First off, I made it without shedding a tear. That’s a big step for me – normally I lose it when saying goodbye to Nate and Zach. For those who don’t know, I took the only non-stop from Seattle to Beijing on Hainan Airlines (China’s largest private airline). The flight left about 1 hour late, the flight was around 11hrs and 15min. Overall, it was a good experience. Seats were comfortable, in flight entertainment was good (but no where near as good as Delta international flights), and the food was OK.
I watched ‘Crazy Heart’ with Jeff Bridges…not my kind of movie but when you have 11 hrs to kill, you need to pick something. I read some and I played lots of yahtzee (like 2 hours worth) on my ipod touch. The flight went up the Canadian coastline and flew directly over Anchorage…since it was clear I got to see a ton of mountains and glaciers. I also pretty confident (based on my current research) that I saw Mt McKinley off in the distance – even though it’s over 100 miles from Anchorage – it is 20k ft tall – hard to miss on a clear day.
The flight crossed from Alaska over the southern Bering Sea and into Siberia – it really did look cold down there. Lots of sea ice! Along the way there were really cool views of mountains, glaciers, icebergs, and sea ice – at least until it got cloudy. From about 90 minutes, it started getting pretty bumpy. There are some thunderstorms moving through so the plane was bouncing around a bit. About 20 minutes before landing they announced that they were going to spray disinfectant in the cabin since it was international flight. Basically they shot something through the air system (you could smell)…I have no idea what I got exposed to…oh well.
Once on the ground, customs was easy…not much different from the US really but less of a line. I carried my luggage so I didn’t have to wait for it. Everything at the airport is in English (and Chinese obviously) so it was easy to get around. I stopped at the currency exchange to pick up my RMB (Chinese money) – you can’t pick this up outside of China as it is a closed currency. Next was the taxi. They have a taxi line so I hopped in one and handed the driver the address…in English. Crap! He doesn’t understand “Hilton Beijing” in english…nor do the 3 other Taxi helpers standing around the car. I pulled out a Google map (which was partially in Chinese) – I think that got him going but he still wasn’t sure. Fortunately there was a phone number on the map – so he called it and got directions.
The Hilton is nice…I flashed my hilton honors number, paid a fee to add breakfast and got an upgraded room which also includes complimentary happy hour. That’s where I’m at now. The room is nice. They say you don’t want to drink the water…I saw why in my room…it had a pale brown color to it in the sink. At least there is bottled water everywhere.
Well, that brings you up to speed.