Beijing - Day 1

Hehe finally I am here to blog about my Beijing trip. Like I said it was awesome! Hmm I have no talent like Kae Vin to describe his Cambodia trip in such a creative way. Really love the way he wrote about it. So I will just do it in a simple way and let the pictures do most of the job.

For your information, we went under Forever Travel tour agency. My family's 1st trip under them. Before hand we always went under Lye Peng tour agency. Well my rating for this agency - 4 out of 5. I love my tour leader. She is so pretty!

So, our tour group consists of 16 participants with 1 pretty leader (tour guide). Out of 16 people, 12 of them are my family members. The rest are a pair of mum and daughter from Singapore (working there) and a pair of husband and wife from Aussie (migrated from M'sia).

Basically for the 1st day, we spent most of the time in airports and airplanes. From Penang International Airport, we flew with Cathay Pacific and stopped at KLIA and waited for passengers from there to board. Then we continued our journey to Hong Kong International Ariport for transit. Then finally we flew with Dragonair to Beijing Capital Airport.

I think the whole journey took about 12 hours, maybe a bit less. Stuck quite long in KLIA and on the track of Hong Kong International Airport. The airport was sooo busy that more than 10 airplanes needed to queue up just for taking off! Can you imagine that?

As usual during long hours flight, what you can do are just to eat, sleep, watch movies, listen to music or go to toilet. That is why I became fatter after coming back from China. Input more than output... Damn!

1 of the meals.

Wrapped myself in blanket like I was so cold.

Shyuan reading my CLEO, pretending to be interested.

What made this day interesting was, something funny happened when we arrived Beijing Capital Airport. I am really amazed at how cautious and concerned the China government is regarding the H1NI cases. Compared to them, Malaysia is lousy.

Once we landed, we were not allowed to leave the aircraft. Paramedics were sent onto the plane to check each and every passenger's body temperature. That means if one of the passengers did not pass this checking, then all passengers might be asked to be quarantined, just in case he/she was the carrier of swine flu.

I nearly thought I was not going to pass the checking and everyone has to be quarantined.

They checked my temperature for 3 times! 3 times! Everyone 1 time but I was checked for 3 times!!! I was worried like hell!

After the 1st time, that girl checked another time for confirmation. Guess something was wrong with my temperature or maybe the device was not functioning well. Then after the 2nd checking, she walked away but turned back to look at my seat number. At that moment, I was already terrified. Why the hell did she need to check on my seat number?!

Then she even asked the other paramedic to check my temperature for the 3rd time! My god! Luckily this time my temperature did not exceed 27°C 37°C. Phew! Thank god I did not make anyone stay in hospital haha.

Shyuan's dad wearing mask for FUN not for prevention haha.

Once we got down from the plane, 1 of my uncles started laughing at me for being checked 3 times. He was teasing and joking about this incident. He even told us confidently that he would be able the pass the checking easily but maybe his wife would not because she was sick before this trip. So all the way he was the 1 laughing and talking the most.

Then came this scenario. We passed by a counter with devices set up like this:


See those 2 cameras and 2 screens? In front of each screen there was seated 1 officer. Everyone was required to walk pass the 2 lanes. Once you walk into the range of screening (where the bars are placed), your image with heat and temperature will be shown in the screen like this:



This device is very sensitive, trust me, and also very accurate. No matter you walk to the left, to the right or maybe you want to jump or squat, your temperature will always be on your head, following you all the way. This makes the officer's job easy to spot those passengers with high temperature (more than 27°C 37°C). If your temperature exceeds 27°C 37°C, there is a high possibility that you are having fever - 1 of the H1N1 symptoms.

Then this image popped up and everyone was excited.


This guy with 37.2°C is that laughing uncle of mine.

He was stopped by the officer in-charge and was ushered into a special 'room' like this, somewhere beside the counter to carry on the necessary procedures to check whether he was really having fever or not.


I wonder how he managed to smile for the camera when he was god damn tension that time. Haha he was the one laughing at people but he was the 1 ended up this room.

It took him ages to come out from that room after being confirmed that his temperature has dropped back to normal. We knew he would be fine since he was not sick, but quite worried that the officer might send him off to be quarantined. As you know, SARS affected China a lot and they have learnt from that lesson.

Everyone in our group applauded when he came out and he was laughing damn hard away. He did not know that there was another checking awaiting him ahead. By that time his temperature rose again because of the laughings =_=''. At the last counter, he was specially asked by the officer in-charge to enter another 'special room', again!

This time, we were really laughing uncontrollably and wondered why he was so unfortunate?

LOL, we were not being mean for laughing at him, we were worried too. But if you were there, you would know why we laughed that hard.

The last checking took him more than 15 minutes (felt like half an hour or more). Luckily this time his temperature dropped again to normal. So this whole journey from airplane to this counter took us more than half an hour and we had not even collected our luggage!!

This is what we did while waiting for him - taking photos!

The airport is soooo huge!

When we reached the luggage collection area, there was no one already. Our luggages were the ones left on the spinning machine. Wonder how many rounds has it spun?

You cannot imagine how big the airport is! We even needed to take a train from the last counter to the luggage collection area! Maybe 10 times of the area of Penang International Airport?!



Well, we were of course late for dinner since the whole checking out process consumed so much time. But this incident also reflected how efficient and cautious the China government is. Our temperatures were checked 3 times at 3 different places! (though mine was checked 5 times) They really want to minimize the number of H1N1 cases. Thumbs up for them!

Maybe Malaysian government should learn from them. There was so much difference when I reached Penang International Aiport from Beijing. No one checked on us... No one! No wonder the number of confirmed cases are increasing. LOL

To call it a day, we checked in Holiday Inn Express where we stayed for 3 nights. The rooms were nice, but the management was damn lousy. They should really improve in that.

My room with Shyuan.

Well, so that is all for day 1. Will not write so long for the next few entries. I am getting more and more long-winded. Sigh.


-sherril=xuele-