Day 8, Medical Exam, Buddhist Blessing, 10 Family Temple, and a Pearl River Cruise…….whew

Well, we had a lovely flight from Tokyo to Beijing. Japan Airlines (JAL) had the cleanest, newest looking plane I’ve ever been on. The seats reclined nearly flat. I was even able to get a ½ hour or so of sleep. I thought that we were two of maybe 15 people on the whole plane, that was until we deplaned. It seemed that everyone else on the Boeing 777 were in coach.

We really had no problems of any kind getting through what amounted to be three checkpoints. The first of which was where we handed one gentleman our form stating we weren’t bringing in blood, disease, or had been around anybody with Sars. The second of which, we gave our passport and information sheet to a police officer and he stamped the visa page. The third was handing our declarations page, which the lady didn’t really looked at.

Just as we got through the lines, we entered and area that had metal crowd gates up (like in NYC near NBC studios) and there were hundreds of people holding up signs. Half way down the walk we saw a sign that said CHI.

We made our way to the end and met Michelle. We waited for about 20 minutes just talking with her. She stated the driver was having a hard time in traffic. After another 30 minutes in the van we were at the hotel.

At the front desk I asked about internet in the rooms and was told it was ready to go but for a fee. They were wrong. It doesn’t work. We went down to the front desk and they said they would send up the ‘technician’. A few minutes later I met a non-speaking Chinese gentleman that played with the connection and my computer for 10 minutes. After much sighing and crawling under the desk, he motioned to me that it’s not the connection but my computer creating the issue.

I will talk to the font desk tomorrow morning. I know a few things about computers, we’ll see if they’re impressed.

It’s been over 48+ hours (I’ve lost count) with just a couple cat-naps on the plane so I’m beat. I will try to post this as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who have posted comments.