Beijing Arrival

I am so slack at this. But anyway, I will do a bit of catching up now.

We arrived in Beijing last Tuesday (31st May) after a rather bad flight from Singapore. The flight itself was okay but the attempt to sleep overnight on the plane was rather unsuccessful. Not to mention painful. I think chiropractors must have shares in airline companies forcing them to keep their seats uncomfortable. Anyway, I digress.

Okay, rant aside. We arrived in Beijing at about 8am and cruised through customs and immigration. Thinking we would do it the local way we caught the airport shuttle in to town. (12Y, about A$2). This was all good until we got dropped off in the middle of town not having a clue where we were !! Unfortunately swarming at the drop off point was an army of rickshaw drivers waiting for some fresh newbie backpacker blood. We spent the next 20mins walking around trying to find street names that looked something like those on the lonely planet map in the back of the Beijing book, while trying to shake off a rather persistent rickshaw driver who had his own ideas on where we should stay.

Eventually we found a street name that looked familiar and headed off towards our hotel, in exactly the wrong direction. This diversion lasted about 10 mins before we realised the error of our ways. Considering we were carrying our full back packs around, we had had next to no sleep on the overnight plane, it was smoggy & hot and we were continually getting stared at I think we did quite well not to break down and cry on the spot ! About 40 minutes later we finally found our hotel (which was a very cool old style courtyard hotel). It turned in the end our hotel was only about a 10 minute walk from where we got dropped off.

Helpful Hint For The Day: Bring a decent map of Beijing with you and perhaps even a compass !!