Be Very Afraid
We left Hong Kong today and headed to Beijing. We were both very exicted becuase we are one step closer to our little Bug.
However our journey started off to an interesting start.
We landed in Beijing and between the cloudy sky and the polution the air was an off shade of green and brrr was it cold. What happened next is almost too wierd to describe. We were met at the airport by "Joyce" and our "ride" Mr. Hau. My assumption was that it was car service from the airport to the hotel that doubled as ground transportation to the major sites (Great Wall is like an hour outside the city). Wow were we wrong.
First imagine Mr. Hau's ride. Think Freddy and the mystery machine, without the groovy paint job - or the upolsered seats! It's like an old painters van with folding chairs bolted to the floors and covered with pillow cases.
And Joyce is not just a facilitator. No, somehow we got ourselves a tour guide cruise director on steriods. But not even a good cruise director becuase 1. She treats us like we might be fresh off the farm all but holding our hands as we cross the street and 2. she's taken about two years of english, which makes communication a struggle. Now, I did take a year of chinese, but in high school. So unless communication involves any of my newly-learned phrases such as "is your diaper wet" and "do you want a bottle" I'm pretty useless.
So, from the start I am clearly not thrilled. It only gets worse when "Joyce" tells us that they will NOT be brining us to the hotel. She has "Chinese Acrobat Show" tickets for us and we need to go there first. After weaving through what looks like Bedstuy, they pull over the van next to a laundomat/barber shop and said to get out. Joyce leads us around the corner to this oddly located middle-school like auditorium, hands us tickets and says we need to stay for the show which starts in 45 minutes. (Mind you, at this point we have no idea where Mr. Hau is with the van or our luggage.) We are starving at this point, but luckily they are selling refreshments - bags of microwaved popcorn, probably made early in the morning. As we sit and eat our stale popcorn load after load of tour bus pulls in - a vertible united nations of jet lagged travelers.
At this point Steve and i were just laughing with complete befuddlement...but in the back of our minds we are also thinking: "This is only going to get worse. We are staying at the Holiday Inn".
I'll spare you the details of how the envening did actually get worse before it got better, but it did get better. Apparently Holiday Inn is to Hong Kong what Westin is to NYC, so we are quite comfortable. The full-sized Kung-like bed that pained us for 3 days in Hong Kong has been replaced with King sized pillow top.....you get the jist.
Now apparently Joyce is returning tomorrow, but hopefully I can convince Steve to be polite to her East Coast sytle aka: Give her the next three days off so we can enjoy ourselves.
We'll see...
However our journey started off to an interesting start.
We landed in Beijing and between the cloudy sky and the polution the air was an off shade of green and brrr was it cold. What happened next is almost too wierd to describe. We were met at the airport by "Joyce" and our "ride" Mr. Hau. My assumption was that it was car service from the airport to the hotel that doubled as ground transportation to the major sites (Great Wall is like an hour outside the city). Wow were we wrong.
First imagine Mr. Hau's ride. Think Freddy and the mystery machine, without the groovy paint job - or the upolsered seats! It's like an old painters van with folding chairs bolted to the floors and covered with pillow cases.
And Joyce is not just a facilitator. No, somehow we got ourselves a tour guide cruise director on steriods. But not even a good cruise director becuase 1. She treats us like we might be fresh off the farm all but holding our hands as we cross the street and 2. she's taken about two years of english, which makes communication a struggle. Now, I did take a year of chinese, but in high school. So unless communication involves any of my newly-learned phrases such as "is your diaper wet" and "do you want a bottle" I'm pretty useless.
So, from the start I am clearly not thrilled. It only gets worse when "Joyce" tells us that they will NOT be brining us to the hotel. She has "Chinese Acrobat Show" tickets for us and we need to go there first. After weaving through what looks like Bedstuy, they pull over the van next to a laundomat/barber shop and said to get out. Joyce leads us around the corner to this oddly located middle-school like auditorium, hands us tickets and says we need to stay for the show which starts in 45 minutes. (Mind you, at this point we have no idea where Mr. Hau is with the van or our luggage.) We are starving at this point, but luckily they are selling refreshments - bags of microwaved popcorn, probably made early in the morning. As we sit and eat our stale popcorn load after load of tour bus pulls in - a vertible united nations of jet lagged travelers.
At this point Steve and i were just laughing with complete befuddlement...but in the back of our minds we are also thinking: "This is only going to get worse. We are staying at the Holiday Inn".
I'll spare you the details of how the envening did actually get worse before it got better, but it did get better. Apparently Holiday Inn is to Hong Kong what Westin is to NYC, so we are quite comfortable. The full-sized Kung-like bed that pained us for 3 days in Hong Kong has been replaced with King sized pillow top.....you get the jist.
Now apparently Joyce is returning tomorrow, but hopefully I can convince Steve to be polite to her East Coast sytle aka: Give her the next three days off so we can enjoy ourselves.
We'll see...
posted by C2K at 10:37 PM
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