Day 1: Travelling to Beijing (28/09/09)

Suitcases packed.

Wallet emptied out of any useless cards (man do I have a lot of useless cards).

iPhone ready.

Let’s roll out!

I was considering leaving my iphone at home but then where would my only source of internet be? I was hoping to use some free interwebs at the airport or at the hotel but you’ll find out soon enough how that goes.

Got on our first flight, QF128, to HK. Flying business. It’s amazing how little staff travel costs. The cost of my flight (including airport tax) is probably less than a flight to Brisbane. Honestly, flying business is the way to go for long distance travel. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to handle economy seats on any flight longer than 5 hours. Tiny seats, no leg room, constant worry about touching people and annoying people behind me by tilting the seat, terrible food…the list goes on.

The flight to HK went smoothly, I naturally went straight for the inflight entertainment (which I later found out runs on Windows CE), ended up watching Terminator Salvation, 1/4 of the Proposal (it was so slow and boring), Star Trek (2nd time watching it and the awesomeness is still there) and Duplicity. I sat next to my brother, who surprisingly wasn’t as annoying as before. That kid’s been to more places than I have…quite depressing.

We landed at HK at around 6:30pm HK time, got our luggage, checked out and went for the next flight. Surprise fucking surprise, we “missed” the flight, not enough time to check in, travel to domestic terminal and then walk to the boarding gate. Plan A has failed. But not to worry, Plan B is still in tact, we purchased “open-tickets” so that means we can fly whatever flight that cooperates with Qantas as long as there are seats. Walked over to the check-in of our second flight and they told us it’s actually a combined service with another airline so they cannot accept our tickets.

GG.

Plan C?

That’s the only downside to buying extremely MW airline tickets, you’re put on standby and not guaranteed and seats.

At this time my bro was tripping out. First time that I’ve really seen him scared. He was asking dumb questions like “What if we become homeless?”.

Sad James

Thankfully (sorta…but not really), there was this tourism salesperson standing around and heard our “plea”. Walked over and offered us tickets, HK$2000 per ticket. I’m like thinking GTFO but my parents were actually considering.

After haggling here and there we managed to get the price down to HK$1650 a ticket. It probably is cheaper to buy these tickets than staying at a hotel next to the airport, it’s around $400AUD for the night for a single room. After buying our tickets, we ran for the boarding gate. Except we realised that the boarding gate is at a another terminal and you reach that terminal by train. I looked at the watch…it was 8:00pm, the flight leaves at 8:03pm and the train is in 1 minute. I bolted like a crazy asian for the rice truck as soon as I got off the train in an attempt to hold the door so the rest of my family can get on (I had the image of Home Alone 2 in my head where they’re all running for the door and get in just as it was about to close). After running to the gate there was a sea of people lining up to board the flight, apparently it’s been delayed.

When we finally got on the plane the first thing I noticed (apart from the fact that I was sitting 3rd row from the back, the small seats and the lack of legroom) was the aroma of urine. I sat down on my seat and my seatbelt was wet. FML.

The food was also bloody terrible.

Exhibit A.

Here’s also the difference in legroom.

Economy

Business.

We finally arrived at our hotel at around midnight. We stayed at Crowne Plaza, the first 5 star hotel that I’ve stayed at. Everything is all very nice and clean, and they also have a door man! The guy just stands there and presses the up/down button for the elevator.

Here are some pics of the room.

That’s about it for the day. Forbidden palace coming up!