Our hosts work only a few metro stops away from where they live, and they invited us to come visit them at their start-up company. It's a really cute office: they have seven employees, divided into a design floor and a development (engineering) floor. The office has a humidifier running and a balcony (too hot to stand in) with base guitars - D plays the base. He met us at the station and bought us some local specialties for lunch: Shaanxi burgers and spicy noodle soup, which we brought up to eat at the office with the others. We'd already had the Shaanxi burgers on our way so didn't finish those. They are just like mini-shawarma: half-size pitas filled with shredded meat and fat.
D's start-up must have invested in a VPN or proxy outside China, because they can access the real Internet from there, including Google's line of products and Facebook. We giddily downloaded apps for our phones and Leia got her Facebook fix, setting back weeks of rehab.
After a couple of hours enjoying the Internet there, we returned to the apartment to finish packing our things, brushing our teeth, and headed to the airport for a cheap flight to Chengdu. No more overnight trains for us just yet! We'd looked up shuttle buses to the airport but W and D looked them up again for us in Chinese and wrote us a nearby address we could show to a cab to take us there. We got to the airport that way much faster and earlier than we needed to be there, hours before the check-in desks opened.
At the airport we had some Chinese food which was bad for our digestion, where we charged our devices and tried to write while the noise gave me a headache. Boarding was so quick we nearly missed it. The flight was less than two hours, but awfully uncomfortable with a stinky baby across the aisle. We still much preferred it to the train. As soon as we got our bags I took some medicine from our traveling pharmacy.
We fought with the Chinese over a taxi (we got taxi-jacked five times) that brought us swiftly to our hotel in the center of Chengdu around 0200. The 3-star room is extremely nice and we felt like the best-housed hobos around. They read my requests and put us in a room with the wireless router, so we get great signal.
D's start-up must have invested in a VPN or proxy outside China, because they can access the real Internet from there, including Google's line of products and Facebook. We giddily downloaded apps for our phones and Leia got her Facebook fix, setting back weeks of rehab.
After a couple of hours enjoying the Internet there, we returned to the apartment to finish packing our things, brushing our teeth, and headed to the airport for a cheap flight to Chengdu. No more overnight trains for us just yet! We'd looked up shuttle buses to the airport but W and D looked them up again for us in Chinese and wrote us a nearby address we could show to a cab to take us there. We got to the airport that way much faster and earlier than we needed to be there, hours before the check-in desks opened.
At the airport we had some Chinese food which was bad for our digestion, where we charged our devices and tried to write while the noise gave me a headache. Boarding was so quick we nearly missed it. The flight was less than two hours, but awfully uncomfortable with a stinky baby across the aisle. We still much preferred it to the train. As soon as we got our bags I took some medicine from our traveling pharmacy.
We fought with the Chinese over a taxi (we got taxi-jacked five times) that brought us swiftly to our hotel in the center of Chengdu around 0200. The 3-star room is extremely nice and we felt like the best-housed hobos around. They read my requests and put us in a room with the wireless router, so we get great signal.
No comments:
Post a Comment