Trip days 1 (travel) and 2 (Beijing day 1)
So I made it to Beijing!
The Brisbane to Hong Kong leg went without a hitch. One of my best flights ever ... Maybe 1/3 of the plane was full so I basically had the last 5 rows to myself.
The Hong Kong to Beijing leg was another story. Arrived without drama, got my boarding pass, caught the train to the other terminal's departure lounge ... simples!
And then the delays started. Now this was scheduled to be an 8.20pm flight. The flight was originally delayed for about an hour without any sort of notification (at least not that I could understand). Then it took another half hour after the new departure time for us to start boarding. The plane itself was fine (an older plane with a 2-4-2 configuration in cattle class) although it had these weird little footrests (obviously for the shorter Asian market) for little old ladies to mount their feet on. Of caourse what this meant for me was that I lost a couple of inches of leg room and only one of my legs could move out of a 90 degree angle.
Once we were finally boarded we sat on the tarmac at the gate for about 30 minutes without any word. Then we got an announcement saying we were lucky ... it would only be another hour before we pushed back! So we're sitting on the Tarmac for 90 minutes and the crew has started to serve dinner since it's now between 10.30 and 11pm. We finally start to push back and then stop. Get a little further then stop. Then we get out and are stopped on the runway for a bit. Annoying! If we're not going to leave for an hour at least leave us in the terminal!
Eventually we got flying only to have to change terminal in Beijing so we drove around for about 20 min. We got off the plane about 3am then had to do the whole customs thing and whatnot.
So I got out of the airport and it was 30 degrees and 90% humidity at 4am! I was not at the terminal I was expecting and I didn't have my hotel name in Mandarin (my mistake!). Given some of the reviews I wasn't confident the hotel was going to be open at 4am for me to check in.
I'll admit it ... I had a little moment. I couldn't understand the broken English of half the people trying to talk to me and I was getting very frustrated. I ended up getting the free shuttle bus to the terminal I was expecting then had a nice sweaty walk in jeans to the airport Hilton and paid more than I wanted to for a very fancy hotel room with an awesome shower and very comfortable bed. It was proper fancy. A multi-level, multi-bedroom, multi-bathroom suite. I got the room at half price because I checked in so late and it was still far more than I would normally pay. Whatever.
I was in a much better state of mind in morning. Didn't sleep well ... something I often find when sleeping somewhere new despite being really tired. One advantage of the Hilton is they have all the things. I raided their toiletries and took what I wanted, took some toilet paper (because China!) and just luxuriated a bit after a shitty travel day.
So I got the train into the city today and walked down to my new accommodation. Much further away than I thought ... google maps isn't great here. Very sweaty. 33 degrees and 70% humidity but feels like 44 degrees according to my weather app. That seems an accurate assessment. It's really gross outside.
The hostel seems fine though it is a stark change to the Hilton. I'm currently sitting in the common room using their internets and drinking some generic Chinese beer for about $3.50 a bottle. Have seen some German or Austrian dudes, a couple of American chicks and a bunch of what I assume are Chinese staying here.
At the moment I don't have a sim-card so I'm relying on wifi at the hostel. I'm not convinced I will actually pick up a SIM since I'm not running a VPN. It's interesting to see how much I rely on Facebook and various Google services to do anything.
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