Planes, taxis and a lot of fun. . .

Friday 5th January 2007

The hours at Heathrow passed quickly enough, because we were so excited about the trip. No huge logjams at check-in or elsewhere in the airport and the flight left on time. Let’s hope we don’t ‘pay’ for that further along the route. A good flight (although BA can never really compete with Virgin for the little extra touches). The ‘in-flight’ entertainment was good with a choice of films that both Sid and I enjoyed. I saw more segments of a number of films than I intended, simply because of my seat-mate. The guy next to me was 6ft 5” tall (obviously, I’m talking about the guy on the other side of me to Sid!) and about 20 stone. Really nice young man, 25, teaching English in China, just outside Beijing. Only problem was, his bulk made him spill over into my seat and as a result he inadvertently changed channels on my arm-rest-control- panel, roughly every half-hour, or each time he moved position.

Flight was just under ten hours so we arrived in Beijing at 10.30 local time, but 2.30am to us. We’d dozed on and off, but must still be working on adrenalin, as it’s now 8am English time and 4 pm here. Just got back to the hotel and Sid’s having his afternoon nap as I write.

We’d been warned by loads of people how difficult it would be to make sense of Beijing Airport without any Chinese language or assistance. We’d boldly decided that we didn’t want to book transport to the hotel in advance, because although our oversized luggage disqualifies us from backpacker status, we certainly don’t want this trip to be a glorified package tour either. And we’d also been told there is an ‘official’ taxi desk in the airport. There isn’t! But first things first, we needed to access some Chinese Yuan. Simple. Put the card in one of the numerous cash machines scattered around, I thought, and get out a couple of hundred quid to start us off. Not so simple. Yes, the instructions could be accessed in English, which we did, but I’d omitted to check what a couple of hundred quid in Enlgish would be in Yuan (had my handy calculator that I’d carefully cut and pasted from Yahoo on Wednessday, tucked away in my bum bag.) So, I ask for 300 Yuan and out it spills. Success, except when I worked it out we’d only got the equivalent of £19. Off to Starbucks for a coffee and a rethink on currency exchange rates and to retrieve my not-so-handy guide. Back to the machine to take out (successfully this time) 3000 Yuan. OK, let’s decide how to get a taxi to the hotel, we think, and I start searching for the Hotel address details printed in Chinese. I know I had these because Ian kindly printed them out for me at work as my computer doesn’t recognise Chinese characters and his does. And I had been warned that taxi drivers here don’t read or understand English and so having the hotel address in Chinese was a necessity. I now know that the page Ian printed out form the web is in my green box file, marked holiday, in the study in the Old Forge.

Never mind, off to the desk marked ‘hotel reservations’ in English to ask the woman there to write out the name and address of the Marco Polo Hotel in Chinese. Except she couldn’t. Although she had some, limited, English and it’s her job to book hotels she couldn’t read the address in English to write it out for me. But she did manage Marco Polo in Chinese. By this time, we’d had about 20 touts offering us taxis and had refused them all, as all the good guide books tell you to do. Just as we were about to go out of the door to get a ‘metered’ taxi, a guy sees the Marco Polo written in Chinese on my sheet and says he will take us there for 450 Yuan (about £30). I say, no we know the fare should be about 180 Yuan (£12ish). He comes down to 250 and we settle on a fixed price of 200. Off we go with his ‘friend’ who proudly shows us the Airport Highway. He says it’s a toll road and he does go through a booth collecting a 100 yuan ticket (although he makes no payment). He then gives us the ticket, in the back of the car, and tells us it is for us to pay him. Sid says ‘no, we agreed a fixed price of 200 with your friend and that’s what we’re paying – he even says they ‘shook hands’ on it, though I know he didn’t. I know he didn’t because I read somewhere that the Chinese think it is bad luck or insulting or something to shake hands. Nevertheless, he takes us to the Marco Polo, we pay him 200, he goes away not very happy and we check in with no problems.

Hotel is absolutely perfect for our first ‘culture shock’ few days. Very good large room, all mod cons, staff with some, but limited English, and great facilities. We dump our gear and walk off towards Tianenman Square, about a 20 minute to half hour walk away. See the ‘Chairman’s House’ on the way, then into the square itself, which is massive. See the Great Hall of the People, the Gate to the Forbidden City, and the huge museum. Meet some very nice students in the Square, who spotted us straight away as in the hour we took to stroll to the Square and around, we did not see any other westerners at all. I know it’s January, and not the tourist season, but very surprised. Also surprised that the few people we asked for directions didn’t understand Sid saying Tianenman Square and pointing. (Sid was a bit hurt at this and did say that he thought it was ‘payback time’ for them to help us as he’d helped numerous Chinese tourists with directions in London, Birmingham and Stratford upon Avon. I think there was a bit of racial mis-stereotyping coming in there, because I’m pretty sure the tourists he’s helped in the past were Japanese, not Chinese!). The students then took us to see their art exhibition which is in a part of the museum which is being redeveloped from next week to house a new museum in time for the Olympics next year. They did us a calligraphy scroll of our names, just as a gift, because I think they enjoyed practising their English. And gave us a very welcome hot cup of china tea.

Today has been beautifully sunny, but very, very cold. Fortunately we’d packed and dressed for it, so no problem. It’s been a really exciting and fun day so far. And then, this was rounded off with a visit to the dumpling house. Fantastic – huge bowl of egg and tomato soup, absolutely gorgeous mixture of beef and tomato and duck and mushroom dumplings, with a mixture of dipping sauce, two very large beers and all for the princely sum of 46 ruan, otherwise known as £3!!!