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Published: July 13th 2007
Well, I am here. Got some great photos and video already, but in this internet cafe the computers are very slow and my laptop battery is about to run out, so I only got a couple of quick things to share.
Beijing was smoggy flying in. Made L.A. look like the wild blue yonder. Some coolie kid that would not take no for an answer lead me to my connecting flight then tried to "extract" some bogus charge because my "bags were too heavy" and tried to pretend that he represented the airline and I had to pay him 400 yuan (about $50) to be square.... gave him $20 instead because he did shave about 15 minutes off my transfer time, and all I wanted to do by this point was get my butt to Dalian... 13 hours on the plane from Chicago had made it pretty numb, let me tell you...
I arrived last night in Dalian at about 6:30 pm, and my friend Miao was waiting at the airport for me. We took a taxi to our hotel (which is really cool) and checked in. I had 4 pieces of luggage with me, and Miao had
one, but hers was stashed at a little store by the bus station. So after unpacking my things a little, we retrieved her bag and went to the ATM where I tested my plastic. 2 out of 3 worked fine, and today I looked at my accounts online and I was only charged a $2.50 fee for withdrawing dough. Go VISA, boo mastercard... which means my plan of using my paypal plastic for most of my ATM w/d is out of the question now... oh well..
After getting some Chinese money Miao took me to a "bbq" restaurant. It was really amazing. We had great food, about 3 courses, I had meat and rice, and she had sushi, and she treated... the spread was great, but neither one of us ate much and since we didn't have a fridge in our room we couldn't take it with us... but here is the kicker, the ENTIRE fancy meal at a great restaurant was only 88 yuan, all-inclusive, which is about $13. Unreal... it was great...
Anyhow, today we got up bright and early for the free breakfast in our hotel (which I will describe in another blog) and hit
the post office so I could send a few things to my friend Jun in Taiyuan that I brought over to him. Let me just say that the experience at the Chinese post office was great. They got their postal system down...
We walked through a park on the way to the post office and saw about 300 septagenarians practicing some kind of tai-chi martial art with freaking broadswords! Also, they were playing hacky-sack with a shuttlecock and doing martial arts with fans and stuff.... it was cool.
Steve
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Thems ain't nothin'
I could totally take some of those old ladies in the video.