The Peoples Republic of China

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Woke up to our last morning in korea, packed up and immediately headed to the airport, we wanted ample time to deal with mass transit to the airport and to deal with customs.

the ride to the airport took us outisde the city during the daylight. the train went through the countryside, and we road through these big mud flat areas, that i think may have been flood plains, but without proper internet here in china, i cant look it up now. (ths is a later edit, somehow i am able to use google products right now, so here you are- they are indeed mudflats)

the seoul airport is HUGE, probably the biggest airport i have ever been in. ticketing was easy, security was a little long, i think i am used to getting priority with military, so maybe it wasnt that bad to a normal american traveller.

after security we still had a little over an hour before our flight and we made haste to one of the executive lounges that we have access to with the super-swanky credit card we got.

the attendant began checking us in, and then realized our gate was in the other terminal, and they had a lounge over there. cause incheon needs like 6 premium lounges. so we headed to the international terminal and checked in.

it was pretty impressive, ive never been in one, there were a bunch of big comfortable chairs, watching the kind of things businessmen watch on TV; financial news and golf. and then behind that was the whole reason we got the fancy-pants card; the buffet.

there was food, and we did our best to eat our monies worth (we didnt pay anything to get in here). they had a salad bar, and wine and liquor and a beer tap (that was unfortunately unoperable at the time), those were our favorite parts. we havent had a big leafy salad since we got to Asia, and of course free booze is awesome.

other food included some chips and crackers and pretzels and cheese, a few steam tables of fried rice and stir fry like things, some sammitches and instant noodles. we ate atleast one of everything, and a bunch of some things.

after probably embarrasing ourselves clearing 10 or so plates, we rolled to our gate, and pretty much right on the plane.

i immediately fell asleep.

woke up for the snack, and went back to sleep.

and woke up to land, unfortunately it was near dark, and between the weather and the pollution (ill get to that in a second) couldnt see anything.

Beijing airport is also really big, got through immigration without a problem, and went to change money and hop the train.

Laura checked in with what appeared to be an information desk, while i went to a currency exchange.

I wanted to turn over all my leftover korean won into chinese yuan. after trying to figure out the rates, in USD, and it turned out they were going to charge me 60USD to change 170USD worth of monies, so i walked away. and now i have like 30USD, 500JPY, 152,000KRW, and some odd few hundred CNY in my pocket.

Simultaneously, Laura was struggling with this “information” she was trying to confirm how to get to our hostel, and the lady behind the desk said “oh, that is very far away, we have a car that will take you, 500 RMB, very easy” no thanks. turns out this was not an information booth, it was a tour agency.

so welcome to the Peoples Republic of China.

We found the real, government sponsored inforation kiosk, and they were VERY helpful. They not only wrote out the directions in english and mandarin on how to get to our hostel, the agent called the hostel to see which was the easiest way of getting there. She told us the hutong (ill get to that in a second too) is closed, so we have to ask staff to get in. We took this to mean it was sort of a gated community, this was not the case.

the trains were too easy, between the english and our growing ability to recognize script completely alien to our own we got to the station within walking distance of our hostel.

emerging from the underground, deep into Beijing was quite the shock. First thing we noticed was the haze. Between the fall wet weather, and quite literally the pollution, there was a pall over accross the city. i say city, but i mean the neighborhood because we really couldnt see more than 500m away. also people, everywhere, and not all the high fashion young people of Tokyo or Seoul, the kind of people that get dirty for a living, the kind of people that live kinda dirty.

not unsafe at all, just less upscale than the Japan and Korea that we saw.

we basically made it to our hutong. hutongs are throwback neighborhoods, they were the ubiquitious housing/commercial areas of china up until the the 1950s and 1960s. they are tiny alleys and walkways, i mean tinier than the ones i have described in japan. some of what we saw could fit only 2 people shoulder to shoulder. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong ) unfortunately, we didnt know that we had found our hutong and walked around a little more.

we got to the entrance of what we believed to be our hutong, but the road was blocked by construction, we asked a guy that appeared very official, i think he was private security for something. he was very nice, and between gestures and smartphone translation applications he told us, that we were indeed in the right place, but we cannot go there because of the construction, and ponted accross the street at the construction.

so we attempted to get in from a different angle, walking around this neighborhood we saw all kinds of wild shit. people everywhere, eating food from the stalls, scooters and tuk-tuks speeding through the roads, and sidewalk and out of other hutongs. at one point we cought a glimpse in a room that was full of cops on break, or shamming, which was cool, until you finished the glance into the room, and saw a micky-mouse mascot head.

welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

we walked more, past a very heavly secured building with either military, or VERY well equipped private security, a myriad of restaurants and just closing shops, and hundreds of makeshift scooters and carts carrying all manner of things.

finally we resolved to just go into the construction area. trying to tell the one guy at the gate we had a hostel in there, he let us in.

the street was dirt, i dont know if it has always been dirt and is only now getting paved, or if it was paved and is being redone, but it is dirt. and it is covered, there is scaffolding built up, making a very long tunnel. The shops on either side are all closed because no one is coming down these streets, and it is impossible to see. some spots were very dark, where shadows of piles of dirt and bricks and refuse blocked the blinding light of construction lamps.

we turned off the main hutong street onto a much smaller one walking back and forth and back again, circling around and not finding the place. finally we stopped in a ricewine shop and more very friendly Beijingians helped us out, giving us the final hint to get us home.

As we tried to open the door and get INTO the lobby, i heard a clatter behind me, Laura knocked on the door while i peeked around the corner, and suddenly a shoe came flying over the wall of the hutong street, and landed on a bicycle leaning against the far huntong street wall.

What the fuck.

Welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

getting into the hostel, they expected us to pay in cash, but we didnt pull enough cash, so they let us just pay later.

we got to our room, the bed was great, and we had our own bathroom, so it was really all we needed physically, but digitally it was lacking. we couldnt do anything, no email checks, no searches, no blogs, no maps, nothing.

welcome to the Peoples Republic of China

we went to the lobby to find dinner, the internet worked a little better here, we decided on a hot pot place.

so we ventured back out, there were fewer people out and about but it wasnt a ghost town. we went to dinner, turns out it was halal, and all the meat we had was lamb. it was ok, like most hot pots, it got better the more stuff you threw in there over time

Stopped to grab some waters from a corner store on the way home, because I am not sure i trust the tap here…

When we got home it dawned on us that google, and everything therein is blocked here in china. No gmail, no google docs, no blog, no google search, no youtube, no googlemaps.

with that in mind, we started using bing, and apple maps, and contemplated leaving the hostel the next day.

We jumped into the deepend, and we didnt know how to swim. up to this point in the trip, we had been planning at most 24hrs in advance what we were doing, we had hotels and flights already booked, but what we were doing when we got there was researched and booked last minute. without our prime search source, and without email, booking was going to be near impossible.

we needed a concierge.

Despite the hostels fantastic bed, we were pretty sure we were going to move to a new hotel in the morning.