After 2 months of lounging around, it was time to get back to work and to China. It was such a treat to be home and visiting with family and friends but time to get back to reality. We dumped off our winter clothing, stocked up on necessities and headed back with fewer bags.
August 24/25 - The flight, while long, was uneventful. With a few of these long flights under our belts now, we are getting more used to the details. Thanks to a nice Air Canada employee at check-in, Don and I got seats by the emergency exits again which guaranteed us great leg room (seats 50 A&B would be ideal). Yay! We even enjoyed the new Star Trek movie finally. Great flick!
Our adventure came when we landed in Beijing. Sam had reserved a room for us at a hotel near the airport the week before we left China to come home for the summer. They were to send a driver to pick us up and would meet us at the airport with our names written on a piece of paper. That was the plan. Instead, we arrived one hour late and so had to make our way in a taxi. I had a printout from the computer with the hotel name in Chinese so we thought we would be ok. Unfortunately, our driver didn’t know the street and had to stop to ask for directions. We even called the hotel but there was no answer. Despite asking countless people by the side of the road and in cars at stoplights, he still couldn’t find it after an hour. The hotel was only supposed to be 5 minutes away. At his last stop, a police hut by the road, the taxi driver found out that the hotel had been demolished! Now what?
We finally called on our friend Kathy in Jinan. Now there is a superwoman! Thanks Kathy for saving us! She talked to our driver, found another hotel for us online and reserved a room and then explained to the driver what was going on. He still had to call the new hotel for directions but got us there in short time. It ended up to be very close to the airport and we even ordered supper from a picture menu with English. We took the hotel airport shuttle the next day and caught our flight to Shantou. No issues this time
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