Lhasa to Beijing

Day 21

I was tempted to just skip blogging today because I only managed three hours of sleep last night and today is a travel day. However today started off with some excitement. We woke to a text from Donna saying that our flight from Chengdu at 10pm (after a 6 hour layover) had been canceled and the new flight was not until 8am the next morning. Panic ensued. Texts were typed , a call made. Fortunately, Donna managed to get the airline to put us on a connecting flight that leaves a three hours earlier, meaning that we may get into Beijing around 10 instead of one am.

Crisis averted there was a knock on our door. Ari told us that "I don't know why but Zachary suddenly started having a huge tantrum and he's screaming for you." Zachary it turned out had his first nosebleed.

On our way out of the hotel I noticed a sign over a room used by the cleaning staff with mops and a utility sink inside which said "sterilization room." Andrea wanted to send me right in.

As much as I am not sad to see the last of Sunrise Hotel Tibet in a way I'm glad that we stayed there. The children bitched and moaned but I think it is good for them to wee that not everything is a Hilton. When I was Joshua's age I was staying in youth hostels that made this hotel look like a palace, sleeping in aisles on trains because the sleeper car was too expensive, and sometimes sleeping in a tent when I traveled.

We got to the airport really early, they suggest that foreigners check in two hours before a flight and Pandon (our guide) added half an hour safety main for traffic snafus. Our flight was delayed an hour and a half. In fact I photographed the departure board because it is cool to see a board that had every flight delayed.

Everything to eat at the airport was horribly overpriced. Andrea and I bought the only affordable things we could find: one bowl of Ramen noodles for $3 and a roll for about 80 cents and split them. They wanted 58 Yuan (almost $10) for a pot of tea so we're making do with tap water.

The Chinese salt everything to incredible levels. We used less than half of the seasoning packet for the Ramen and that was plenty. The other day, the two bags of dried fruit that we bought at the supermarket turned out to be salted. I found out that one had 47% of a person's daily sodium recommendation when I finally got the package interpreted. We gave it to our driver.
The food at Chengdu was more reasonably priced. Andrea and I had beef bento while Joshua and Zachary headed off to Pizza Hut. They decided that the pizza was too Chinese and went to Subway instead.

Our flight was delayed. It finally took off at 9:05. We flew China airlines, which is the classy carrier, because the budget airline that canceled this leg picked up the cost of the ticket. They had a camera in the nose of the plane that we got to watch takeoff through. It was cool watching the runway go by in the pouring rain. Landing was even cooler, seeing the runway lights on approach.

Li Feng's husband,  Andy met us at the airport. He had a white Hylander, just like Andrea, and so we felt right at home. He had to get up for work the next morning and leaves the house at 6:30 every morning so it was really nice of him to come to get us. Since it was after midnight we flew through nearly empty highways.

Because of my stuffed nose my ears wouldn't equalize on either flight. It was just an annoyance on the way to Chengdu but was pretty intensely painful on the second flight. The pain kept me from sleeping when Andy finally got us back to the apartment.