Day 8 - Back... to the future... unfortunately
Trip Start
Aug 08, 2006
1
10
14
Trip End
Aug 23, 2006
Beijing, China
Monday, August 21, 2006
Knock-knock-knock...
Knock-knock-knock...
I jump out of bed to get the door. There is a small chinese guy saying something I don't understand. But I'm guessing I know what he means: Our taxi is here waiting for us.
Rebecca, still half asleep suddenly blurts out: "What time is it? That guy said our taxi is here for us!"
Yeah..
Lijiang airport before it opens in the mornin
. I knew it.Good thing we packed the night before. We got changed as quickly as we could and did the last bit of packing/organization and haul all of our stuff down to the lobby. The cabby is happy to help and we strike off into the dead of night.
Walking through the dark streets of lijiang is a different experience. Immediately into a whole new route through town we've never been through before. And it was only one alley away from our hotel
Ride to airport, empty streets and dark countryside
Arrive at gate of airport and wait. Other taxi drivers sleeping in their cars. Nobody else is there yet.
At 6:30, the gate opens. The taxi driver takes us up to the front door of the airport, which is completely dark. The sliding door is wide open. A large flat panel TV is playing continuous commercials.
We wait.
Sitting in taxi outside closed airport
At 7:00, there is a flurry of activity. Dozens of chinese airport workers walking to and fro sillouetted by the non-stop commercial. No two are together. It was like some kind of silent ballet out of fantaisia or something. After a short period of time, the flourescent lights flicker on and the normal daily airport activities slowly start winding up. We eventually go in and realize we still have a long time before we need to be anywhere. We chill at a little table for a bit before Rebecca asks about local places to eat. She discovers that there are eateries at both ends of the parking lot. So we check our bags and flip a coin on which one to go to. We choose the little one on the right. It looks like a converted auto-shop, completely with corrugated steel roll-up door. We walk in to a stall and there is exactly one table inside and an empty glass case. The waitress tells us we can choose from 4 things: Fried rice, Naxi (the local dominant subculture) baba bread (which is served everywhere), white rice and something else I don't remember. We choose the first 2, kinda groaning since we're talkinga 7am breakfast here. A couple of stalls down it looked a little more established, so Rebecca walked down there and found they had a whole menu. So we just about walked out of the first place since she'd told us they all serve the same thing. When Rebecca confronted her, she said she had a full menu too but didn't present it because she didn't think we could read chinese (even though Rebecca greeted her with pretty fluent chinese)
Becca rests while Kirby writes
. I'm guessing that the 4 things she listed are the only things she could say in english.Anyway, Rebecca ordered some egg/tomato dish that she had a hankering for. Once it showed up it was like *yak* that looks horrible. She asked if I wanted to take a picture, but I didn't want to gross out anybody reading my writings. As for taste, it wasn't that bad. Actually, it was all pretty good. I still prefer the americanized pork fried rice, but this stuff was good. And the Naxi baba bread... Well, it was the best we'd had since we'd got to Lijiang. It was like a cross between a doughnut an naan bread. Crispy outside, chewy inside, very bready-tasting. It was actually a lot like an elephant ear without anything on it. Except those are gross (trust me, I've tried...) So I guess it wasn't anything like that except maybe the way it looked. They were yummy. All in all a very good breakfast. Which I feel a little bizarre admitting...
So we finally got on out plane, about 45 minutes to Kunming (the capital of the Yunnan province) and about 30 min layover, then another 3 hours back to Beijing. I will reiterate again that I hate flying. And as much as I hate flying, I hate landing about 19 times worse. It is a pretty rare occurance that I finish up a landing without being nauseous. So we land in Beijing, and not only am I fighting a nasea, but it's back the air-quality of an elephant's colon
Chinese breakfast, fried rice and babba
.Taxi to hotel
Indian food again
DVD place, placed order
Movie theater
headache!!
-must be carmonoxide in air
Bookstore
WiFi
Sit down to blog an entire days worth
Rebecca goes out to get tissues and shop for cd
Back to room and sleep
