Thursday, March 12 – Hong Kong to Guilin, China (Take One)

At about 3:00pm today we left the Driedgers' apartment in Hong Kong and took the Airport bus to the Hong Kong International Airport. At the airport we soon found the Dragon Air counter. Lots of friendly staff to help us check-in. First surprise – the plane was full, so we got bumped into business class. Had to take a shuttle van out onto the tarmac and then got into the plane and our nice big business class seats. The flight was only an hour long and I had a customer satisfaction survey to fill in. I did some sudokus and filled in the survey. We got a hot supper and French red wine. All was going good. We were descending into Guilin in thick fog and clouds. All of a sudden the plane's engine started screaming and we pulled sharply back up. Thick clouds prevented us from seeing where we were, but this wasn't a 'usual' occurrence. It didn't take long for the captain to come on the P.A. and explain. Heavy fog prevented our landing. We'd circle up above the clouds for a bit and try again in 15 minutes. We did just that. Same thing the second time: the pilot yanked the nose back up into the air. This time we knew that we were heading back to Hong Kong. There would be no landing in Guilin today. Hmmm. We flew back and an hour later we were back in the Hong Kong airport. Lots of Dragon Air staff had everything organized and under control. We all got vouchers for food and were given boarding passes for our same seat numbers for a flight leaving tomorrow morning at 8:30am. Lots of staff on hand. They began taking groups of us to the Airport Hotel that is connected to the airport. We were processed quickly, given another HK$250 food voucher, keys for our hotel room. We called the Sheraton in Guilin and explained our no-show. All is good. They'll have our room for us tomorrow and the next day – we just moved our dates up by one day. Then we went down to the buffet restaurant to eat. We weren't all that hungry because we'd just eaten in the plane, but we ate noodles and soup and ice cream for dessert anyway. Then Sue and I walked back into the airport and I bought some contact lens solution and a travel case (our bags were left on the plane and I had packed my contact lens stuff into the suitcase). We went back to our room. Sue was asleep by 11:30 – didn't even watch CNN (haven't had that since Bali). I updated my journal and then went to bed too. We have a wake-up call for tomorrow 6am.

Thursday, March 12 – Hong Kong to Guilin, China (Take Two)

The wake-up call came at 6:00am. Sue made coffee in the room and we showered. No deodorant, but we're clean. We're in the "Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. By 6:45 we were in the hotel lobby ready for another go at Guilin. We went through passport control and then had coffee in the business class lounge. Our flight left at 9:45 – we boarded an hour before that but ended up sitting on the tarmac waiting for the skies to clear in Guilin so we wouldn't have a repeat of yesterday's flight. Got our nice business class seats again! I really was impressed, especially with the attractive Asian stewardesses on the Dragon Air flight. The 1:25 hour flight ended with us flying through dense clouds before landing at the Guilin airport. After picking up our suitcase and getting RMB (Chinese currency) from an ATM we stopped at the information desk. We took a shuttle bus into town (30 minutes) and then a cab from the shuttle stop to the Sheraton Hotel. We got a deluxe room on the 5th floor 'club' level. Nicest room so far! Big 50" plasma TV and king-size bed and glass shower, etc. – almost as nice as what we have at home! We enjoyed the room for much of the afternoon – I spent time working on our Bali photos on my computer. At 5pm we finally headed out for a walk. We walked along the Li River. We watched men and women playing cards. We crossed the busy main street (twice), taking our life in our hands as the crazy Chinese drivers (I mean, car, bus, motorcycle, and even bicycle riders! All of them seemed to take no consideration for people crossing, whether there was a painted crosswalk or not!) A broad sidewalk took us down to the Elephant Park. We paid a discounted entry fee (twilight hours) and toured around in the attractive park. Then we climbed the steps up to the top of Elephant Hill. Some Asian tourists were quite excited to have pictures taken with us and we met them a few times as we walked around the top of the hill taking photos of the view of the city and the river from the top. There was an old stone pagoda at the top too. Then we came down and ambled back towards our hotel. We found the 'Night Market' next to our hotel and we looked at some of the booths and hawkers as we meandered through the market. We were looking for a place to eat, but got distracted by a young enthusiastic 'teacher' who harangued us into buying a tour to the rice fields for tomorrow. He led us on a bit of a wild goose chase before we had supper, and finally he made cell-phone contact with the guide (this teacher is only selling us the tour; the guide is someone who actually speaks English and will be guiding us tomorrow). The guide is supposed to show up at our hotel tomorrow morning and call out 'Mr Rudy!' or 'Nikkel' at around 8:00 or 8:15! We went to the supper restaurant our 'teacher-friend' recommended and shared a big Chinese dish. Then early to bed! That wake-up call will come soon enough!