We had to be towed

Our very first boating outing turned out to be a rather interesting and frustrating one at the same time. We wanted to take the children out for some activities over the weekend, as they have been in the apartment over the entire week due to rainy weather forecast in Beijing. We decided to go for boating since Beijing has several nice public parks with sizable lakes. So, it was either Beihai, Chaoyang Park (which is just across the place we lived) and the Summer Palace, the lake of all lakes in Beijing.

After some checks with our driver, we decided to go to Summer Palace early to avoid the crowd and the severe heat in the afternoon.

 

On arrival, we made a beeline to the pier where tickets were sold. The crowd was thin and the weather was perfect. We went ahead and got ourselves a paddle boat. We had to pay a deposit of RMB300 and every hour is RMB60. Everybody walked excitedly to the pier and we got ushered into our boat. There were no instruction given and before we could ask, the helpers at the pier had already pushed us off.

I knew that we had to paddle to make it go forward and backward and the little lever in the middle, besides me, I reckoned must be to steer the rudder. As we paddled it out into the lake, the breeze was blowing gently and everything seemed perfect until of course when we tried to turn the boat. No matter, which direction I turned the lever, the boat just refused to turn. It just kept on turning into the direction where the waves are going. Suddenly, it dawned on us that we have absolutely no control over the boat. It is kind of scary as there are bigger tourist boats that go right across the lake and we are `floating’ dangerously into their paths. We tried everything we could think of, from reversing and going forward and reversing to slowly turned the boat around and even resorted to paddling as fast and as hard as we could to move the boat forward back to the pier. It was a better workout than going to the gym for sure.

After a good 30 minutes, we managed to get our boat nearer to the pier and frantically shouted to the helpers that we need help. They shouted back for us to call the number written on one panel on the boat. We called and 5 minutes later, we were towed back to the pier. On closer inspection of the boat we took, we noticed that the rudder has actually broken off and there was absolutely no way that we could move it in any direction that we want.

 We went back to the ticketing office to claim our refund and were told that we need the confirmation from the helpers from the pier. Upon approaching the pier, NONE of the helpers were `helping’. Some even suggested that we pay for 30 minutes ride. Undeterred, my wife argued and finally got one kind soul who came forward to walk over to the ticketing office to verify for us. We got our refund but that left a bad taste in the mouth.

I was almost ready to throw in the towel and go home at this point in time, but a promise is a promise. We promised the little ones that they will go boating. So, we took a break and had a cup of coffee before we proceeded to queue for tickets for the motorized boats. (We didn't know that such exist until we were out in the lake…hehehe). We had to pay a deposit of RMB400. The charges were RMB100 per hour for a 6 seater boat. We could not wait for the 4 seater ones as all of those have been taken.

Steering the motorized one was definitely much easier and once we got to open waters with less traffic, both Ryan and Chenya took turns to steer the boat, which was a lot of fun.

Taking a boat ride to see Summer Palace is definitely the way to go, as the lake is so huge and walking around it will definitely take too long a time and too much an effort both with two little ones among the swelling crowd of local Chinese tourists.

If you are ever here at the Summer Palace, I would strongly recommend that you try this although this would very unlikely be in your itinerary if you are following a tour.