The Flight

The day of departure finally arrived, and after a night of agonising over the weight of our backpacks (it is surprisingly hard to keep a backpack down around 10 kilograms) we set off to Sydney Airport buzzing with anticipation. Our Singapore Airlines flight would take us first to Melbourne airport where we would pick up more passengers and then north to Kuala Lumpar for a transfer to a flight directly into Beijing.


There are many details of the flight that I cannot recall. What flight number did we board? What meals did they serve? Did I watch a movie? 

Ask me what I remember and the details come in flashes.

Leaning across the aisle to whisper to S "What the hell? Diverted to Adelaide because of fog? Are we going to miss our connecting flight?" S' reply; "I hope not."

Next we are sitting in the airport at Kuala Lumpar waiting for a new flight to take us to Hong Kong because we missed our connecting flight. Briefly we flash to an image of the blood draining from my face as I sit over a bowl of Won Ton; "I've swallowed my labret piercing!"

Three hours later I can recall a flight to Hong Kong. Volcanic Islands looming out of the smog, slowly becoming more numerous till they connect up into one giant island. Endless lines of container ships ploughing through the greenish water into the welcoming bosom of China's commercial harlot; Hong Kong harbour.

Waiting at Hong Kong for 2 hours for an internal flight to take us to Beijing.

Praying we do not die on the Air China flight to Beijing. At this point, there was a concerned conversation heard between the only two westerners on the plane. "We were meant to get there at 4:30 in the afternoon. It's now 10 in the evening. Will we even be able to check into our hotel?"  The whispered reply. "I don't know. We will just have to find out when we get there."

"If we get there."

When we finally touched down in Beijing it was an immense relief. We made our way through a practically deserted airport and slipped through customs with almost too much ease.

"I think we are going to make it S. Your constant reminders of our impending doom may be unfounded."

"I wouldn't count on it Sarge!"

S and I managed to to find another adventurer looking for a taxi into the city so we all bundled on board and gave a command that we hoped the taxi driver could understand. He was able to decipher our pidgin Mandarin and in no time we found ourselves hurtling towards the heart of modern China along wide express ways surrounded by a surprising amount of nothing, nothing apart from the smog.

At this point I should point out that the only instructions we had for finding our hotel was a vague street address and the description of the giant neon sign above the hotel. Just look for the neon sign and you will be fine we were told. With that in mind I shall return to the narrative.

Our acquaintance turned out to be a nice chap who was planning to backpack around the major cities of China for a few weeks before heading back home. A commendable enterprise both S and I agreed. We however, had no illusions as to our ability to self navigate this vast non-English speaking country and still see and experience everything we would want to within those week. We wanted to experience the real China, the part of China that did not know tourists as a reliable source of income, and through the Intrepid tour was the only way we would achieve this.

Setting down at the YHA we bid our temporary travel companion good luck and set out in the direction of our hotel along deserted unlit streets. S was sure he could pick the way to our hotel based on our printed map so handing over responsibility for our direction to him I cast my eyes around the sleeping city.

What struck me first was the stillness. We were in the middle of one of China's biggest cities and there were very little city noise. The second thing was the size of the buildings. Having not visited America yet I was unfamiliar with arhcitecture that was designed to make the inhabitants feel special. Giant towering buildings looming towards each other over broad streets, or at least, the buildings we could see along the main boulevard. A walk of five minutes would find us down close, dark alleyways amongst two storey crumbling houses, dodging cracked egg shells, old rice and rotting cabbage that had been cast on the road side for overnight garbage collection.

I digress though, for I have not revealed why we found ourselves down a dark alley, laden with our backpacks being followed by a man on a scooter who, for all we knew, was waiting to mug us and leave us gasping through slit throats in the refuse of last nights dinner.

We were to find out the next day that in Beijing, neon signs and other external lights were turned off after 11 at night to conserve electricity, and so, as we stumbled though the dark streets, we missed our neon sign for the hotel. Fearing ourselves lost we looked around for help. A lone man on a scooter with a little cart attached to the back puttered past us so we braved our lack of Mandarin to try and gain directions. After a moments thought he, realising his English was probably worse than our Mandarin, gestured for us to get into the back of his scooter cart. "We'll never fit in there!" S exclaimed. Hurriedly S tried to indicate that we just needed the general direction pointed out and after a brief pause, the gentleman  gestured down a dark alley, away from the main street. Oh great, I thought, we've been here for less than two hours and we are already being ushered into dark alleys by the locals. I looked at S. We were both tired and at the end of our respective tethers.

"Let's just do it" He said.

I looked down the alley. It was not only dark, but narrow with rotting vegetable matter thrown across the road.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes."

We started down the alley, now feeling like we were making a hideous mistake. To make it worse, the man on the scooter started to putt down the alley after us, keeping a discrete distance.

"Oh Shit." One of us said. Possibly both of us at this stage as  the situation became a little stressful on top of the 16 hours of travelling.

To our relief, we came to the end of the alley unmolested to find ourselves standing in front of our hotel. Relief flooded through us and, seeing that we had found our quarry, the gentleman on the scooter cheerfully waved us good night and putted on down another alley.

I do not recall anything else after this point, but as I am quite sure that I awoke the next morning in the hotel with both my kidneys so I am going to make the bold assumption that we had no more mishaps that night. I do recall upon gazing at the neon sign the following evening that it really was quite noticeable within the surroundings. A mighty shame it was of little use to us, but it did teach us our first lesson of China. It was surprisingly safe and the locals were actually nice. Lesson learned, and a hundred more to take. The next four weeks were going to be an experience unlike any other we had ever had.