Monday 4 August 2008

4th August 2008

This is how to do it. Japan wins. Amazingly nice people and survivable without a trust LP. Beginning with the Japanese Lady who shared a taxi with me, after 4 hours of sleep, at 5am AND wrote out some interesting places for me to visit in Japan, in Japanese! Also directed me to my airport check in. Then a plus for the Chinese, Beijing airport is excellent and so is the Japanese airline All Nippon Airways. Checked in mega quick, took easy internal train to my gate area depature lounge. Milled about, used all my final money on a variety of Beijing Olympics merchandise, still unable to find a cool jacket though. Had a coffee and breakfast in a small restaurant and bumped into my Japanese friend again.

Finished off cash in Olympic shop, and wandered to my gate to find the plane boarding, no queue, but about 15 staff memebers. Turns out the plane is mostly empty and I had selected a most excellent window seat with no one next to me or behind me. The plane had a camera on the front which you could watch the entire flight as if u were a plane nose, or like me, you could have selected to watch the fantastic Kung Fu Panda movie. Though I was interupted quite often with piles of food, drink and wet towels. Excellent food.

On landing, used the spotless toilets in the mostly deserted airport, got bag quickly and had an extremely nice and helpful man look through my bag at customs. Everyone is very polite and helpful, so after some initial ATM currency exchange calculation brain ache I went to the tourist information office, who printed me an exact map of where my hotel is and cheapest way to get there!

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