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Today we stayed in the Grand Epoch City area, also known during our stay as the Orchestra Village. The Red group (Americans) were rehearsing most of the day and we got to watch them for a bit.

We also took a walk around the compound to sight see. This place is so big that we were so tired of walking by the end.There’s an Indoor Water Park within the city wall. The day we arrived, we were told that the park was closed for maintenance and would reopen today. So we went there to check it out. It turned out to be still closed for the day. We also found the small man make lake (big pond). You can rent a pedaled boat to explore the the pond and the water ways that snarl from one end of the city to the other.

There’s a swimming pool in the Zheng’an Palace Hotel. This hotel is located at the very center of the city. The cost to swim is 68 Yuen. Swiming cap is required … seriously. Luckily, we had been told about this requirement so we did bring some swiming caps with us

I also visited the ‘Health Center’ which is a big gymnasium building. Inside, there’s a bowling center, basketball, tennis, badminton courts. There are pingpong tables, exercise and weight room, some billiard tables, rock climbing wall, laser tag games and video games equipments. It’s pretty impressive. I went for the full body massage for 168 Yuen for 45 minutes. What a treat!

Pictures: Day 3 album.

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This morning, due to jet lag, we woke up at about 3am in the morning. We killed time by watching TV, reading and browsing the internet I also had times to work on pictures and upload them to the site’s album section. At 6am we went down to the second floor to eat breakfast in the banquet hall. As I mentioned in the previous post, the food was just so so. It’s better than dinner we had the day before, though.

After breakfast, a bunch of parents met up and decided to head for Beijing on city bus while the kids were practicing and rehearsing. We had a couple of parents that speak Mandarin and were willing lead the pack (thanks Stone and Kenneth!). We walked out of the city through the southern gate. We caught bus #938 heading to downtown Beijing. The fare is 10 yuen per person. The bus is quite nice and clean and, most importantly, air conditioned. The weather was already quite warm (probably close to 90 F) so the cooled bus is really really nice. The bus ride lasted for about 90 minutes and we stopped by Beijing’s main train station.

At this point, the group split into two smaller groups. One group headed for the ‘Antique Street’ market. We and the other group opted to stay within the area which had a couple of more modern type shopping centers/malls and places to eat. The reason being that we would be going to the antique market on the 4th day anyway so we might as well explore other places for now. We agreed to meet up in front of a Starbuck in about 3 hours.

We had lunch in the area. Some went for some seafood place. My younger daughter went for McDonald and my wife and I dined at Mr Lee noodle’s house. Apparently Mr Lee has a restaurant franchise all over China. Our food is not bad at all … much better than food provided at the hotel, obviously.

In the area, there were a few licensed ‘Olympic Souvenirs’ stores. We bought quite a few items such as t-shirt, hat, key chains, etc. We looked around a couple of shopping centers but didn’t find anything that would be unique to buy and bring home. We did find a small candy store that sells all kind of Chinese sweets. We bought a few of those colorfully wrapped chineese candies.

By about 4:30pm, we heard from the other group that they were running late. Our group decided to head back to the hotel ahead of them because we were so tired already. This time, however, we did not get the air conditioned bus heading back. No wonder, the bus fair was also 4 yuen cheaper. It’s quite miserable in the bus with the heat and humidity as it was. Half way through though, the rain started to come pouring really heavily. It helped cool down the temperature a bit. Fortunately, the rain also stopped in time for us to unboard the bus and walked back to the hotel.

Pictures: Day 2 album

We actually left for Beijing on July 29. There were 10 student peformers and 50 family members going with us this time. Two more groups are leaving today and the last two groups will head out tomorrow. NBC news team was there to cover our departure and to interview a few of us. Link to their video clip is here: http://www.nbc11.com/newsarchive/17026930/detail.html?taf=bay

The flight on UA 889 was uneventful. If I had a choice, I would not fly United, ever. Our experience with UA have always been bad to just OK. The legs’ room feel to be less spacious compared to other international airlines. The food is the worst. Other long distance carriers provide each individual passenger with a monitor per seat so we can pick our own movie instead of sharing a single movie on a projection screen. After a few minutes watching the movie at the projection screen, my neck gets so stiff an hurt. My eyes also is tired looking at a bad quality of picture projected onto the screen. Other carriers also give you a chance to play video games with your personal monitor screen. That is very useful if you bring small kids on a long flight. UA has nothing useful that can entertain anyone on a long tiring journey. The most exciting part of this UA flight was meeting with the USA water polo team and some track & fields athletes. The pilot announced their presence on the flight and he also welcomed our group!

My first impression of Beijing and it’s international airport really surprised myself. I found that the airport is quite modern, very clean and brightly lighted. That’s contrary to our expectations. Immigration officials are quite friendly. Security is tight and quite obvious with so many security guards and policemen standing around. However it’s not an intimidating view to visitors, not even close. We did not see anyone holding any big guns or anything like that. They are not looking and starring at us like we are some suspecting terrorist.

A little cute sniffing dog sniffed one of our bag and then just sat in front of one of the bag. The policemen who were walking with the dog politely ask us to open the bag and inspected the bag. They asked if we were bringing in any fruits. We told them no because we did not bring fruits. Unfortunately, the same bag was again, being inspected after it went through the scanning device. Again, we were asked if we had fruits in the bag. We think Prianka’s ‘Fruit Loops’ candies actually generated the false alarm

The bus ride from the airport to our hotel took about 1 hour and 30 minutes. We are staying at Fu’ An Palace (Fuan Gong) Hotel. It’s one of the four five star hotel situated within the new Grand Epoch City. I’ll write about the hotel and the city on my next post. For now, it’s time to go to sleep

Picture albums for this part of the trip is here: http://daudfam.net/v/2008/Beijing2008Olympic/Day1LeavingforBeijing/