The morning didn't start off too great. We got up at 5am and got dressed. We had called for a cab last night to pick us up at 5:30 this morning to take us to Airport Express (train). We were ready and waiting outside so no one would be woken by the guard ringing but after about 15 minutes we were still waiting. Peter called Anupam and he called the cab company, apparently they had gone to the wrong address. The ride to the airport was uneventful and there were very few cars on the roads so it was nice and smooth. We got to the terminal and bought our train tickets and then went to check in for our flight on Dragon Air to Beijing. Everything was fine until the lady asked me for the credit card that I used to book the flight online back in December. She was referring to my debit card which was back home in Florida in my desk. The bank had told us that for security reasons they couldn't put a note on our account that we would be traveling out of the country and if we used our card overseas our account would be immediately suspended for our protection. Having no reason to bring my card I left it at home. The flight was already booked and paid for in full so we had a hard time understanding why they needed my card. She didn't speak very much English and Peter and I
speak absolutely no Cantonese so this complicated things a bit more. We tried to give them another card just for verification but we were told we would need to buy new tickets and would be reimbursed for our previous purchase at a later date. Ahh, I don't think so, it's not like we're talking $20 here, this is a couple thousand dollars. I was getting really upset and about to cry (though I cry about everything so this is really no news to anyone) when she said, "okay, it's fine this time just go". We aren't sure what's going to happen when we try to return to Hong Kong but we will find out in a couple days. After that things got a little smoother for our flight there. We took the airport train to the actual airport and went through immigration departure with no problems, we stopped to pick up a drink and muffin at McDonald's Cafe (the only line that wasn't extremely long) and then made it to our gate just in time to line up and board. The flight was uneventful and had quite a bit of turbulence but nothing major. We were served breakfast, which was unexpected, with silverware and no chopsticks for the fist time in a week. We found this rather odd since we were flying from Hong Kong to Beijing but we enjoyed dining easily and our first tastes of dragon fruit.
When we landed in Beijing we departed our plane and walked through the airport. The airport was huge and really cool looking on the inside. We had to walk through these weird "temperature detectors" which we assumed were for detecting a raised temperature so that if you had a fever you would be quarantined until deemed safe. Interesting. We waited and got through immigration and got new stamps in our Passports and then had to take a shuttle to another terminal. The airport was absolutely gigantic which I suppose should be expected since it is the capital of China. Apparently they built more to the airport for the Olympics which were held here in 2008. We made it through baggage claim (we only had our two backpacks which we carried on) and then converted some HK$ to Yuan. We were told that our guide we had arranged for would pick us up as we departed the customs area but when we went through we didn't see anyone with our name. There were a lot of people holding signs but none for us. We back tracked and then circled around but still no one. We went to a pay-phone and tried several phones numbers but none of them worked. We aren't familiar with the phone number system here so we don't know if we were missing numbers or had too many. We walked around again and then again. I was really overwhelmed at this point. There wasn't a single person who spoke English and the numbers we had were no good. Having already gone through problems this morning I was not in the mood for any more. I stood in one place and Peter walked around twice more but this time he found our guide! Yay, finally we could start our adventure. Linda will be our guide and translator and then we have Mr. White for our personal driver. We got to the car and then drove about an hour and talked with Linda about various things. The air outside was very smoggy and not clear at all. The temperature was very nice and cool
but whenever you looked into the distance anything in front of you was separated by a thick cloud of haze from all the pollution. The only thing we had on our itinerary for today was the Beijing Zoo to see the China Pandas. Now, Peter and I have seen pandas before so this was really no big deal for us but it means a lot to the Chinese culture and they are very proud of the pandas. We got in the zoo and walked straight to the pandas and were lucky enough to see one of the pandas walking around in the outdoor exhibit. We took a couple pictures and then headed out of the zoo. I don't know if there were other animals there but we only saw the pandas.
The guides took us to our hotel which is the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Beijing. It is a 5 star hotel and has all the amenities that we are use to back home. After we were dropped off and checked in we dropped off our stuff in our room and then decided to head out to the streets to explore a little. We hadn't eaten lunch and it was after 2 so we tried to find somewhere to eat. We walked down just about every
street from the corner of our hotel and learned quickly that vehicles do not stop for pedestrians even when they have the green walk signal. We also found that every restaurant and shop closed at 2pm and wouldn't reopen until 6. After walking around hungry for a while we decided to get back to the hotel and see about finding food there. The restaurants in the hotel
also closed at 2 but we could order room service so that is what we did. I got traditional fish and chips and Peter ordered a big burger and fries. The food was alright but nothing too exciting but it filled our bellies and we were happy for that. Once we were full we decided to just stay in the room and relax. We enjoyed doing nothing for the first time in about
a month and watched some really crappy movies on the three English channels we got until we started falling asleep. Peter asked if I wanted dinner but I was really tired and not hungry so we decided to just got to sleep.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home