Rough start - Qingdao

Our adventure to Qingdao had a rough start. Our initial flight, #4664, was set to leave from the Shanghai Hongqiao airport at 2:05 PM. Somewhere between booking our flight via elong.com and boarding our airplane, our reservations were arbitrarily changed from flight #4664 to #4662. Whether someone attempted to pass along this information is unclear. To further the confusion, we were issued a ticket and a boarding pass with conflicting information. Our ticket read flight #4664 and our boarding pass, which we did not read (of course @_@) read #4662. Flight #4662 left before #4664...

So, when we attempted to board #4664, the airline Gods frowned upon us and worse, denied us boarding. This led to some excitement as the Chinese passengers found it both fascinating and hilarious that a westerner (aka John) had just tried to board the wrong plane, as his plane had left 40 min. prior. Of course, it was not his fault....we found out later that at times, if you check-in early, the airline will automatically bump you to the next available flight to your destination.

We were instructed to exit the terminal, go back past security and rebook. This would have been fine and dandy, had the next flight to Qingdao not left at 10:30 PM. Without any other options, we rebooked, went back through security, and staked out the most comfortable looking metal seats we could find. We counted ourselves lucky, as our luggage had been pulled from flight #4662. Unfortunately, that luck was short lived. On account of poor weather conditions in Qingdao, we did not board our new flight until quarter past midnight. By the time we reached our hotel, it was close to 3AM.

In China, there are two types of hotels (and toilets, food...), Western and Chinese. We had booked ourselves in a "five star" Chinese hotel, which only ran 500 RMB a night (approx $65 USD). What we didn't remember, is that most Chinese sleep on rock hard beds (its good for the back). Needless to say, after a day of being stuck in an airport, concrete-like beds didn't sound too appealing. :) But, we toughed it out...

The next morning, we checked out, and moved to the Shangri-la. :P Since then, things have smoothed out substantially. The city is beautiful and has a lot to offer when compared to Shanghai. Cleaner air & water, nicer people, and beautiful scenery...if given the option, we would definitely like to live here. For those of you unfamiliar with Qingdao, it was formally a German colony (until 1929?) and lies in a bay in between Beijing and Shanghai. Its official residents are about 7 million. Because of the city's roots, its architecture has quite a bit of European influence. The city is well known for its beer, Tsingtao, which was another parting gift from its previous occupants. It will also host the sailing portion of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Saturday night, we attended the annual Expat Charity Ball, which was a really great function (in purpose and entertainment value.) We met some really interesting people and spent the night socializing in English, which was a refreshing change (especially for John) Since then, we have focused mainly on business and plan to return back to Shanghai early tomorrow morning.