Are Those Chickens in Your Goat Ranch?

Sunday, October 9, 5:30am "Got tickets?"

Today we woke up bright & early to catch a plane to Zhengzhou.  All of the families made it through the ticket line except us.  You see, we decided to go against the norm and stay separate from our group at the Westin in Beijing ( we are suckers for the heavenly bed or maybe we're just a little high maintenance).  Since I travel a fair amount for work we decided to take advantage of my go-zillion Starwood points that I have accumulated to pay for a majority of our hotel stays since we are required to book two rooms in each hotel that we are staying (Chinese hotels only allow three people per room no matter your size or age).  It had really worked out just fine except the local agency rep forgot to include us in her numbers when purchasing the airfare tickets to Zhengzhou.  Oops!!!  No worries though, George got us booked on the next flight out and we're just an hour behind the rest of the group.   We feel like we're on the Amazing Race :).  

Detour #2- 12:20 pm "Go with the flow........."

We were able to board our later flight from Beijing to Zhengzhou but 30 minutes into our  flight time the pilot announced that we were turning back to Beijing due to weather conditions getting worse in Zhengzhou.  It turns out that there was dense fog which was made worse by the local farmers burning corn husks. This is the time of year for the corn harvest and ALL of the farmers burn the husks after the cob has been removed by hand. It was interesting to see this process along the busiest of roads in Beijing.  You could see hundreds of yards of corn just lying on the sidewalk and huge piles of husks next to them.  Even in Beijing we experienced very smokey skies because of all the burning going on (in addition to the thick smog).  The terminal inside the Beijing airport also had a smokey haze.  Yeah, that's what you want to see inside of an airport and around planes.......smoke!  

So...........we picked up our luggage and got in the long lines to try to re-book our flight.  All of the flights to Zhengzhou were cancelled for the rest of the day and the first available flight out was Monday evening at 10:20pm. BUMMER!  The airline was required to provide us a hotel for the night so we went with the flow and jumped on a shuttle bus to the hotel.  From  the looks of the shuttle bus I told Shanna that it was very likely that the hotel would probably resemble a goat ranch, at best. Boy did I call that one!  You wouldn't believe the scenery surrounding this "hotel". There were wild chickens running around and it looked like a war zone around there. We couldn't help but laugh at the situation.  When the bus pulled up to the hotel I told the driver not to worry about removing our bags from the van. As luck would have it, our driver didn't speak not one lick of English.   Since I can only say enough Chinese words to order off of an extra value meal at McDonald's we had a rather comical exchange as I played charades to try to tell this driver to take us back to the airport (using my arms like wings and making airplane noises, to boot). We were then approached by the one, yes only one person in the hotel that spoke broken English. He happened to be the hotel manager and he REALLY wanted us to stay at his swank establishment. I started off trying to let him down easy by telling him that our flight was very early the next day (little white lie) and we needed to stay much closer to the airport. He was insistent that we were very close to the airport and all would be fine. Finally, I had to fess up and call his baby ugly..."Sir, you're hotel is not nice and I have traveled too far to stay in your goat ranch for the night" (I added the goat ranch for your whimsical benefit). He smiled, chuckled and relented knowing that we weren't " goat ranch" kind of folk.  The reality of the situation was that my gut was telling me that this was not a safe place for my family. 

Did we mention that we're hotel snobs?

7:00pm "Just what the doctor ordered......."

But have no fear, the amazing George is here!  We seriously don't know what we would do without our beloved George. He swept in and saved us from the free range chicken goat ranch and put us up in a nicer hotel in the city. George felt so bad about our day that he sent three gentlemen to our room that were experts in Chinese traditional medicine and gave us the most amazing massages complete with a full body "pressure point" massage.   Just what the doctor ordered.  I bet we all sleep like a rock tonight!  George was also able to get us on a 7:00am train from Beijing to Zhengzhou.  We were excited about the 5 hour train ride since we had seen enough of the airport in Beijing (10 hours). We also new that fog, smoke or any other weather condition wouldn't keep that train from departing.  I wonder what amazing adventures await us tomorrow............picking up Maili is definitely one of them.  WE CAN'T WAIT TO MEET HER, HOLD HER, LOVE HER!!