperial gardens.  So our fist stop was the 北京动物园 (Beijing Zoo), got to visit the pandas! The animals in Beijing zoo are quite different from our rain forest theme zoo in Singapore. There was a quite a large number of various colourful fowl and birds, and the children seems to enjoy looking at the beautiful birds. The Chinese tigers look more magnificent from our Malayan tigers, but most of the big lazy cats (tigers, leopards, lions) were either sleeping or lazing motionless in their enclosures. A lot of walking was done, and the boat ride along the canal allow us a good rest.

The 2nd place to visit was the 北京自然博物馆 (Beijing Museum of Natural History) as there is an ongoing Woolly Mammoth exibition. I thought I could see the real, whole woolly mammoth. The big woolly mammoth on display turned out to be a replica, the real things are only the bones and the head. The kids weren’t too interested with the mammoth, so we make our way to the main exhibits at the main exhibits. They separated the two area and we had to purchase tickets to visit both areas, damn!

Anyway, the dinosaurs, animals, bugs and plants interest the children way more then the mammoth. Its funny that we just visited the real animals in the morning, and then looked at their specimens in the afternoon. Nevertheless, the children enjoyed the trip.