flying to Beijing

Today I will try to catch up with last two days events – mostly arriving to Beijing and first day spent here wondering at the strangeness of this city.

But first things first: the flight from Bucharest to Amsterdam (by KLM) was one of the nicest I’ve been on. It’s a shame that this was not the main one, but just the first step before the longer flight from Amsterdam to Beijing. I had the luck to be seated near the emergency exit, which meant (beside the mandatory emergency exit training) that I had a lot of space to stretch out. Really, I felt like in business class, without paying the premium. Also the food, while limited, was pretty delicious.

Also on this flight they handpicked the best-looking flight attendants I’ve ever seen. Absolutely lovely! The 2hr20 flight felt great!

Then, after a short layover in Amsterdam, things got worse…

The flight to Beijing, which surprisingly is not that long at around 8hr30, was not very pleasant. The main issue was that the entertainment system was non-existent. I could watch a movie with Jim Carey – Yes Man – but on a screen so far away from me it was futile. To make things more extreme, when pouring tea on of the flight attendants spilled some on me. And it was HOT. Fortunately I didn’t get burnt, and they did have iced towels which alleviated the pain.

Oh, and I mostly could not sleep. I cannot understand why, but all in all I think I slept for 1 or 2 hours max.

Fast forward and and 10 am on Friday I arrived in Beijing. Found an ATM (thanks to HSBC, as Agricultural Bank of China didn’t like any of my cards) and took around 2000 RMB for paying the hostel, train tickets and have some pocket money. I did want to use the mass transit to the hostel, but being very sleepy I decided on the far more easy way of going by taxi.

Going by taxi – or most precisely trying to explain the “where to” part – proved an adventure in itself. While I did have the address written in pinyin the fact that I pronounced it all wrong confused the poor driver. After around 10 minutes of confusion, with the help of the taxi company (who had an English speaking person), we did manage to get to the hostel.  All the way from the airport to central Beijing I was amazed at the sights. There are a lot of highways going different ways, and the first area of Beijing I experienced (from the cab) was a modern office buildings area. Very nice looking, a bit like “La Defense” in Paris. Then of course were also the ugly communist-era buildings: low, same-looking, and just plain boring. Interesting contrast though!

When I arrived at the hostel, my spirits were already rising, and the day soon developed immensely interesting!

Maybe the name of the hostel – Happy Dragon Hostel – had an influence.