Arriving in Beijing

Well after having my original flight booking bumped 3 hours and then a further one hour delay I arrived in Beijing much later than expected. Of course it was another hour later based on Japan time too. My whole trip had been very carefully planned to only fly in the day, and arrive at my destination early afternoon and get to bed on time.

It took an hour to clear customs. Then the cattle herding began. The triathlon volunteer team intercepted me and told me to wait for the shuttle. This was good, as it was expected. They said the wait was 45 minutes. This is where I bumped into a rather tired looking Irish lass called Suzanne, sitting there rather forlornly next to bike box. A bit later her sister, Grainne appeared. But more on them later. As we were still inside the customs area, there was no food, although they did have bottled water. As more competitors dribbled in the wait seemed to get longer. This was my first experience of the China minute. It is a bit like the Microsoft minute. It has little bearing on reality. I imagined they were waiting for the bus to return. Not so. The buses were waiting, and they just wanted to fill them, but we didn't know that. After an hour or so we ganged up and said we were getting taxis. Suddenly, a miracle happened, and the shuttle was available.

Now we had to get out of the airport. The bus driver just leaned on the hooter and forced the gaps. There were cars and trucks weaving all over the road. You pass, left or right, even on the verge. It was like being inside a video game. I was glad we were in a big bus. It took over an hour to get the hotel.

This is where the first huge disappointment happened and it kinda ruined the whole trip, or so it seemed at this point. I had booked on the ITU (International Triathlon Union) race accommodation website and had selected the particular hotel where the rest of the team was staying. There were only "standard" rooms left at the time. I also cancelled my accommodation at a nearby hotel losing a fair sum of money. I had booked this independently and it was very near the team hotel. But in the end I had chosen to stay in the team hotel. However they had pulled the wool over our eyes and we were then shuttled off to hostel style accommodation some 7km away.

This was the little village we had to drive through on the way to our hotel. I can tell you at 2am it didn't look too appealing. What had we let ourselves in for? The two Irish lasses were finding this rather tough. I was too, but I tried to look brave.

By now it was 3am and my very carefully devised plan of only travelling by day had been messed up, first by Air New Zealand's booking system, then by JAL's flight delay, the triathlon committee's shuttle and now the hotel debacle. I was put in a room down a tiled corridor. As a result I could get no sleep day or night. I am a bad sleeper and had noise all day, and intermittently throughout the night has left me exhausted. I really needed the sleep to overcome the travel fatigue and all the walking I had done in Japan.

The entrance to corridor where my room was. Suddenly I knew where I was!