China trip 7 - Longest...Saturday...Ever

Today is check-out day, so after breakfast, I took about an hour to walk back towards the dumpling restaurant I went to on Friday so that I could take some pictures; I had forgotten my camera the day before. Once that was done, it was time to check out, but my flight wasn’t until 5:45, so I just went down to the lobby to hang out. A friend came back from some shopping with a fake Android-powered iPad as well as an iPhoney (Chinese knock-off iPhone 4G with 2 SIM card slots) that also runs Android, so we played around with those for a little while, and then it was time to grab a cab to the Airport. Traffic was heavy considering it was Saturday afternoon, but cleared up once we got onto the airport express road. Interestingly, the airport express road has different speed limits (max and min) for each lane. So one lane was marked 120/90, the next 100/80, and the farthest right was 100/60, followed by a dedicated emergency vehicle lane. As with many traffic signs in Beijing, those all appeared to be mere suggestions. Other interesting sights on the way to the airport: a TRD (that’s Toyota Race Development) sticker on a Porsche Cayenne, and multiple cars with Transformers Autobot or Decepticon logos on them.

We found our gate and checked in, and they tried to put me on a Continental flight to Newark instead of my flight via Chicago because apparently my flight was oversold. I tried to talk my way into them just processing my pending systemwide upgrade on one of the two flights, but they wouldn’t do it, so I told them to just leave me where I was. That turned out to be a good plan, because the Newark flight ended up being delayed, and given the option, I’d much rather be stuck in Chicago for the night if I miss my connection. Security was uneventful, and like most non-US security, we were not required to remove our shoes, but most everything else was the same. No backscatter, just standard metal detectors.

Since one of the folks that was on the same flight as me is a 1K status elite frequent flyer on Star Alliance, he was able to bring me into the Air China lounge as a guest. We had some snacks and waited for our flight. I didn’t get my upgrade (thanks anyway, Elena!) but this was the same drill as on the way out, our jet wasn’t refurbished yet, and so business was just better seats and therefore I wasn’t necessarily missing a lot. I had an exit row, so I had plenty of legroom. I even was able to sleep a little. Food was basically the same as on the way out. Let me just say that it’s a good thing that they started charging for food on domestic flights, because it forced them to make it suck less so that they could actually charge for it. When you’re a captive audience and the food is complimentary, it’s every bit as bad as every comedian ever makes it out to be.

By the time we got off the plane, went through immigration (big line), got our bags (mine was waiting for me when I got to the carousel), went through customs, rechecked our bags, and went through security, it was 15 minutes until boarding started. I was supposed to go through the backscatter machine, but the person in front of me didn’t take off his belt, and therefore had to go through a pat-down, which for some reason caused them to close the backscatter line and wave me through the regular metal detector instead. I’m still not convinced that this backscatter thing is an improvement. The only time I’ve been through one it horribly delayed me, and while I couldn’t care less about the pseudo-nudity, I am a little concerned about the radiation exposure should one malfunction.

United had upgraded me on the Chicago flight, but since I was on someone else’s systemwide upgrade and it didn’t happen on the Beijing leg, I wasn’t about to let them waste it on a domestic flight, so I told them to pull that off of my ticket, which put me back in coach…for about 10 minutes, when my normal status-based upgrade came through. This plane, while also a 757, was not upgraded, so it was just nice seats and free drinks this time around, which was sort of disappointing, because I wanted to try out the lay-flat seats to see if I could get a little sleep. Either way, I got my bags, headed for the taxi stand only to find a 20 minute line for a cab. I think that my cabbie was having some trouble seeing in the dark, because he was doing a lot of weaving, especially when there were oncoming headlights. When we got to the house, he ran my credit card and gave me a slip without a tip line, and when I asked about adding a tip on the card, he said “can’t do it.” I responded, “I don’t have any US cash, I’ve been in China for 10 days”, and he said not to worry about it. I feel bad making him drive all that way with no tip, but I guess ultimately it was his call. By this time, it was well after 10pm, so I went inside, grabbed a quick snack, and then enjoyed being unconscious in my own bed for about 9 hours.

I should note that travel to Asia is always interesting because of the International Date Line. On the way out, you fly for 13 hours, but you leave Thursday evening and arrive Friday night. On the way back, because of the time change away from Daylight Savings Time, I actually traveled through time! I left Beijing at 5:45pm, traveled for 13 hours, and arrived back at Chicago at 4:40pm the same day, making it the longest Saturday ever.

China trip 1 - Travel day (Thursday/Friday)

The next few entries concern my recent trip to Beijing. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!

I found out when I checked in for my flight on Wednesday that I got upgraded on my flight to Chicago thanks to United’s “everyone with status is automatically eligible for an upgrade” program, and since the flight was on a newly-refurbished 757, I got to sit in one of the nice new International business “pod” seats for the first time. I daresay that this particular change would almost make the cost of flying business class worth it, and it definitely would make a systemwide or regional upgrade more worth it.

In Chicago, I had lunch at Berghoff Café, which was a Reuben with fresh-sliced Corned beef and their own root beer. Really tasty. If you happen to be flying through Chicago, I'd recommend a stop there.

I stopped to plug in my laptop and phone to charge them for a while before boarding and I saw instructions for Airport WiFi which said to disable IPv6, VPN, and firewall for best results (but then told you to use Windows built-in Firewall elsewhere in the directions). The IPv6 booster in me was saddened by this, and the security geek in me was appalled by the instructions. So of course I had to take pictures so that I can post them “wall of shame” style…

As expected, I didn’t get an upgrade on my flight to Beijing, but it was just as well, because business class wasn’t actually anything but bigger seats (that reclined further) and better food – no pods on most of the 777s yet.

Coach had standard crappy airline food – chicken and “stuffing” plus salad for the first meal, ramen noodles as a snack, then a hot turkey sandwich (with a stale roll) as a second meal.

Annoyingly, I discovered that I had already read 2 of the 4 books that I brought to read on the plane, so I’m down to one relatively short book and 2 magazines for the return flight. Hope the movie selection is good…

I arrived in Beijing and didn’t even have to reset my watch, because they are exactly 12 hours ahead of EDT.  Beijing airport is huge! The area where you go through immigration has a probably 4 or 5 story ceiling and is at least the size of a small football stadium inside. On the way to immigration, there is a gate labeled “proceed slowly, infrared temperature imaging in use.” I have been told that this is one of the ways that they try to find and quarantine anyone with a fever, but I didn’t see anyone getting pulled aside while I was there.

The line for immigration involved about 30 minutes of waiting, but was uneventful. Each immigrations agent has this little panel at their desk with a happy face, a straight face and a sad face on buttons, and the idea is that you are supposed to rate your trip through immigration, but I didn't really see anyone using it. Notably, you do immigration and customs before you retrieve your bags, and by the time I got to baggage claim my bag was waiting for me on the carousel.

Since China is another of those countries that hasn’t really embraced plastic as a payment form yet, I went and got cash from the China Construction Bank ATM, since BoA apparently partnered with them and so some of the fees are waived. Finding it was a bit of a quest, because the info sheet just said “west side of 4^th floor” and I didn’t know which direction west was, but I found it eventually. Yuan in hand, I headed for the taxis. I had about a 15 min wait for a taxi, but was able to hand the driver the printout our hosts gave us that had my destination in Chinese, and away we went.

I was trying to get to the hotel during rush hour (5pm) so it took more than 1 hour to get there. Beijing has several of what they call “ring roads” which just like they sound, ring the city concentrically. The hotel is off of the 3^rd ring road. Traffic on the ring roads is like the worst parts of downtown traffic and the DC beltway all rolled into one, because it is also a limited access highway that (already) doesn’t have enough lanes but it also has a lot of exits, so there’s near constant congestion due to people trying to get on and off. At least some traffic laws appear to be enforced (people don’t usually run red lights), but lane changes are basically games of chicken, and lanes designated for a specific purpose (turning lanes, bike lanes) seem to be theoretical at best. I definitely saw lots of people using the shoulder/turning lanes for passing zones, and even saw one person driving along in the bike lane because traffic wasn’t moving fast enough in the regular lanes. I also got my first view into the well-publicized pollution that has plagued Beijing as more people have started driving. It’s less brown than the smog in LA, but definitely creates a visible haze that dramatically reduces visibility and makes a halo around lights and signs.

Since I didn’t sleep at all on the plane, and it was now nearly 6 am according to my body clock, I was falling asleep while in the cab, but eventually we got to the hotel.

The cab fare was very cheap compared to home – 112 RMB = ~$15, and that is actually one of the more expensive fares I had during the course of the week. Compare this with the $40 fare from my house to Dulles the morning I left.

When I checked in, the hotel scanned my passport – as I learned when reading the immigration card I filled out, apparently if you aren’t staying in a hotel, you have only a few days to register where you are staying with the government, but the hotels do it for you. Makes me wonder about the security precautions that are in place for that info – do they retain it locally, or does it just go to the same place that the scans from my immigration entrance go? Who has access to the info? How long are the scans retained? Etc… I guess if that’s my biggest security concern in China, things are pretty good.

My room is quite nice – I’m on the 12^th floor of 24. It’s a standard size hotel room with king size bed, TV, couch, and desk, plus a bay window that overlooks the hotel’s garden. It makes my similarly-priced room in Hiroshima last year look even more like a closet by comparison. What I don’t understand is that my 5-star hotel room, which is otherwise very well-appointed has, as the only clock in the room, a tiny, crappy travel-size analog clock that would sell for about $15 (or less) back in the States. It doesn’t light up, so you can’t tell what time it is when you wake up and it’s still dark, and the alarm is one of those single-handed things, where if you want to set it for anything but the top of the hour, you have to guess as to the right position between the two hours. I guess a lot of people just use their phones as alarms anymore, but I’m old-fashioned like that, I like an actual clock alarm.

This room is like some other EU or Asian hotels in that you have to put your room key in a slot at the entrance to the room in order to turn on the room lights, and there is a second switch to turn them off from the bedside, plus a set of night lights that turns on a very dim light under the cabinetry in the bathroom and next to the bed. I don’t understand why that doesn’t catch on in US hotels – I assume that the rewiring required would make it a fairly difficult retrofit to existing hotels, but it makes so much sense for new ones! I bet it saves a good deal of wasted power.

The bathroom is pretty standard. It does, however, have one of those dual-flush toilets and the usual “help us save the environment, hang up your towel” placards. I’ve been running an experiment this week, and have been dutifully hanging my towel up after every shower. Normally, the hotel staff either ignores those cards altogether, or they’ll let you go at most a day or two before they swap your towels either way. I had the same towel all week, so they actually follow the process instead of it just being a greenwashing tactic.

Other interesting things about this hotel are that every night when they make up the bed, they lay a bookmark on the turned down linens which has a quote from the book Lost Horizon – get it, because that’s about Shangri-La? There has been a different one with a different quote each day of the week. Also, each elevator has a carpet with the day of the week on it in English and Chinese. At first, I thought that there was a different day of the week in each elevator, and since there were 6 elevators, I kept wondering which day of the week they had skipped. It turned out that actually, the entire carpet is swapped every day, so that each day the elevator carpet matches the day of the week. 

Since I mainly just needed to eat something before passing out, I ate at the hotel buffet – sushi, Indian food, Chinese food (though I think they just call it “food” here) Mongolian BBQ, and assorted pastries and desserts. I must have misheard the woman when she told me the price, or I was just that much of a travel zombie, because I was surprised to find my bill was over 400 RMB ($60!). At least the food was tasty, but I would find out later in the week just how horribly overpriced it was. 

After dinner, it was time for some much-needed rest.