Okay so I guess the first question on your lips is “who the hell is Hu Jintao?” – Well he is the President of the People’s Republic of China amongst other things.
I returned from another business trip to China early last week. I was there for almost a week this time. As always it was action packed.
The trip commenced on Tuesday night with a drive to the Airport. Once we had checked in we sat around for a good hour or two, savouring a couple of coronas in the newly created bar. This in fact makes a big change to the old layout of the terminal.
Jumping on the plane at about midnight we set off to Singapore. After a couple of Singapore slings and about 8 hrs later we touched down at Changi Airport. If you have never had the chance to pass through here, then you must try to at some stage. It’s one of the most relaxing airports you’ll come across. I digress.
After about two hours of messing around on the laptops trying to get the wifi to work we almost nearly missed our flight. They don’t call them any more – luckily for us the departure lounge was close – A2… if it had been A21 we would probably have missed the flight as it is a good 15mins walk!
Off we set to Shanghai. For once the planes from Singapore Airlines weren’t superb… A great shame as they normally are. The choice of movies was not great and neither was the quality. Five hours later we eventually touch down in Shanghai Pudong Airport.
After quickly picking up our bags we headed through customs.
Customs in China are first class. The if the queues start getting too big they just open more counters. They even appreciate the token thankyou or hello. You even get to vote on there performance by having the choice of 5 shinny buttons. Ranging from a big smile to a deep frown.
We quickly headed across to the other Terminal to get on our internal flight. Having checked in we entered to deprature lounge. The lounge is a long wave like building several hundreds of metres long. So there is plenty of space for all.
We finally got onto our internal flight to Shenyang. Being slightly more cramped and every single bit of cabin space filled with hand luggage. Jumping off the plane at the other end two hours later.
We quickly headed out of the terminal and met up with Elaine. Elaine is the best translator working with Yuanda and she takes extremely good care of us as always. Jumping into the BMW 7 series we headed to the Marvelot Hotel. This ended the marathon 24hrs travelling!
The next morning we started relatively late and headed off to a place called Benxi, and saw an interesting tunnel carved into limestone. One of the largest in the world apparantley. Like most places in Asia it was completly ‘Tourist-ised’, fake dinosaurs just to name a few. In the after noon we headed of into the mountains and saw some Autumnal forrests, eating snacks of roasted Chestnuts and Hazelnuts on the way.
The smog in around Shenyang right now is appalling – namely due to the constant burning of the remenants of corn plants, now that they had been harvested.
We eventually got back to Shenyang and visited the ‘Mushroom’ Restaurant. This place is very inconspicous and serves several meals; one including a soup that contains about ten different varieties of mushrooms. Most of which you have never ever seen before. They also provide superb black bean & and chilli sauces which when mixed together make a great compliment to any food on your plate.
In the evening we met up with Winxie (Meinhardt Consultant) and headed of to dinner with Charlie the contracts manager for the obligitory dinner. Downing Rice Wine, Red wine and beer takes some practice!
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- Gunbai!
