Definitely in China
Published by O-CO under on 08:22
The 13.5 hr plane ride turned out not to be as bad as I thought it would. Time went by really fast for some reason.. All the Chinese people on board couldnt wait for the plane to stop before they got up and grabbed their carry-on luggage from the over head bins. They got yelled at, it was funny as hell. The Beijing airport is huge, and the terminal I am at is new as shit.. The construction of it is something of a marvel too, seems like its all open air. The roof doesnt really connect to the glass walls. I dont know. Thank God everything is in English so I know where the hell Im going.
After getting my bags and finding my way to where the taxi's pick people up, I find myself looking for the address to the hostel Im staying at. Son of a bitch, I lost it! Since I cant communicate with the damn taxi driver I come up with a plan to find it on my laptop and get a wireless signal. So I pull it up and show him, but Im not too confident he knows exactly where it is, because of his weird noises and mumbled Chinese. Turns out he doesnt and we cant communicate for shit! He mumbles and I laugh, thats the extent of our communication. We wind up driving to the district the hostel is in and he gets out numerous times asking people where the hell it is. This would never happen in New York! haha. People would be like "You gotta be F-in kidding me!" and get out of the cab. Watching the meter I know the fare is around 100 Y, which is about 15 bucks. Not bad for a half hour cab ride. Your not supposed to tip in China, but I gave the cabby a $5 US bill and he nearly shit himself! I made his week for sure. It was great!
The main road into Beijing is really wide and extremely lit up with neon lights and crazy buildings. Everything looks so new and is clean as hell. It seems like China took the blueprints from our city infrastructure in the US and upgraded and revised them a little. I think that is basically what they did and what they are doing with their whole country too. People drive like maniacs!! Whoever is there first or has a bigger vehicle goes first thats the rule. They have street lights and speed limits like in the US though. Once we turned off the main road onto the side street my hostel was on it got really dark. The side roads arent lit up, really. They have trees growing over top of them too, which is really cool, like a canopy. Everything is soo clean.
The Peking International Hostel is just like the pictures show it, really nice. They have all kinds of plants and trees everywhere, little buddahs and quaint shit. Its like Chinese comfortable and home-y I guess is the best way to put it. It cost less than 15 US dollars a night for the bed which is nice. A girl from Illinois checked in just before me and we wound up staying in the same room, which was cool. So after we put our stuff in the room we went down stairs and had some Chinese beers and Jack daniels. Being soo tired from the flight and traveling we didnt do any sightseeing. I didnt want to deal with finding my way to and from shit at night, after being awake for however freaking long I was. haha.
My flight to Guilin leaves Beijing at 7:10 am so I have to leave the hostel at around 4:45 I figure. I set up, through the hostel, a cab ride, which was clutch because I didnt know how I was going to get there. So at 4:30 I woke up, brushed my teeth, and waited for the cab to come. When he finally shows up he greets me and then tries to lift my 50lb bags into the trunk of his car and he cant do it!! ahahaha, that was one of the funniest things I think Ive ever seen. I let him struggle for a min while I turn around laughing before I grab them and throw them in his trunk. He was a little embarrassed.
So I havent eaten anything since the plane ride over and am hungry as hell but Im just too busy figuring out what the hell is going on and where the hell I need to go. After getting bounced around from a couple different airport check-in people I finally get my too over sized bags checked and out of my hair. What a pain in the ass carrying all this shit around. This flight to Guilin is ALL Chinese people, and me. I guess they like my blue eyes and light skin because they stare at me constantly. I just smile and stare right back because some of them look funny as hell! haha. This China Air airplane is kinda small inside and the seats and space for your legs are small too. Thank God I have a window seat and can rest my head on the window, instead of this dudes shoulder next to me to sleep. My first meal in China, if thats what you wanna call it, is breakfast on the plane. It consists of egg, two hash brown looking things, a cherry tomato, some peas, a weird sausage thing, a fruit cup and a glass of OJ. Everything tastes really good even though it looks funny, the sausage is white and I dont want to know what kind of meat it is. I put my headphones on, que up Armin van Buuren's, A State of Trance episode 374, gaze out the window as the plane leaves the runway, and doze off, thinking to myself; 'In 3 hours Ill be in Guilin'.
