On January 2, 2012, Marc and I went to Beijing for the very first time.  We had been to mainland China once before, but that was to Guangzhou in the south.  There was no denying I was excited to see China's capital.  I just never realized I would set foot in Beijing one day.  We took a very early morning flight from Manila on Air China.  We left our hotel in the Makati area at 4 am and arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport really early.  In fact the check in counters inside the airport had not opened yet when we arrived.

Much to our dismay, Air China had no trace of our reservations in their system. Despite a written copy of our reservation from United Airlines (We got the tickets on miles last May 2011.), the agent at the gate refused to check us in.  "How can that be?" we asked.  "How can a reservation made months in advance and confirmed by their partner airline not be honored?"  While we were the very first to check in that morning, we were the very last to board the plane.  Fortunately, they let us board anyway at the last minute and because of Marc's Million Miler status with United and the Star Alliance, we were upgraded to First Class, but only after so much protest and complaint.

The flight left at 6 am and arrived Beijing 5 hours later.  The flight was smooth and the food on board was quite good.  We originally planned on taking a cab from the airport to the Park Plaza Hotel.  The cab drivers though refused to take us since we had two big suitcases plus two in flight bags.  There was one cab driver who kept following us and offered to take us.  He had a van.  He had a list which showed the different prices he charged passengers from the airport to downtown Beijing Hotels.  When I saw his list, I couldn't believe my eyes.  He was going to charge us 550 yuan!  It was outrageous I said and we left.  I knew the cab fare from the airport to Beijing's city center was only going to cost 100 yuan.

By this time, Marc was already quite upset and was threatening to take the next flight back to the US.  We went to one information booth and one nice Chinese female employee gave us directions as to how to take the train from the airport and then transfer to the metro lines we needed to take.  Thus, roughly an hour after we landed, we took the train to downtown for 40 yuan per person instead.  We knew we had to schlep our huge suitcases on the metro but we had no choice.  The subway was modern but lacked escalators.  We literally had to carry our heavy luggage on several flights of stairs to get to the platform.  To cut the story short, after two transfers in very crowded stations, we arrived at our hotel safe and sound.

The check in at the Park Plaza was quick and pleasant.  The hotel lobby looked small but elegant.  We were given ginger tea which was a wonderful gesture.  We went to our 9th floor suite, freshened up and walked towards Wangfujing, Beijing's version of Tokyo's Ginza and New York's Fifth Avenue.

We checked out the Uniqlo store in one of the upscale malls along the famous avenue and then we had dinner at Ajisen Ramen.  The restaurant's locale looked very cool and chic.  All the customers were young and hip. Marc and I each had bowls of noodles and we were quite pleased with our food choices.  Shortly after dinner, we went sightseeing some more and just walked along the long stretch of Wangfujing.