Thursday, December 23, 2010

Delay in Quiyang

We were suppose to leave Quiyang at 6:45pm on Friday.  By 6:20pm everyone was on the plane, seated with all luggage stowed.   I was impressed, thinking we would be leaving on time.  Shortly after 7pm the crew began serving supper..not a good sign.  After sitting on a stifling hot, smelly, and crowded plane for an hour and a half we were told to gather all our things and leave the plane.    Our flight was delayed "due to air traffic congestion in Beijing".  (Later we discovered that part of the roof at the Beijing airport had been torn off due to strong winds.)  We managed to get both girls to sleep...and continued to wait...

After a 5 and 3/4 hour delay we were finally able to leave Quiyang!  I was very happy and exhausted!  As beautiful as Quiyang was, I was ready to leave.  To have some less spicy food and begin the last stretch of our stay in China.
We arrived at our hotel around 4 am only to discover we had a very tiny and disgustingly dirty room.  The throw pillows were sticky and slimy, the floor was stained and dirty and the light switches were broken.  The room was very hot and the fan did not work properly, thus no way to cool the room.  The next morning we requested a new room.  The new room was bigger and a little cleaner (I have come to appreciate the cleanliness of home).  However, it didn't take long to discover that our Internet outlet was not working.  We did not want to move again, so we decided to give up on trying to email and Skype.  Instead we continued to call home.
For the next 3 nights we tolerated the loud noise of a jackhammer breaking up concrete right below our room.  It is illegal to work at night, but nothing was done about the noise even though we complained.  Finally, we decided to switch rooms again...what a challenge it was!  The third room I looked at was finally OK.  The first was too small, the second the fan didn't work...it was 30 degrees Celsius in the room!  By this time we were more than ready to go home!

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