Beijing, China Part 5

We went straight to places of interests 1. Forbidden City That was the 1st time I realised something amiss. While the other tours groups carried flags to guide their members, we had none. And a sister in our group who was a frequent traveller offered her umbrella to replace the flag. And she was frowning as she handed the umbrella. Not that she care about the umbrella but to the fact tht we didnt have the guiding pole. What kind of travel agency that didnt have that important item - I ll leave this to ur judgement.FYI, designated flags serve as a guiding poles for members in case while enjoying the views, one member got separated from the group. He could looked for the flag to find his way back to his herd. It is actually one of the most important items in tourism industry.( At least in my point of view as a tourist ) I was like, how can I pay up to RM3k just to face this kind of difficulties.All of us were so afraid tht we didn't enjoy the amazing Forbidden City. To make the matter worse, the local guide forbade us from going to the Dragon Throne of the Emperor of China - I didnt know what it is called till I googled it just now.Pathetic me! It is actually what every tourist should see if they visit Forbidden City. And he forbade us citing that there was nothing worth to see as we could not enter.Hellooooo.....there are preserved artifacts of course no one can enter. But we were all too naive - jet lag I guess. And who are u to decide it is not worth to see. So we just went there without any historical pointers. To think back- The visit was useless in term of knowledge but somehow it educates me more on human. Hahahha...am I alien. We tailed him here and there ..afraid we might lost ourselves in the sea of people...and there wasnt any historical questions that he could answer confidently Sometimes, he brushed aside our questions nervously and most of the times he chose to ignore our questions. If he did explained, it was very shallow.A professional should know a lot but we basically got nothing from him. E.g Local guide : Jadi bagaimana selir2 itu ....... Us : Bagaimana? Bagaimana? Then all u could hear was krik..krik..krik..krik...hahahha. Selir-selir???? what professional tourist guide would use that term in explanation to Malaysians Tourists. We later found out that selir is actually emperor's mistress.(From my friend). He kept on using this word 'Tionghua'(I don't how it is spelt but it sounded like this) which again confused us- instead of Peking or Beijing ..he used Tionghua- till the end of the trip. And never once explained that Tionghua was an ancient name for Peking. (Again, credit to my friend)...Maybe my friend was wrong- I don't know but at least it helped us to make some sense...herm...... It was very wrong for our agency to pick such a lousy and unknowledgable tourist guide. Nothing is wrong about hiring freelancer but there should be some standards to ensure quality. Afterall, my late father did not leave me 2.6billion to spend hokey...That was all my hard-earned money. The last thing I want to do is to spend it for nothing. So, important point here : Choose ur travel agency wisely. More mumbles to come to help u see my point and the consequences of wrong choices. I believe in doing things wrongly but to have it wrong everytime is idiotic. Hahahahha.