Travel to Beijing & First Impressions

Overnight flights are tough and in this case, I was flying to Singapore from Bangalore, which was only a 4 hour or so flight. I say only because when you're on an overnight flight, you want enough time to fall asleep and 4 hours means that if you fall asleep, you land in a foreign country and you're trying to pull yourself out of sleepiness. At least that's what happened to me.

Singapore Airport is a trip. Everything is in English and it's a huge mall. You can get anything there - really upscale clothing, all kinds of electronic equipment, etc. I was able to change over some dollars and some leftover Indian Rupees into Yuan so that I'd have some local currency when I got to Beijing. They had computers set up with free internet access, so I was able to get online and check my personal and biz mail and IM with a friend. I was hungry and after much wandering, I settled for a tuna fish sandwich. It was the first time I'd eaten tuna fish for breakfast, but if you're hungry enough, everything (familiar) tastes absolutely yummy.

Second flight was longer (a little over 6 hours) but was pretty uneventful. Both flights were 777s and they were full, which was kinda impressive. That's a lot of traveling people. I asked the woman next to me to put up the window cover so I could see China (so I thought), but the smog was so heavy, you couldn't see anything. Like LA, there was a line in the sky where the grey ends and the blue sky begins. It's much higher in Beijing though - in LA, it's just above the city. You couldn't see anything other than grey until we were maybe 1,000 feet above the ground. You could only see about 1/4 or 1/2 mile in the distance - everything beyond that was grey. While we were taxiing, my eyes hurt a little and I got a really bad taste in my mouth. I had been really cavalier when people mentioned the pollution in Beijing to me - after all, I lived in LA for 14 years! This makes LA look like it has crystal clear skies. There is no blue sky. It's just grey and you can't see virtually anything in the distance.

Landed in Beijing and I handed over my various papers - no problems, no questions so I got into the "Foreigners" line for immigration. I was surrounded by little (seriously) Korean people on tours. Their passports read "Republic of Korea", so apparently, they don't call themselves "South Korea" (I'm going on a limb here and assuming that North Koreans don't get to go to tours to China. Or anywhere.)

Passed through immigration and found my driver, John, who spoke virtually no English. Also, he didn't offer to push my luggage cart, which I thought was kinda funny. He was driving a new Toyota (I thought the Chinese didn't like the Japanese, but I guess I'm wrong or commerce trumps all). I had read that the hotel was about 17 kilometers from the airport, so I knew the drive would be pretty long and put on my iPod headphones cause John and I weren't able to communicate. The fact that I was listening to Julia Sweeny’s book “Letting Go of God” which was funny and made my giggle probably amused him. Or he thought I was insane. It won’t be the first time. (Btw, that book was excellent – very funny and smart and interesting and touching. Definitely worth a read or a listen.)

Drove up to my hotel and walked in and it was super-swanky. Seriously. Lots of white folks in business attire mostly, beautiful lobby, fancy. Not the best hotel I've ever been in (that's still the Singapore Ritz Carlton), but definitely up there - perhaps in 2nd place. Of course, it didn't hurt that they upgraded me to a one bedroom suite (and kitchen). It's especially nice since I'm here for ten days. I was looking through the hotel services stuff in that book they put in your room and apparently there’s a dress code for the hotel – it’s “Sporty Casual”. I’m assuming that since I walked in after 14 hours of travel wearing sweats and sneakers they were super-impressed and that’s why they upgraded me. (not.) It was likely my Hyatt Gold stayer card. I appeared to be the only one in “sporty” clothes…

I was really wiped out, so I unpacked and relaxed. I ordered shrimp fried rice (it's not on the menu, but they were really nice about replacing pork with shrimp for me). I never eat fried rice at home, but I'm in friggin' China! (I'm very excited about being here - more than any other place I've ever visited.) Turns out Chinese fried rice isn't oily at all - I don't even think it's fried. There was a fried egg on top though, so maybe that's what they mean. It was really good (of course, I hadn't liked what was served on the plane, so I was really hungry again). I stayed up until about 9:30pm and passed out until noon today (Thursday).

I will write and post pictures about today's adventures (and today was definitely an adventure) later. One funny thing though - today, I sent my laundry to a Chinese laundry. Really. (Heh.)