Carl and I have not travelled together for a while. We were both excited about the trip. We called this trip as our "little honeymoon". Since we used my aeroplan miles to get two free tickets to go to Beijing, we decided to go to Beijing one day earlier to the Taiwan's tour that we would join on June 8.
We were quite surprised to learn that our flight was full when we were checking in. I took Carl to China Air's lounge since I am an Elite member. I gotta admit that the lounge is better than Air Canada's one. Well... what's news then - Air Canada sucks!
I never used 台胞證 to board in China (I got a visitor visa by using Canadian passport when I went to Shanghai last time). I got really confused when I was going through customs - I did not know which line to line up - foreigners or Chinese. If I went with the Chinese line, that means Taiwan is part of China. But, I might be in trouble to enter if I went with the line for foreigners. In Shanghai, there was a special line for visitors from Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is not a case in Beijing. There were only two categories - Chinese passport holders and non-Chinese (foreigners). I told Carl that he should be in the non-Chinese line. I would meet him after the customs. However, the customs were in chaos - too many people. The officers were not quite efficient (Carl said, the officers in his line and beside his line were checking out blond girls who were in line. And the girls also smiled at them). It took us a long time to go through the customs. After all, I was worried too much - it didn't matter which line to line up....
I noticed the differences between Shanghai and Beijing immediately after I arrived at the Beijing Capital Airport. Compared to Beijing, Shanghai is more a service-oriented city, not only the hardware design but also people's mentality. We asked the girl at the information counter how to get to the city center. The answer we got from her was to call a number or to take a cab. That made me wonder - why does the airport need her to be at the information counter then? We finally learned that there was a speed train from the airport to the city center ($25RMB). But, the girl who sold me the tickets refused to answer my questions about direction. She only said - just look at the map to figure it out. These gave me some bad feeling about our "little honeymoon"....
The transportation from the airport to the city centre is actually quite convenient. We took the airport express train from the Terminal 3 to the 三元橋 station (about 20 minutes or so). Then, we took the line 10 to go to the 雙井 station, where our hotel is located (Beijing Subway Map). However, it took us quite a while to find our hotel (the map on the hotel website was not entirely correct).
Carl was quite impressed by the hotel as to the room and facilities (gym and pool). I booked a cheap hotel online for the 3-day stay after the tour. So, we decided to check out the hotel to see if we can bear to stay at the hotel. We did not know where the hotel is exactly. As such, we asked Leo who was the staff at the pool. Leo is a young fellow and very polite and shy. He was very helpful. I asked him to call the hotel directly to find out where it is. And he did. It turned out the hotel is just across the street of our fancy hotel. Hence, we went to check out the cheap hotel and decided to stay at the 富力萬麗酒店 for the whole stay of our little honeymoon - since Carl did not really like the cheap one.
After settling down the accommodation, now it comes with the problem of where to have dinner. My friend told me that I gotta try KFC in China if I ever had a chance. So, we decided to go to KFC to check it out. Hmmm.... all due to respect to my friend, we still prefer KFC in Taiwan. Fried Chicken is much better in Taiwan, so are the chicken sandwiches....
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