Arrival

Hey guys,

As I said last post I was now on my way to China, I left a teary eyed Dragon at the airport departures and boarded a SAA plane for Beijing.

Now it needs to be said that I love flying but I find it supremely uncomfortable due to my height, I am 6 ft 2 inches, and so I can never get comfortable enough to sleep.
But, thanks to some quite liberal drinking that afternoon as well as some additional rum and coke and two sleeping pills, I managed to sleep almost all of the thirteen hour flight. Hallelujah!

I had already adjusted my external and internal clock before leaving Johannesburg and so I was quite happy when we landed in Beijing and it was six hours earlier than it should have been. I am quite fortunate in this regard and I don't suffer from jet lag. Yay me!

I was finally in China, I felt like the Rock for a second and then I started paying attention. Beijing international is a lovely airport, huge, with plenty of facilities and hardly anyone who speaks English. I was not to be daunted however and after making my way through customs without incident, I was on my way to find a train to Xi'an.


Now obviously I recommend to anyone who is traveling that they pre-book as much as possible, but since I had a standby flight I was not going to chance being late and wasting money. This meant that I had to pay more and when I got to the train station I had to wait for like 8 hours till the train left, sleeping in the train station is not fun. I felt very scared and tired and had nowhere to charge my phone so I couldn't talk to Dragon.


Nevertheless, I managed to make it mostly unmolested onto the train at 6am the next day. The only bad thing was I lost my jacket at some point in my walk around the train station. The train ride was smooth and took 5 hours, as I was admiring the Xi'an skyline on the way in, I was getting excited. I was about to see my best friend that I hadn't seen in a year or so, and all the plans were about to culminate in my successful move to another country!

I couldn't wait for the new experiences that were coming!
Stay tuned for the next installment
G