CHINA - day 1 Manila to Beijing

Our trip was exciting from the very start! We had planned on leaving the house at 4:30am to catch our 7:15 flight, but the night before, Jim came home and said there was a city-wide curfew from midnight to 5am because of a standoff in a hotel in Makati with some senator who used to be a rebel leader. Hmmmm...things like that don't happen in St Paul, Minnesota! So, we caught a cab at 5am instead, which meant we got a little extra sleep (yea!) and we made it on time, no problem. We had breakfast at the airport and there were absolutely no complications getting through security and on the plane. What a great way to start the trip! Laura was pretty good on the 3 hour flight, though there was one tantrum and she didn't sleep at all, but we all survived pretty well. She didn't have her own seat on the flights from Manila into or out of China, but they did get her a seat on the flights inside China. And on this first flight, we luckily had an empty seat next to us.

The tour company picked us up at the airport, they were very easy to find and very efficient. We met some nice people, including a Spanish couple that we enjoyed very much. His name is Jesus, but I can't remember hers. He really like Laura, but she was pretty shy with him. They ended up sharing a Gazpacho and a Sangria recipe with us that I'm excited to try. He didn't speak too much english, so we even got to try out our Spanish a little. We thought it was funny that we Americans left the Philippines to go to China to meet a Spanish couple. Here's a picture of all of us later on in the trip at the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an:

After the airport, we went to lunch. All the restaurants in Beijing were great. Later, in Xi'an, they weren't as exciting and by then, we were really tired of the exact same dishes for 2 meals every day. But in Beijing, we were still enjoying the novelty. In most of the restaurants, our little tour had our own rooms with the big, round, family style meals with a lazy susan in the middle. About 10 people per room and we filled 2 rooms. The food was usually similar to what you get in an American Chinese restaurant, which surprised us. I thought we weren't getting actually authentic food in America. But it was usually sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli, soup, a chicken dish, a whole fish (eyes and all!), and a few vegetable dishes. Nothing was too spicy until we got to Xi'an, where they eat spicier food.

After lunch, we headed to the Temple of Heaven, which was a temple built for the emperors to worship or reflect on heaven? I don't know, I have a terrible memory and Jim may remember exactly what it was used for better than I do. It was very pretty and had one main circular building and several nearby buildings that were used to prepare for the main ceremony. The best thing I remember about this tour was that we walked along this long walkway to get to the main structures and all along the walkway, there were tons of older Chinese people having soooo much fun! They were singing, dancing, playing cards, playing a version of hacky-sack, and just generally having a blast. The guide said that retired people come here to socialize and tourists enjoy it too. Jim and I decided we were going to come here when we are old since this looked much much better than sitting in a nursing home. Here's a quick video of one of the dances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XtAqqZu5Ys

Here's a family picture at the Temple and a full picture of the whole temple. Most of the pictures at sites will show Laura as a bundle of coats and blankets. That's because it was very cold and she pretty much only napped when she was in the mei tai and I was walking around. And we didn't really have too many warm clothes, so we just layered all our clothes every day and Laura and I kept each other warm. As a result of all this though, we don't have too much proof that Laura was there. Just little bundles of blankets or coats in the pictures:

I think after this we had to wait in the bus for a while because there were more people that were going to join us on the trip, but their plane was running late. Then we went to dinner. After dinner, we went to a Kung Fu play at a theater. Sounds strange, but it was really great. It was a legend about a boy learning Kung Fu. Laura actually sat through the entire show and really enjoyed it! She was very quiet, didn't sleep and watched the whole thing - 1 1/2 hours! She and I quietly talked about what was going on on stage. Luckily, it was a very exciting and interesting show with lots of jumping, dancing and music. At a couple of points, they would have the theater pretty dark, and then turn on the lights suddenly and there were kung fu masters standing right next to they aisles (we were on the aisle) and it made me jump sky high, but Laura didn't cry or even act scared. I couldn't believe it. Anyway, there was an older Kung Fu teacher in the show that she kept calling "Papa" (her name for Jim's dad) and he wore a red robe, so she kept talking about "Papa in the red dress". Thought that was pretty funny. And there were several little boys in the show who could do amazing acrobatics, so she really liked watching them, too.

On the way home, we saw signs for IKEA and Walmart, so I guess we weren't too far out of our element! Most of the signs in Beijing were in Chinese characters and English. But in Xian, there were very very few signs in English. We also saw a famous building under construction that Jim had heard of, but didn't know the name. It will be very distinguishable when it is built. Both towers are leaning and will be joined by the cantilevers. Here's a picture:

After the show, we headed home to the hotel. In both hotels, we were able to make Laura a little tent for her Pack n Play in between the layers of the curtains. It worked great and she slept pretty well most nights. Toward the end of the trip, she and I caught a cold, so the last 2 nights, we were up with her most of the night to keep her head elevated so her drainage wouldn't keep her awake. Here's a picture of her "tent".

By the way, both hotels were great. The rooms were beautiful and very clean, as nice or nicer than any hotel we've stayed at in the states. There was complementary breakfast every morning and it wasn't just stale bagels and cereal. It was a beautiful, huge buffet with every imaginable american breakfast food, plus asian breakfast foods. Eggs, bacon, sausage, french toast, pancakes, cereal, fruit, juices, noodles, omelet bars, breads, etc..... I learned to eat a huge breakfast since I started loosing interest in the lunches and dinners by the end of the trip. And Laura really enjoyed the bathtub, which was really deep, so she could almost go swimming. Jim and I enjoyed the unlimited hot water since our apartment in Manila just has a small water heater that fits under the bathroom sink and that lasts just long enough to wash and rinse everything if you really hurry. No dilly-dallying around.

One more thing about the hotel and china - they really didn't speak English as well as they do in the Philippines. I called housekeeping to try and get another blanket, but the lady in housekeeping didn't understand the word blanket. We definitely would have had to learn Chinese better if we had gone without a tour or stayed much longer. As it was, we just learned "thank you" and "hello". Not that I expect everyone in the world to speak English, it was just a surprise. We've been a little disappointed at how little Tagalog we have had to learn in Manila.