As soon as I got off the plane in Beijing, I got in trouble for taking this photo.
After a quick train ride from the international terminal to the regular normal terminal, I walked up to the first tourist information booth, exchanged my dollars for yuan, and asked to book a hotel for the night. (I had a 13 hour layover) After waiting for about 30 minutes while the the three cute ladies behind the desk said things to each other, a young man walked up, flirted with the ladies in Chinese, and told me to follow him.
As we left the airport, the young man shoved a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. I was worried he was going to smoke as he shuttled me over to the hotel, but instead, I sat alone in the shuttle and waited for him to finish before he drove me to my hotel.
As soon as I walked in the lobby, I noticed two toy poodles sitting behind the counter with an attendant. One of the toy poodles, which was white, had only its ears dyed bright orange.
After taking a quick shower in the toilet/shower located in the side of the room (and forgetting to use the hotel provided shower shoes,) I immediately turned off the lights and tried to fall asleep. But I barely slept at all, my mattress felt like it had fallen off the roof off a car and been run over multiple times, and I couldn't figure out how to turn on the air conditioner because it had a very complicated remote written entirely in Chinese.
I took a shuttle back to the airport at 5 in the morning, already exhausted. This time, the shuttle was packed. On the way to the airport, the man sitting behind me pulled out an electric razor and began to shave. He didn't have a ziplock baggy or anything with him, so I assume he just let all of his beard hair fall on the floor.
The Bejing Airport is huge. Inside were 4 bronze statutes of dragons as well as a bronze statue of a Chinese warrior. There were also 4 Maan Coffee shops, (I assume a popular Chinese coffee chain for me), but because it was still 5:30 in the morning they were all closed. The only restaurants open were a fancy Japanese sit-down place and KFC. I choose KFC.
I had been told that in China KFC was a fancy restaurant. I did not find this to be the case. It was definitely, however, strange. As far as I could tell, Fried Chicken was not on the menu. You could get a dough stick with egg or a pork loin and bean soup if you wanted. I opted for the chicken fillet breakfast panni, which was very sweet, and a coffee.
There were so many cool things inside of the Beijing Airport. Next to the drinking fountains, there were also hot water fountains. I have no idea what those were for. I also found a FIBA store which sold paraphernalia for the world cup of basketball, a Chinese convenience store which had cucumber and Italian red meat flavored Lays, an electronic store that sold phones, robots, rice cookers, and bowls, and this super awesome orange juice vending machine which that squeezed the oranges right inside the machine.
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