First Day

China Trip Blog Day One - Friday, July 19, 2013

I'm here in China!!  The flights over here went fine,although I never sleep well on the plane so was exhausted when I got off.  I had no checked baggage so sailed right through passport control and on out to meet my driver.  He had the OAT sign up and I found him easily.  He spoke no English but handed me his cell phone to talk to our local guide, Jessica, who told me he'd bring me to the hotel and I would have the evening free.  It took over 90 minutes to get from the airport to the hotel.  The traffic was unbelievable.  Shades of New York City in the rush hour.

It is hot and hazy here.  The pollution is very visible.  The hotel is nice, but they aren't kidding when they say the beds are hard!!  My little mini-router didn't work with the ethernet cable in my room at first but now, miraculously at 3:00 AM its working fine!!  I wandered downstairs to scope out the hotel and ran into another member of my group so we went out to dinner together.  We went to a restaurant near the hotel.  The food was good but it took us forever to figure out what to order as the menu was huge and only part of it was translated into English. We had the most helpful young waitress who spoke a little English and tried very hard to be helpful!  She was really sweet.  Reminded me of many of our U of R students from China.  I got a Szechuan beef dish that was delicious but extremely spicy and hot.  We also got a chicken dish.  There was some confusion after Tom ordered what he thought was a stir fried vegetable dish that turned out to be a salad.  We decided to avoid it so as not to get ourselves sick on the first night!!   Then when we got back to the hotel I tried the "lobby bar" only to discover that it doesn't really have liquor - just Chinese beer and some wine, so my evening cocktail tonight is a can of Chinese beer instead of my usual G&T!  Not bad actually.  I think I'm  going to become a beer drinker while here!

I went to bed by 10, as I was exhausted, but now at 3 AM I'm wide awake.  Not adjusted to time difference, obviously!  Have to be up early for breakfast and a briefing meeting with the guide at 8:00 so hope I get sleepy soon!  Our agenda on Saturday includes the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, so we're diving right in!