: China: Day 1, Beijing

Everybody knows where China is but yet the very mention of that country gives such a pale impression. I admit, I was one of the skeptics towards China's development and long patriarchal history. I mean this is the city with the most millionaires in the world and also the most poorest people around.

So realistically how developed could it be?

Well, after exploring 6 days around 2 of its magnificent cities, I have found myself in love with the country's fast paced and not to mention hectic lifestyle.

Day 1 started out with full of drama. We boarded the AirAsia X plane and after approximately 6 hours of non-stop flying, our captain informed us that due to the bad weather in Tianjin, we were unable to land immediately, thus we needed to stay up in the air longer till it cleared but because we were low on fuel we headed directly to Beijing (to the delight of the passengers who were cheering and clapping).

Drama ended right? NOT! As we landed in Beijing's tremendously HUGE airport, we were informed that us passengers were not allowed to disembark from the airplane as AirAsia X had no landing rights in the Beijing airport, which basically meant they were not willing to pay for us passengers to land directly at Beijing.

In addition to that, we then had a deportee on our plane that was required to be taken off the plane on the first port of landing. Then the passengers became impatient and all started standing up, making their phone calls to whoever they knew internally to try and ensure that they were allowed off the plane. To their despair, they were informed to sit back down.

After over 30 minutes, we were then "kindly informed" that we were being allowed to disembark from the plane afterall.

Drama no. 3 was that our driver who was suppose to send us to our hotel was waiting in Tianjin. After making a few phone calls, we managed to get a friend to call him to tell him in Mandarin that we were no longer needing his services but instead we took a RM250 cab to the hotel.

And that concludes the "Beijing Drama".

After all that hustle and bustle, we met up with a few of my dad's former colleagues to have a wonderful Chinese style dinner and here are the pictures: