10/14/2025 – Welcome to Communist China
We got up in the morning, had breakfast and were off to the airport to catch our flight to Beijing, the capitol of mainland China. This will be our first time visiting a communist country, so we are interested in seeing how things are different. We had originally obtained our tourist visas to enter China back in 2019 when we were planning our Round-the-World trip, which was aborted due to COVID. Fortunately, we had obtained 10-year visas back then, so they are still valid today.
Things at the airport in Hong Kong went well, with no issues getting through security and boarding the plane. We arrived in Beijing on time and the process of going through the immigration process, getting our luggage, and getting through customs went very smoothly and efficiently. The only minor issue was the dates on our visas. Because the visas were attached to our passports 6 years ago, the dates were not as pristine and clear as they were originally. But that hiccup only delayed us by a minute. Then, we were met by our driver at the terminal exit and he whisked us away to our hotel. We met up with our guide at the Doubletree by Hilton who helped us check in and gave us the low down for tomorrow. We dropped our bags off in our well-appointed room and went in search of din din.
Finding a place to eat is always tricky for us when we travel due to Kathy’s allergies to shellfish. We decided to play it safe and easy our first night and went to the attached mall to look for food. We weren’t hungry enough to try the buffet at the hotel. Taco Bell doesn’t serve a whole lot of shellfish, so we started there. A little language barrier was resolved quickly and we ordered some good ole tacos. Paying in China is going to be a pain point! Many places to do accept credit cards and we had left our cash with our passports in the hotel room. But – we had planned for this and had downloaded both AliPay and WeChat onto our phones, after researching about it online. Unfortunately, we were not able to get either app to work. Even the nice young lady at Taco Bell couldn’t get it to work. Best laid plans…
Back to the hotel we went and bellied up to the buffet. Instead of the $8 USD dinner we had hoped for, we ended up with a $75 USD dinner. “Eat up!” Kathy implored, “We are getting our money’s worth from this meal!” Dave tried some German pork, German potato dumplings, and some German potato pancakes. You can take a Bauer out of Bavaria, but you can’t take the Bavarian out of Bauer. Of course, sometimes you can’t take a German dish out of Bavaria, either. We don’t know why, but the potato pancakes tasted like orange peel! Do oranges even grow in Germany?? But, the dinner was very good, and the desserts even better. Fat, dumb, and happy, we retired to our room satiated.
Back at the room, we tried the wifi. Google does not work in China. That means no kathyanddave.com, no Bills or Sabres updates, and no Gmail! Our first communist snag! Oh, well, tomorrow is another day.