Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Day 9: Beijing Welcomes Us...Again

Even though today was supposed to be a travel day, my mom still decided it was best to visit even more relatives. This time, it was my great aunt. We took the subway this time round to get a taste of public transportation and besides the barbarian hoards of people everywhere you go, it was very smooth.

We only had about 2 hours of time to visit before having to head back, but of course, they had the usual banquet waiting for us. Now, these crabs are really good and all...but after having them day after day after day, it gets a bit routine. We chatted about the usual family things and were about to leave. We had already gotten on the bus when my mom realized she had left her cell phone at the great aunt's place. We hurriedly headed back and to welcome us back for the second time, we had another banquet (okay, not really, but it totally could have happened).

We still had some errands to run so we headed to the shopping district to buy some snacks and withdraw some cash. This is where I learned that the chinese banking system is retarded. According to my mom, if you deposit money in Shanghai, you can't actually withdraw it in Beijing. The only way to transfer was to manually withdraw all the money and then redeposit it all. This made no sense to me at all, but my mom insisted this needed to be done.

After errands, we headed home, packed it all up and went to the airport. We flew Hainan Airlines this time and the experience was pretty pleasant again. The only annoying thing was after landing in Beijing, the plane taxied for almost 20 minutes before arriving at a gate.

1 comment:

moonfleck said...

haha we can make a drinking game out of how many time the word Banquet comes up.

Although i think the room hopping one in Shanghai is definitely the best!