last few hours in HK, first few hours in Beijing

I woke up on Friday and had breakfast on the back deck, with all of Hong Kong island towering over my cereal.  These are the kinds of moments that I’m trying to savor before I disembark in San Diego.

I had no business in Hong Kong on Friday because I had to PACK and get to the airport!  Holly and I met up and were sure to print our hostel confirmation page which included directions to the hostel in Chinese.  We had no idea how important that would end up being, as nobody in Beijing speaks English.

We took the Star Ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island and then hopped the airport express to the airport.  This was a fancy train with nice seats, which is why it was so ridiculously expensive I think.  The ride to the airport was quick and OH MY is the Hong Kong airport huge.  We found our airline and proceeded to check-in.  They have a pretty good system going with check-in – they write your flight number on a sticker and slap it on your chest.  They can easily group you then.  Not a bad idea.  We found out that all the students who booked a Great Wall tour independent of SAS were on our same flight.  Holly and I grabbed some quick lunch and looked to spend the rest of our HK dollars (which aren’t accepted in mainland China).  We killed the time much more quickly than we expected and found ourselves rushing to the gate for boarding time.

The flight to Beijing wasn’t too bad, but it was about 3 hours which is about 2 hours too long for me.  We did get a happy little snack in a box with a hot meal, a roll, and some bean salad.  It all smelled/seemed a lot like ship food, but we had a few bites.  I believe I’ve mentioned rule #1 of traveling (if you have access to a bathroom, USE IT); rule #2 is “if there is a free meal, eat it.”

We landed in Beijing and as we got off the plane we got a rude awakening to the Beijing weather:  FREEZING.  To be fair, it was actually about 50 degrees F, but I have been in very warm weather for months.  It was a shock.  My jacket went on immediately.

Walking through the Beijing airport was bizarre – it was 530pm on a Friday – a busy airport time in the US – but it was empty.  Completely empty.  We got through passport control pretty quickly, and then I had my first experience with what I call sickness customs (right before regular customs).  Basically, if you’re ill you need to declare your fever or cough and then you walk through a body temperature scanner.  I kept my cough in and got through just fine.  Regular customs was a bit of a joke and we just walked right through.   This was not an indicator of how the rest of China would be, surprisingly.  Throughout the next 5 days, I'd have to put my bag through an Xray scanner countless times - on the subway, at the train station, at the ship.  But not in the airport. 

We got some cash from an ATM and made our way to a taxi stand.  As I mentioned, the hostel sends the confirmation via email along with the address written in Chinese.  We got in a cab and handed the sheet to the driver who looked at the address for awhile and seemed confused.  He said something to us and we did our best "I have no idea" shrugs, so he just took off. The cab ride turned out to be cheaper than we expected and he shockingly pulled up right in front of the hostel 45 minutes later.  Little did we know that it would be our best cab ride in all of Beijing.

The hostel turned out to be amazing.  The common room looked like the coffee shop at the college you went to. There was a refrigerator stocked with water, soda, and cheap beer.  We grabbed a beer and checked into our room.  FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, I got the upgrade from the regular double to the luxury double (this just meant it had towels and room to walk). But I’ll take it, it was awesome.  Take THAT Emily Sanders.

Holly checked her email and realized that her friend’s friend had emailed her back about meeting up in Shanghai (where she lives) and had invited us to dinner at 7pm at a restaurant downtown.  It was 6:45pm, so we called her from the hostel and said we were on our way.  We asked the guy at the hostel for a general idea of where we were going and he pointed us to an intersection on the map.  We hopped in a cab and handed the driver the directions.  He took off and we got stuck in some nasty traffic.  He dropped us off at the intersection and we couldn’t seem to find the restaurant.  We were so late at this point that we felt a little pressure to get there as soon as possible.  We asked a nearby concierge, but he didn’t speak English.  We asked some more people, who also didn’t speak English.  One guy pointed down the street and we started walking but weren’t seeing anything.  We stopped a group of young people and one girl spoke some English.  She was a HUGE help – she took her phone out and called Tammy for us and told her where we were and that we were on our way; then she called the restaurant and got directions, and then she hailed us a cab and told the driver where to take us.  We were so lucky to find her.

We got to the restaurant and met Tammy, who was so sweet and a lot of fun. She ordered for us (every restaurant is really family style, so it was nice for her to just decide for us and order). We had some broccoli, some tofu, some amazing chicken cooked in red chilis (it was a little too spicy for me, but it was so good), and some tofu  noodles.  We were already full by the time the Peking duck came out, but it was amazingly delicious – you take the duck, some cucumber, some green onion and roll it up in a thin tortilla-like wrapper and dip it in a little sauce.  It was so good!  We stayed and talked for awhile and drank some Yin Jang, the delicious local beer.

It was great talking to Tammy about our plans for the next 2 days, she helped us figure out a good order.  We decided to book a Great Wall tour for the next day, even though it was a little pricier than we had planned.  She called our hostel for us and booked us two spots.  She also helped us figure out our day for Sunday.  We had only been in Beijing for 7 hours, but I was overwhelmed by how helpful everyone was, even though the communication barrier was so great.  The language barrier in China, overall, was unlike everywhere else we’ve been.  It was a significant challenge.

We had Tammy tell our taxi where we were headed and we gave him the hostel card with a map and directions.  He apparently has Speed Racer as his role model and was flying around the streets of Beijing.  He drove around our hostel area for about 10 minutes trying to find the place.  Tammy had given us good advice: Don't get out of the cab until you're where you need to be.  He tried to kick us out a few times, but we stayed and he eventually found our place.  We got back to our hostel around midnight and went right to sleep.  We had to be ready for the Great Wall by 8am!