| Where to start, so the trip started from Denver, where temperature was around 40 something degrees, not too bad. Flight to Seattle was not too bad, busy plane as always. The flight from Seattle to Beijing was alright, had an aisle seat, and it was next to a windows seat. The girl that sit next to me seemed terrified of me. Long 11 hour flight, but got through without any issues. When getting into Beijing, had a layover of 16 hour layover. Hainan airlines offered a free hotel for the night, so had to try and find the desk to follow up on it. The directions I had weren't too clear, and was difficult to find someone that spoke well enough english to get help. I managed to find the counter, and about 10 minutes later, they took me and about 10 other folks(none spoke english), about 35-40 minutes away to some hotel that was really nice. One of the pictures was from up high from the hotel room. The pollution index was super high, so I found it a little sketchy for breathing, but not enough I couldn't sleep. Was the first place i had a chance to practice my chinese, as the hotel clerks really didn't speak engligh, but I was able to corner the driver to find out how to get back. He told me he didn't speak english, and then when I pushed the question in chinese, he was able to finish it and told me they would pick us up in the morning, no problem. Was able to get back in the morning, and get the flight over to Sanya. The air was so bad in the morning, could barely see the sun in true color, was a really ugly reddish color. |
| Arriving in Sanya on time, things were good. I was able to get my bag from the baggage claim, and found there was open/available wifi there. The temperature was a nice 75 degrees, and sunny outside. The airport had all doors(garage style) open, so air was flowing in, was great. While getting my bag, got a wechat from the girlfriend, who told me she had not left her home city yet still(she was supposed to arrive 15 minutes after I did). I tried to walk down to find a place to eat, since I got there at the end of the lunch hour, around 12:30'ish. I found a KFC, and some other places, but also found no one really spoke english anywhere. I tried to wait around at the KFC, but like every place around, they all had "free" wifi, but they required a chinese phone number in order to use it.... You had to provide a chinese phone number for them to text you the passcode to make the connection. Since I didn't have a chinese phone, I could not make use of the wifi sitting at one of the airport restaurants. I walked back up to baggage claim to recheck with the girlfriend who said she had still not left yet, and planes were delayed due to bad weather. I looked really terrible around the baggage claim area, as I had to get my laptop out and connect with a headset, since my phone's wechat could not connect to have a phone conversation. While doing that, cab drivers came over who could speak english and wanted to give me a ride. I told them I was waiting for girlfriend to get there, and I wasn't going anywhere for a while. When the girlfriend told me she was finally leaving and on her way.. Around 2 oclock, I went back to KFC to try and order something to eat. I waited until there was no one in a line, and I went up and tried to order a #2 from the menu. The woman behind the counter could not understand anything I was saying, we were both feeling awkward. After a few seconds, she got her manager, which could speak a tiny bit of english, was able to make out my #2 order I wanted, but the side request was not correct, but I'll take what I could get. KFC in China is very spicy, and grilled. China KFC does not have any deep fried chicken, it's all grilled. |
| After finishing up what I could from my meal, since I didn't have interent, just played computer games a bit waiting for time to pass. Around 4 in the afternoon, I made my way back to baggage claim, to which the taxi drivers hit me up again for ride, which I said I was still waiting. I was finally able to find a seat nearby the baggage claim, and continued to hang out there waiting for girlfriend to arrive. The next hotel shuttle was going to be there at 5, and would not be back until 7. Girlfriend said she landed at 4:45.... She got to baggabe claim area a few minutes later. At 5:01, she was able to get her bag. However, we missed the shuttle, so we would have to wait. We started making our way to the restaurant area to go wait. When we started walking, the taxi drivers asked her about needing a ride, to which she said no... We almost got to the restaurant area, when a guy walking by asked her something, to which she asked 2 questions(I was able to understand one of them), and then she turned us around and said lets go. We ended up taking a taxi(uber) ride for about $20, which wasn't bad. When we got to the hotel, I had asked what happened, and the girlfriend said that the cost to get to the hotel should be around 150(rmb, $25 US), and the first drivers were asking 250($48). This driver said 130($22) dollars, so it was worth it. |
| The driver to the hotel was about 45 minutes, and went through several tunnels, and very green areas. Kind of felt like driving up to Santa Cruz from San Jose in California, just not so many up and down hills. We arrived at the hotel, which was a 9 floor hotel, 5 minute walk from the beach, and had 3 inside restaurants. I thought I had gotten us a room facing the beach, so was excited to get to the room. Once we checked in at the front desk, the bellboy(not sure what else to call them), took our luggage, and walked us to our room. The checkin floor was on the second floor, so when he walked us, he took us over to the elevator, and then picked the 1st floor... I was thinking how could you see the ocean form the 1st floor, I was thinking got a bum deal. We got to the room on the 1st floor, and it looked amazing on the inside. I soon came to realize that the kind of room I had gotten was one that had it's own lagoon pool attached to it. That worked, I was not expecting that, but it was great to have your own personal pool. |
| So the first day, we had issue with the room being a little too warm( was around 75-77 degrees). We tried to turn the AC down to try and cool it down, but nothing was happening. Girlfriend called down to have someon come and look at it. So the tech person comes in, looks for a few minutes, and then tells us that the doors out to the pool need to be kept closed, or the AC will not come on, and then he left. Since we had been relaxing in the room for almost an hour with the doors closed, we weren't convinced that was the problem. The tech had said it should start cooling down in about 30 minutes, but of course, nothing changed. We called back again to have them send someone else. That someone else showed up, spent about 15 minutes on the AC, then turned something on, and then said noticed a temperature difference was happening. Later I learned that the tech said the freon valve was turned off. He left, and over the course of the rest of the day, the room cooled 1 degree per day.. It was acceptable, and when we were too hot, we jumped in the pool for a few minutes to cool down, which worked out great. |
| I really enjoyed the breakfast buffet, which came with the hotel. However, we liked sleeping in, so we had to set an alarm for 9:30 in the morning, so we didn't miss it. We usually got to the restaurant by 10, and was able to get a full breakfast in before 10:30 when the restaurant shut down getting ready for lunch. The first day, we went for breakfast, and came back to the room, and they had already made it up. The room had a service light to let the cleaners know to clean the room. However, on the second day, we came back and the room was not clean. We went out to hang out at the pool for an hour, and checked, and room was still not cleaned. Girlfriend called to ask to get the room clean. We checked 45 minutes later, and the room was still not cleaned. The girlfriend again called back a little more agitated, and told them she is requesting they clean the room every day at 10:00. To my surprise, the rest of the week(5 more days), the room was always cleaned spotless when we got back from breakfast. One of the managers even called to followup to make sure we were happy, and to send us a free fruit bowl. Girlfriend likes to speak her mind and rock it! |
| Relaxing at the pool was amazing, was my favorite thing about this trip. I loved having our own lounge couches, and just relaxing out there day and night, since average temperature was around the 70's both day and night, and during the day, had a little bit of clouds, which kept it from getting too hot. Sitting out on the patio, had palm trees, nice breezes, and the pool had water running off the sides, which made for a nice soft sounding waterfall sound. Was able to have drinks, and could do whatever I want. Sadly, I was enjoying watching video's on youtube, and reading articles. Sadly, China government blocks sites like google.com, youtube, facebook, and other social media sites that aren't China made. In order to get around it, I had to log into the office, and then use the office to get to these sites to use them.. When I did this, people in the office saw I was online, and shocked I wasn't in China on vacation, to which I confessed I was in China, but not really working. Either way, there were times I would watch something, and other times, I would just crash out being so comfortable on the chairs. |
| We walked out to the beach, which was only a 5-10 minute walk, and the entire walk was paved with greenery, and nice pathways. Even the main pool for the hotel reached out towards the beach area. Wehn we walked out there, looked like they were planning a concert or something, as they had a stage being setup, and a bunch of chairs for it. The beach sand was awesome, but the water was not very clear(wasn't dirty either), but the sand and tide, was just turning the water a muddy brown. They had jetski's on the beach, and I might have rented one, but the water just didn't look inviting enough to try it. You could rent segways or interesting bicycle devices if you wanted to get out to the beach in style and back. Towards the end of our stay, there was an awesome fireworks show that was going off at the beach we were able to watch from the hotel(had to jump up to the top floow and watch). |
| Arriving in Chongqing, I recognize the small of spice in the air, the same as last visit. The weather was alays gloomy/rainy'ish, which really made me miss Sanya and that warm/comfortable blue sky and air. First night we arrived, we were too lazy to go out for dinner, so we ended up ordering down for room service(I think first time I have ever done that). Had a nice club sandwich, and a chocolate shake. I wasn't sure about tipping or not, and I still feel like maybe I was supposed too, as the person did a nice job of setting up the table, put the plates on the table, and had us ready to go. The girlfriend wasn't sure, but I think maybe it was. The pains of learning a culture... lol Of course, the breakfast at the hotel wasn't as great as the breakfast in Sanya either, but was still good. |
| We did manage to get a massage day in, which again, was a little uncomfortable for me, as everyone in the room spoke chinese except for me(well not enough to keep up), and when I was asked very simple questions in Chinese I could normally answer, for some reason, my mind completely went blank. The massage guy that was working on me had a hard time, since he wasn't very tall, and had a hard time mssaging areas where I was tense, as he tried to put all his weight on, and still wasn't enough. He found, as I knew, my feet were extremely sensitive, and everytime he worked on them, my feet would always shake. Everytime he triggered my feet, we would both crack up, was quite funny. |
| The trip back was a little hectic. Leaving Chongqing, the bus that took us out to the airplace took about 30 minutes to get us there. Then took another 20 minutes or so to taxi to the main run ways to take off. We ended up leaving an hour late. Arriving into SHanghai was an hour late, and only left me an hour and 20 minutes to get to my flight to Seattle. I couldn't find english speaking folks again, but was able to track someone who pointed out to me I had to get to Terminal 2, and I was in Terminal 1. So I had to hike it across the entire airport. While I was hiking, my large suitcase had a wheel start busting up on it.. Grrrrrrrr, I manage to drag myself to Terminal 2 finally, found the checkin line, which had about 30-40 folks in front of it. Took about 40 minutes to get through to get checked in... Took another 40 minutes to get through customs, and then another 20-25 minutes to get through security screening. Once getting through everything, I thought I had about 15 minutes left or so, so was debating whether to get something to eat, since I hadn't eaten yet, and left Chongqing at 8 in the morning. I decided to eat after I got to the gate. Good thing, as when I got to the gate, they were already boarding, and there was no one left waiting in line to get on the plane. I quickly got on the plane about 5-10 minutes before they closed the door. The flight was awesome, I was again in an aisle seet, but this time, there were 3 seets, and no one was in the middle seet. There was a very friendly girl sitting in the window seat, so the flight back was pretty comfortable. And of course, got to Seattle an hour hear, and had a 6 hour layover waiting for flight to Denver... Grrrrrrr Tried to sleep, but found it almost impossible. And then, when arriving in Denver, temperature was 7 degrees, and all I had was my leather coat, and a broken suitcase wheel, and was parked out as far away from the airport as possible... |
| Was still an awesome trip!!!
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