{"id":4485,"date":"2017-08-12T16:58:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-12T23:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=4485"},"modified":"2017-08-12T17:05:36","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T00:05:36","slug":"trip-to-beijing-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=4485","title":{"rendered":"Trip To Beijing, China"},"content":{"rendered":"

August 10, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have had a horrible time with trips lately.<\/p>\n

I get all excited, tell people that I’m going, to only have something out of my control cancel the trip.<\/p>\n

As I said previously, I will no longer be announcing my trips.<\/p>\n

I will take it from the old Soviet space missions – report on things after they’re already done, and edit accordingly.<\/p>\n

So, I’m taking a mini-vacation and decided that my journey will be starting and ending in Beijing, China.<\/p>\n

Of course, to compensate for getting scammed all the time, I have to be a frugal as possible in other parts of my life.<\/p>\n

So, instead of paying for a direct flight to Beijing from LAX, I cut my travel costs in half by taking a direct flight from LAX, past Beijing to Changsha and then take another two hour flight back and land in Beijing.<\/p>\n

Thursday night, Professional Debriefer Paul stayed sober enough to give me a ride to the airport; I thank him for his sacrifice.<\/p>\n

Traffic to LAX was great, until we got to the airport – it was nightmare traffic from hell.<\/p>\n

It was so bad, PDP dropped me off at the arrival level.<\/p>\n

I checked in with no problems and was even lead to the “family security line” where I didn’t have to remove my shoes or laptop from my bag and avoided the porno scanner and gate massage.<\/p>\n

The flight was an hour late and I asked the counter person if I would have enough time to transfer to my flight to Beijing – I would have one hour.<\/p>\n

“Oh, no problem,” I was told.<\/p>\n

My flight was rescheduled to leave at 2:40 am, so I ordered six beers at the bar before they closed at 1 am.<\/p>\n

We took off; I had an isle seat next to a very nice Chinese couple.<\/p>\n

I was tired… I mean really tired… travel anxiety, the airport, the 12 beers I had before I left… I just fell asleep.<\/p>\n

I woke up six hours later and looked at how much longer we have to fly; only eight more hours!<\/p>\n

\"Darkness<\/p>\n

The Sun was nowhere to be seen; it actually only came up during the last hour of the 14 hour flight.<\/p>\n

\"All
\nAll the American movies have Chinese subtitles on Hainan Airlines.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Flight<\/p>\n

We landed actually right on time, even though we were an hour late in taking off.<\/p>\n

It seemed like it took forever to get my luggage, and get through customs.<\/p>\n

The customs agent was grilling me on why I was there and why I have a Russian visa that expired and I had never gone to Russia.<\/p>\n

“My trip got cancelled, that’s why I came here,” I said.<\/p>\n

By the time I actually got my domestic boarding pass for the next flight, I had 30 minutes before boarding and waiting in the security line I was thinking, “Fuck! I’m gonna miss my flight!”<\/p>\n

I didn’t even have time to exchange my money into Chinese Won.<\/p>\n

I got there right when the flight was to board…<\/p>\n

\"Beijung<\/p>\n

Our flight was delayed, and I didn’t know why.<\/p>\n

I met a fellow passenger who needed a connecting flight from Beijing.<\/p>\n

He said, “The Beijing airport sucks; I try and avoid it at all costs. I’m going to miss my flight.”<\/p>\n

\"Stuck<\/p>\n

After two hours, an announcement was made in Chinese over the PA, and then 90% of the passengers left the waiting area.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

I asked what was going on to the lady at the desk, but she spoke no English.<\/p>\n

\"Trapped<\/p>\n

After some time, they brought out an English speaker who said that “All flights have been delayed due to thunderstorms and wind in Beijing; we have shipped our guests to a hotel until the flight will resume.”<\/p>\n

Really?<\/p>\n

I tried to order a beer at the noodle bar, but they didn’t take American money!<\/p>\n

This was the first time that I’ve ever been to a country where they don’t take American money!<\/p>\n

After four hours, and nobody was back in the terminal, I decided to make a mad dash to the international terminal and exchange my money for RMB.<\/p>\n

So, now I can have a few beers and eat!<\/p>\n

\"\u9e21\u80da\uff0c\u9762\u6761\u70ed\u5564\u9152\"
\n\u9e21\u80da\uff0c\u9762\u6761\u70ed\u5564\u9152<\/p>\n

\"Me
\nThey have Budweiser, The King Of Beers, but it has the old pull tabs that get littered everywhere.<\/p>\n

Seven hours late, we finally were given the all clear to board the plane to Beijing. <\/p>\n

We were told, “This will be a bumpy ride, so be prepared.”<\/p>\n

And yes, it was.<\/p>\n

I was sound asleep on the flight when I was awoken by people screaming and noticed that my stomach was in my throat – we were weightless for a few seconds before the plane stabilized and then shook more.<\/p>\n

We landed in Beijing Friday night.<\/p>\n

\"The
\nFor some strange reason, we landed way the hell outside the terminal and were bused to pick up our luggage.<\/em><\/p>\n

This should be an interesting trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August 10, 2017 I have had a horrible time with trips lately. I get all excited, tell people that I’m going, to only have something out of my control cancel the trip. As I said previously, I will no longer be announcing my trips. I will take it from the old Soviet space missions – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,9,31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4485"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4505,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4485\/revisions\/4505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}