Catching up on blog posts from the past few days. We arrived at the Guilin airport on Saturday night luckily about 2 hours early. When we handed our flight info to the “gate agent,” she looked beyond perplexed and just kept staring at us. As that doesn’t translate into easy feelings, I just looked back at her and held up 6 fingers for 6 of us. Then she got on the phone and called somewhere and finally started typing our info in. Maybe we were her first American customers, but it was very strange. Then we went through security, one by one. They made Charlie take off his concealed money belt in front of everyone, and then they ran that back through security. So that was extra comforting that all of our money had been just flashed around for all to see.
We waited in the small terminal and were treated to repeat performances of the women’s synchronized diving competition from the Olympics – which happened about 2 weeks ago! To top of the experience, when our flight was boarding, the man was speaking in Chinese so we had no idea who was to board when. It was tremendously difficult to hear (even if he was speaking English), since he was roaming the crowd near the gate speaking into a tiny microphone connected by what looked like a cell phone earbud cord to a loudspeaker not much bigger than the palm of his hand! He’d walk around the perimeter of the crowd, holding the speaker above his head – like THAT would help! Whatever he was saying was comically garbled – one of those times I wished I would have snagged a video. Charlie finally flagged the man down and was told “Chinese board first!” What?!! So we just pushed in with the (Chinese) masses anyway to get on the plane.
The Chinese airlines don’t believe in our monitor on time departures, so our flight was an hour late departing. We arrived in Taiyuan close to 7:30 pm, but the kids were excited because we had to deplane on the Tarmac and take a short shuttle bus ride to the terminal. Of course the shuttle bus was overloaded, but we made it safely. We grabbed our luggage, met out substitute guide and drove an hour to the hotel. Once at the hotel, the bigger issue arose when they tried to give us the rooms that I “supposedly” had told the agency to reserve, which were two mini smoke smelling rooms with 4 single beds for 6 people so we got into a big fight about how that obviously was vey inadequate. We then were pushed up to 2 bigger rooms with 1 queen, 2 singles, 2 rollaways and one mini type of bed. And then they told me some exorbitant price that we will be paying for this extra smoke smelling luxury. The only people staying at the hotel, besides another couple who is also adopting, seem to be middle-aged Chinese business men, who smoke and talk/shout loudly. There is no English spoken either at the front desk. During breakfast, the family has been the source of attraction with the kids. Today, a nice man asked to have his photo taken with us twice. He was very shy and smiled so big when we said it was not a problem. We get that a lot.
The next morning started our Chinese laundry comedy of errors. After being in Guilin for a week, we had 3 bags of laundry. Our guide first told us that if we dropped laundry on Sunday, it would be ready on Wednesday!!! We said we couldn’t wait that long, so the hotel said they could do it. No prices in the price list of course, so we left one small bag with them. We then hauled the other 2 bigger bags several more blocks only to be told that they could do it, but they don’t wash underwear and socks?!! This took a 1/2 hr conversation to find this out, while Lisa and the kids were outside being surrounded by more and more elderly Chinese women. One was obviously the woman in charge, and she kept calling her friends over and would point at us and speak rapid fire Chinese. When our guide came out, we asked what they were saying, but she did not say and brushed them all off as we pressed on to another laundry several more blocks away. Maybe they were saying that they do socks and underwear 😀. We arrived at the next laundry, which could do all, but it had to be washed AND pressed. So another 1/2 hr conversation about how we did not need anything pressed and cut the price by 50 percent. The woman finally did, but we probably will need a second loan to pay for it!
Because the laundry ordeal was so much fun, we decided to press on to exchange money for the adoption. A normal 10 min process took close to three hours…yes three. Hard to decipher why, but something about a money launderer in Taiyuan weeks ago named David. The poor other man with us was named David, so they screened him about 50x. Then they took our cell phone numbers, SS numbers, passport info – made us really comfortable that now anyone in China can re-create our identities! Additionally, random people/men come right up and look over your shoulder at the personal transactions! Charlie was ready to wrestle a few and gave them the strong “get out of here!”
Taiyuan appears to be quite modern (Chinese wise). There are many large skyscrapers, tons of construction and mini shopping mall type areas. The traffic lanes are 6-8 lanes wide for cars, scooters, bikes and people. At times, it is like playing Frogger to cross the street. There is 1 Pizza Hut/KFC about 8 blocks away. They serve hot water with lemon and no plain pizza (only pizza loaded with toppings.). So we opted for the least exotic and got their Garden Pizza which had tomatoes, peppers, corn and pineapple as you typically order those things together normally 😂. Ash and Kyle had the delicious Pizza Hut steak sizzlers. The food was actually decent so we will probably go again.
We did walk about 10-11 blocks to find a Starbucks, but that was closed for repairs or re-opening. We couldn’t really tell. One thing we noticed was that in the approximately 2 hours we wandered the streets, we saw NO westerners. None. In our travels we typically cross paths with at least one or two, but not this time.
Since there are so many of us, we usually exhaust the hotel’s meager allotment of towels fairly quickly. So Charlie called Housekeeping to have new towels sent up. The first call (to the button on the phone that indicated “Housekeeping”) was fruitless as the young lady spoke no English. The Front Desk was the next call, but there was still a bit of a communication gap. Finally, we escalated our question to the “Assistant Manager”…now we’d be getting somewhere! It took three attempts for the individual to understand that we needed towels. Then came the obvious question: “For the Face, or for the Hands?” He clarified “For the BODY”. XieXie’s followed and we ended the call. Promptly, 5 minutes later, the towels arrived. We thanked the delivery person, and brought the towels in for the next morning. Fast forward to shower time in the morning (not a calm, peaceful, slow paced process for our crew) – we unfolded the towels. In lieu of normal bath towels, we’d be given towels like we’d never seen before. The were like table runners! No more than 9 inches wide, and about 4 feet long!! I can’t imagine the BODY that could even use a towel like that – and we had FOUR of them. Mom and Dad “took one for the team” and used them. It took a few moments longer, and some drying pre-planning, but we made it work. We can usually always make it work, somehow. (I want so badly to bring home one of those towels as a souvenir- but with our luck, it would push us over the weight limit for checked luggage. And, we’d probably be charged lots of yuan by the hotel for it.)
The honking of car horns is crazy here- all day and most of the night. We are right on the street side, so it has become a constant background noise.
There are some dogs and even a few cats in the city. Looks like both strays and pets. Aunt Rita, we even saw a small version of Harry here. Then Dylan had his picture taken next to a friendly, very hungry, stray cat that was being fed a sausage like treat from someone else. It’s eye was very messy (probably due to a cat fight), so Dylan was sad about that.
Otherwise, so far, so good in Taiyuan.