This article is about “how to get the cheapest lowest airfare to beijing” and “the A(H1N1) situation in Beijing”. You can find some useful information in it if you are planning your China vacations now.
A lot of people asked me how to get the cheapest lowest airfare to Beijing. I will recommend the web site – priceline dot com here. The most attractive thing about this web site is that you can “name your own price”. Sometimes you can get 40% off flights. (if you are lucky) Usually, you can only choose the date of the flight when you “name your own price” in priceline dot com. Here is what I got from it: “You may be required to travel during off-peak hours for this trip. Your trip may start anytime, midnight to midnight, on your travel dates. Your exact flights and times will be shown to you once your purchase is complete. Although we always look for non-stop flights first, priceline flights may make up to one connection each way.” I think this is why you can get very good deals on your flights from priceline dot com. But it is still a good choice for you if you are not very sensitive to the time of your flights. If you don’t wanna “name your own price” or are not satisfied with the flight time you can get from this “name your own price” function, you can use its regular “shop for discount travel” function.
I flew to Beijing on 05/08/2009. On 8:00 am, 05/11/2009, I received a phone call from the Chinese Malaria Control Center. They told me that there was a A(H1N1) patient in the plane I took to Beijing. It was the first A(H1N1) case in China. I won the lottery !! The people of the Malaria Control Center tried so hard to find my contact phone number. Two hours later, I took an ambulance with 2 “astronauts” to the Guomen Hotel of Beijing. When I got off from the ambulance, the nurse did a body temperature check for me. My body temperature was normal. I would be transfered to the Dianmen Hospital if I got a fever at that time.
I then got my room key from the front deck of the hotel. My room is not bad. (The Guomen Hotel is a 3 stars hotels in Beijing) When I unpacked all my luggages, I made a phone call to my parents. They didn’t know that I was receiving the A(H1N1) quarantine in Beijing. There were lots of people here in this hotel and I found out that it was the lunch time. I went to the restaurants then. It was a Chinese food buffet and I loved these delicious food. When I was in the U.S., the food problem is always bothering me. As a Chinese, I don’t like all the American food and the Chinese restaurants there are also serving the “American Chinese food”. They are not the real Chinese food.
After lunch, the nurse checked my body temperature again and sent my a basket of flowers. The flowers were beautiful, but I just wanna a good sleep. I was so tired. 30 minutes later, someone knocked at the door again. This time, it was the nurse sending me the fruits… 🙁
In the following 2 days, all I did was eating and sleeping. On the morning of 05/13/2009, I went to the yard of the hotel for a walk. It was ok for us to work out there. (we can not get out of this hotel for sure.) Some people were playing Tai Chi and others were jogging. I turned on my TV. Wow! All the news are about the A(H1N1) now. I saw the face of the A(H1N1) patient in TV. But he looked very unfamiliar. I didn’t remember seeing him in the plane. I was so bored here. I don’t like watching TV. I am the kind of people who can not live with the computer and Internet. If I knew it was so boring here, I would bring my laptop with me to this place. 🙂
I also met some American people here. They were much more bored than me in my point of view. There were only one English channel in TV and 2 English newspapers here. Maybe the food here was not delicious for them either. They might have some Chinese food in the U.S. . But what they could get here was the real Chinese food. It was so different with the Chinese food they had in the U.S.. The good thing here it that they could improve their Chinese and Tai Chi skills. 🙂