In Beijing with Boaz

Declined the 'exiting breakfast' on offer, and wandered up to the coffee shop again instead. Gave up trying to ask for decaf - there's a limit to how genuine a Chinese coffee shop can be. It's western breakfast menu was spaghetti or pizza!

Wandered over to the People's Park after breakfast to while away some time. Lovely grass and gardens. Modern museum and concert hall in the middle of it all. Got back to the hostel, packed and decided to check my flight's status to find that it was now scheduled to be 75 mins earlier than advised. Well that changed the shape of the morning somewhat, as I was 2 hours from the airport. I hurriedly checked out, and disappeared into the subway. Got half way to the airport and transferred to the Maglev train - a magnetic levitation train that hits speeds of 430 km/hr. It only took 7 minutes to cover the remaining distance, but with buying tickets and going through security I'm not sure that it ended up being much faster.

Anyway, I made the flight which left on time - a China Eastern Airbus A320. It was meant to be a 2 hour flight. However, once we had taken off, the pilot told us that flight time was going to be 55 minutes, so I thought I'd misheard. But no, we duly landed in 55 minutes - the only domestic flight I've ever taken that's landed more than an hour early. The upshot was that I was now over 2 hours earlier than the time I advised my pickup, so I just sat and waited till he eventually showed up with my sign that he didn't even need to use.

Beijing has changed a lot. Instead of wall to wall bikes, it's now wall to wall cars, and they have that most ridiculous of regulations - a crawler limit on the Beijing Freeway! Even more useless was the control tower at the airport. You couldn't see the top of it for the smog. They might as well have directed the flights from home (or perhaps they were).

Only three of our tour group at this hotel - seems that more are joining us in Xining tomorrow. I am rooming with Boaz from Israel. I am keeping my Ruth jokes up my sleeve for when I need some cred.

Wandered the streets fruitlessly looking for wi-fi. Eventually gave up and had tea of 'chicken with vinegar and sugar' at a local restaurant, and was presented with a mooncake as a token of the festival day.