First trip to China, I have a few China Diaries

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007


China Diaries

Well I'm here in Beijing, China. It's my first trip to China and I'm quite excited to be here though it's another asian country. I flew with a group of Drifters and other models from LAX, some that have never flown out of the country before and it clearly showed. It was a long haul on Korean Air, the flight wasn't too bad. It's been alllloooonnng time since I've flown economy and I must say that Korean Air's economy class is by far the best! If anyone ever decides to fly overseas, I recommend Korean Air.

I showed up to LAX not really knowing anyone I was travelling with which is fine considering I've travelled alot on my own before. Everyone is pretty cool, but like I said there are a couple of younger people who have never flown out of country and there is just etiquette that's commone sense when you're embracing in other cultures and a sense of respect to other travellers. There were guys travelling with us that were loud, obnoxious, rude, throwing things...etc....They think they were being funny, but it got to a point where stuff was hitting other people, and I had enough of it so I voiced my opinion to one in particular, let it be heard, and put him in his place. Call me a bitch, but when you're embarrassing others, hitting others, and being so loud you can't hear yourself breathe. Shortly after, he decided to behave himself.

After 24 hours of flying, we arrived into Beijing via a 4 hour layover in S. Korea's Icheon airport. The weather condition is poor, it's muggy, gloomy, foggy....similar to a marine layer that just won't go away. We sat around at the airport for 45 minutes before we headed out, but before that, we had to take loads of photos with spectators as WDS is becoming quite popular over here. After 24 hours of travelling and lack of sleep, we all didn't look too keen on having our photo op. After that, we piled into the bus loaded up our bags and headed to the hotel. Originally, we were going to take 2 shuttles to the hotel, but ended up being one. So we piled 27 people into a short bus and piled 95% of our luggage ontop of us, we were sardines. Luckily, it was a short trip to the hotel, because if it was any longer, we would probably start throwing blows at one another and I know the first person I would give a right hook to, the obnoxious one.

Once we arrived, we had 30 minutes to freshen up before we had a press conference with local media and the motorsports chairman, then it was off to a buffet dinner. I sat with most of the other models which is majority of their first time here as well as mine. There are a couple girls from last year but for the most part, we were a new batch. All the girls are pleasantly nice and were really excited to be here. Our buffet was typcial Chinese, some stuff looks and is eatable, other stuff such as chicken heads aren't so appealing. We all ate our meals and the chairman was going around taking shots of this Chinese version of sake. Mind you the chairman is a woman, the Chinese sake is 80% proof and she went to every table and threw one back. She's a champ because I took one and I was buzzing off ONE! After dinner, my roommate and I went back to our room, connected to the internet and pretty much called it a night. I was beat from travelling, some of the crew planned on going out to the clubs but I wasn't feeling it. Now it's November 8th, very early in the morning and we have a day planned to roam about the city doing god knows what. This is the first installment of my dairies here........more to come soon.

Des

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Photos

Hotel
The view from our room.

Taxi's
They are everywhere.

Forbidden City behind me
I walked around by myself and made some Chinese friends along the way to take my photo. :-)