..VOYAGE ECHOES (minus WIND)

Forest & Land Hotel Facilities

Above are the facilities that you can expect by staying at the Forest & Land Hotel in Beijing. I shall just check them one by one with you.

1) 24 hour front desk: OK
2) Business Center: Nope, I did not see it at the hotel but you can ask about it
3) Laundry: OK, as I was first offered a room with a window opening to the laundry
4) Parking: Well, there are parking spaces outside the hotel
5) Multi lingual staff: OK not all of them but at least one or two persons at the counter can understand the English language. You just hope that the person is at the counter when you want something but I had no problem when I was at the hotel.
6) Security Guard: Not noticeable but there are a lot of male attendants at the front desk
7) Safe deposit box: I did not use the facility, do query about it
Copy machine: Nope, not in plain site
9) Bar/Lounge: Just outside the hotel is a snooker club serving drinks & etc
10) Porter/Bellhop: OK as I mentioned, plenty of able young men at the front desk
11) Car rental: I guess so but I asked for a taxi cab
12) They have a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor level just beyond the front desk which serves a non halal menu
13) Sorry, no swimming pool is available for hotel guests. The kids will say, awww..no swimming pool? Heck! I know because I felt it when I was young. Anyway, Happy Voyage!

*Relevant links: Forest & Land Hotel Room Prices.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The hotel that I stayed in Beijing was called the Forest & Land Hotel. Yes, it is a strange name for a hotel. I found it online after about 2 weeks of budget hotel searching. Strange is it not, that good, budget hotels only can be found only with hard searching work. Well I did find one for my Beijing trip & I will write about my personal experience but not in this post. The forest & land hotel is located near the main road of Qian Guai Bang Chaoyangmen Street Beijing. Yes it is a mouthful to say but it is a strategic area for budget travelers.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

I had traveled to the Philippines with my lady about a month ago & we stayed in the vicinity of Pasay City. Unfortunately, the area is pretty much a slum where you can see a lot of poor people by the roadsides especially at night. Additionally, the local jeep vehicles used for cheap transportation are parked in large numbers in the area, making it a hangout for many locals. Most of the people in the street at night are presumably harmless but the lack of street lighting in the area make the situation look more dangerous than it actually is so no sense in taking the risk of being mugged by taking a walk into the night at Pasay City. It can occur to you that many of the locals are staring creepily at you. One experience of walking in the area at night was enough for me & my lady. So don’t go there because you can’t see anything interesting especially at night plus it’s not worth the risk.

What alarmed me most was that there was a security guard in a 24 hour convenience store. There must be a reason for it. Furthermore, I arrived to Pasay City by bus from Clark airport. Beware of the sleazy Aussie Connection cab driver in the white taxi at the bus station who will charge triple the cost of cab fare. It does not make sense to pay the same amount of 10 minute cab fare which costs similar to a 3 hour travel by bus. He will be offering to show his ideals of better hotels. I realized now that he had rigged his taxi meter to start at 285 Philippine pesos (about US$6) even before the cab moved. Hence, whatever the amount that shown on the meter of the scamming cab driver, the real amount you are supposed to pay is way less because a hotel service car cost only 150php. More ‘worst places to travel to’ information is available at Peter Greenberg’s site (www.petergreenberg.com) who is the author of the book called Don’t Go There & also travel host for the Today Show.

Popularity: 6% [?]