Day 72 – Beijing

Saturday, April 05, 2008
We woke up semi-early this morning to make it to our ferry in time. The reason we’re going to Beijing VIA Shenzhen is because the flights from Shenzhen to Beijing are a lot less expensive compared to Hong Kong to Shenzhen. Shenzhen is actually a part of China, so the flight is domestic whereas from HK would be international. The ferry only cost like $20USD as well so it was definitely worth it.
The ferry was pretty much completely empty besides us so we could sit wherever we wanted, which was kind of nice. At first we all sat in the front but as soon as the ship started moving we realized that was a bad idea and moved to the back of the boat where it’s a lot smoother. They showed some movie during the ride but I fell asleep for the entire 1.5 hour ride, definitely a much needed nap.
We had to go through Chinese customs once we reached Shenzhen’s ferry port. They were very skeptical as to why 9 Americans are coming into their country after being to like 9 other countries in the past two months. I’m sure they just have heightened security because of the whole Tibet situation that’s going on, but we had to thoroughly explain our intentions in China, how long we were going to be there, why we visited each of the countries that we just came from, ect. All of these questions even though we already had a Chinese Visa to enter the country. Eventually, we were allowed through customs to where they check passenger’s baggage. I’ve never actually had my bags checked until this security check. All of the airports that I’ve been through on this trip, and the first actual bag search came in China off of a ferry.
Next we took a short, 5 minute, van ride to the Shenzhen airport. The airport was really nice. The first modern airport that I’ve been in since Johannesburg actually. Even the airport in Delhi, the capital of India, was poor and dated. The plane to Beijing was a little over 3 hours. They served us some food, which was nice since we were all starving and the airport café that we ate at in Shenzhen served possibly the worst food ever. Well, not as bad as the ship, but still pretty bad. Another first for me, I’ve never received an actual meal on an airplane. It was decent though.
Upon getting into Beijing we first headed to our hotel, the Beijing News Plaza to check into our room. We had originally wanted to try and check out the Olympic Village area in Beijing but anytime we would say ‘’Olympic Stadium’’ to anyone they would give us a very confused look. We joked that the Chinese government hadn’t told its people that they were hosting the Summer Olympics in a few months, but there were many signs around the city saying ‘Beijing 2008’ so I’m not sure how not one single person understood us.
Next stop on the list was to get some food. We saw some restaurants not far from our hotel so we headed that way, with no idea where we were really going. Just a quick side note, Beijing is a VERY spread out city. The streets are very wide, and anywhere on a map that looks close to where you’re at really isn’t close at all. We ended up finding a little restaurant a few blocks away from our hotel. The food was pretty good. We found out rather quickly though that Chinese food in China is actually a lot fattier and has more bones than Chinese food in America.
After dinner we headed back to our hotel and explored it a little bit. They actually had a pretty sweet pool in the basement of the building. It closed at a really early time though so we never got to going in there. We did get some massages in our hotel though. They weren’t as cheap as in Vietnam, but still not too bad. By this time it was pretty late and the massages put us all in a relaxed state so we just ended up hanging out in the room for a little bit before falling asleep. A lot of travel really wears you out and we planned on waking up early to meet with our interport lecturer early in the morning to go to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.