As a result of a “fog-bound Beijing” 24 hour delay leaving London…
An Anticlimactic Start To My & Janie’s First Big Travel Adventure Together, 14 to 16 November 1993
…we only had one of the two scheduled days in Beijing, at the start of our 1993 China tour.
Never mind. Kuoni would try to squeeze as much into one day as is humanly possible…possibly more than that.
17th – Beijing – went to Tianenmen Square and Forbidden City in morning – then closonet factory – then lunch on the way to Great Wall – food slightly spicy this time but still more Cantonese style than Beijingese. Great Wall in afternoon – walked up a bit bought a rabbit skin hat on the way up for ¥10.7 (£1.30) – straight back for Peking Duck dinner. [indecipherable added note]. Mr Poll Tax explained how to complain about anything.
Ah, so the Peking Duck was the second night, not the first night…still, everything I wrote about the Peking Duck meal (and the Park Inn) still applies.
My abiding memory of getting ready to go out for that meal was Janie’s hairdryer moment. I don’t mean her chewing me out Alex Ferguson style – that sort of hairdryer moment would be more predictable than memorable – no, I mean the moment when Janie, who insisted on schlepping her own hairdryer half way around the world, plugged in said hairdryer and made an entire Holiday Inn’s electricity go “pop”.
OK, it is JUST possible that something else in the hotel made the electricity go pop at the precise moment that Janie flicked her hairdryer switch…but what are the chances of that happening?
I don’t think Janie dared try to use her hairdryer again until we got to Hong Kong.
The Thomas Edison Award for electrical cabling – the Holiday Inn Beijing
I don’t remember much about Mr Poll Tax but I suspect he was a seasoned, semi-professional complainer.
All the photos we took on that big day – just 17 between the two of us would you believe – in those days it was rolls of film and rationing our supplies – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:
