Beijing Bloggery

My bag is packed, my briefcase is stuffed with snack crackers, individually packed 'wet wipe hand cleaners,'and other assorted stuff for a long, long flight. I leave tomorrow morning at 10:10 am and arrive in Tokyo at 2:45 pm on Tuesday, at which time according to my calculations the clocks in Dallas will be 11:45 pm on Monday night, which means the Dallas-Tokyo flight is about 13-1/2 hours long. After arriving in Tokyo, I hang around for about 4 hours and then fly to Beijing, arriving there at 9:20 pm Tuesday evening. Translated to Dallas time, that is 7:20 am on Tuesday (Beijing is 14 hours ahead of Dallas, Tokyo is 14.)

I plan to finally get around to reading The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, while in flight. Of course, if I am as smart as I ocassionally think I am, I will try to sleep as much as possible on the way to Tokyo so I can adjust more quickly when I get there. Maybe I'll stay up late tonight, try to sleep a few hours early in the flight, then try to adjust my internal clock to something approximating Beijing time. Then, of course, when I return home next weekend, it will be another bit of adjusting; I arrive back home at 9:30 am next Sunday morning.

As I was reading a bit this morning about taking taxis from the airport in Beijing to the city, I wondered how in the world a map printed in English (which is all I have) and a hotel address, also printed in English, will do me any good when I get into a taxi that's driven by someone who does not know any English...and I know no Chinese? Fortunately, I found a smart travel & tour company that had the good sense to produce the hotel name and address in Chinese, so I copied the file that contained the Chinese text image, pasted it into a Word document, and printed a copy. Now, I am feeling a bit more comfortable knowing I can explain where I want to go. But that little journey looking for a way to communicate my desired drop-off address made me think...why don't hotel companies that cater to international guests provide more assistance to their guests?

I searched the hotel web site, all in English, and found absolutely nothing with Chinese characters in it. All the instructions, including driving instructions from the airport, are in English. That doesn't help the visitor who cannot communicate to the Chinese taxi driver. In the U.S., we're guilty of the same thing. We are happy to accommodate international visitors, provided they speak and read English. Rarely are accommodations made for other languages. I listened recently to a speech by Paco Underhill, who commented on the fact that many European retailers will gladly accept payment for goods in their stores in any currency...Euros, dollars, Yuans, etc. They accommodate their guests; if a guest tries to pay for something in the U.S. with Euros or peso or some other 'odd' form of money, he or she is surrounded by store security brandishing weapons.

I hope the Chinese are accommodating to me, the uninitiated first-time traveler to Asia. Once I get to the hotel in Beijing, I will breathe a sigh of relief...assuming they have my room reservation.

With luck, I will have Internet access in my Beijing hotel. And, with luck, my new Blackberry Pearl will allow me to call back to the U.S. and receive calls from the U.S. and allow me to receive email. No doubt some of the other people from the U.S. who will also be there will have email and phone access, even if for any reason my email and phone service don't work.

Enough blogging. I'm excited about my trip, but wish my wife could come along with me. Travel is not nearly as satisfying without her presence as it is when she's with me.