24-hour plus trip ends with Beijing arrival

Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 11:55 p.m.

By Terry R. Cassreino

BEIJING – We made it.
After a long, tiring 24-plus hour trip that began at 9 a.m. Central Time on Monday (well, actually 5 a.m. when we left Hattiesburg) we arrived in Beijing and checked into our hotel, Hotel Kunlun, at about 9 a.m. Tuesday.
Here's where the concept of time gets tricky, so bear with me.
Beijing is 14 hours ahead of Central Time. So while Pam and I arrived at 9 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, it actually was 11 p.m. Tuesday Beijing time. That's correct: We lost a full 14 hours on the trip over.
Pam and I are tired, drained, exhausted and full from all that airplane food. We were in such a hurry to get to the hotel to sleep that we didn't even have time to take photos marking our arrival.
The photo you see on the left was taken at about 3 a.m. CDT in the Tokyo airport. We had just arrived from Detroit and were waiting in the stifling heat (I guess the air conditioner was out at the airport) for our connecting flight to Beijing.
As you can tell, Pam's already exhausted.
The thing is I couldn't tell if she was tired from sitting; tired from trying to recline in an unreclinable chair between Detroit and Tokyo; or tired from counting the number of endless, prefabricated airplane meals the flight attendants (who weren't that friendly, I might add) passed out every 30 minutes.
Curious about plane food? Well, here's a sample of what we dined on.

• A snack on the 9 a.m. on the Northwest flight to Detroit.
• A diet drink and pretzels 45 minutes after our 12:45 p.m. flight left Detroit.
• Dinner at about 1:30 p.m., featuring terriyaki chicken with white rice, green beans and rubbery chocolate cake.
• Snack time at about 7 p.m. featuring a turkey sandwhich and a Diet Coke.
• Breakfast at about midnight (which actually was late morning Tokyo time) featuring chicken fried rice (don't ask me why they served fried rice for breakfast).
• Snack time at about 6:30 p.m. (Beijing time) on the flight from Tokyo to Beijing.
• Dinner at about 7 p.m. featuring chicken noodles, a salad and another slice of rubbery cake.

None of the food was remarkable. Nor was it sutiable for serving at a nice, posh, upscale restarant like Commander's Palace in New Orleans. It was airplane food -- whatdo you expect? It's not like they have a chef in a kitchen cooking the stuff.
Besides the food, the sound system was out the entire 13-hour flight from Detroit to Tokyo -- which meant that we couldn't watch and enjoy such top-notch films as “Pride and Prejudice” and that Dennis Quaid hit “Yours, Mine and Ours” (all of which were pan-and-scanned anyway).
One thing of note: Pam did watch “Walt Disney’s Chicken Little” on the flight from Tokyo to Beijing . She gives the film a big thumbs up. Now that was a nice flight. We each had our own television monitor mounted on the seat in front of us. Along with that, we had access to our own video-on-demand system (I watched part of “Rent”).
Well, at least we are in Beijing. And on tap for today: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm drained from traveling. I need to rejuvenate. Pam needs to rejuvenate. And we need to get ready for the big moment of the week: Gotcha Day on Monday, April 3.
On my next post later today, look for more photos.
It’s 11:51 p.m. Tuesday. And I’m going to sleep.

Text and photos copyright 2006 by Terry R. Cassreino