Most people don’t realize that to fly to China you actually fly over the top of the world instead around the world because it’s a shorter distance. Below is a picture of the flight path. We flew straight up from Newark over Greenland, then over the top of Europe and Russia. When I fly back it will be day light and about 12 out of the 16 hours all you can see is snow and ice below us. I hope we don’t have to make any emergency landings!
Well I just arrived in Hong Kong. Its about ten at night here. Flying in at night is amazing the entire city is light up with all kinds of lights. I’ve been to New York City at night which was really awesome but it doesn’t compare to Hong Kong. When the plane was landing I could see the reflection of water below us. We were about 20 yards off the water and it looked like we were going to land in the water. Then all of a sudden the plane touches down on the runway. The runway literally ends in the water. The Hong Kong airport is actually a man made island. I couldn’t imagine the amount of dirt and stone they had to dump into the ocean for that.
The Hong Kong Airport is really awesome. Its easy to navigate and customs and immigration are a breeze. If you ever flown into the US you know how badly it sucks going through US immigration and customs. Sometimes it takes hours. I missed my connecting flight more than once. At the airport my driver was waiting for me in front of Starbucks with a sign that had my name on it. The place I am going is actually about an hour and half out of Hong Kong. We basically drove around the outside of Hong Kong on the way. I know I already said this but the lights were amazing!
For those of you that didn’t know, Hong Kong use to be a British providence until I think sometime in the early 90’s but then they had to give it back to China. They are considered to be China but they are still treated very much different. It’s easy to get into Hong Kong but it is much harder to get into mainland China. Crossing from Hong Kong into China we had to go through security again. They are very cautious about H1N1. So I was asked many questions about being sick and had to fill out some health paperwork. They even took my temperature. After that the car drives through a bath of some sort to sterilize the car from transporting any type of viruses into China. I should also mention that since Hong Kong was a British providence they drive on the left side of the road and then as soon as you cross over into main land China they drive on the right side of the road like in the US.
The driving is just like you see on TV or in those email forwards. Its pretty much every person for them selves. At one time we were on a one lane exit ramp but the cars were 3 or 4 wide. It is really crazy and you have to have some major balls to drive here. The last time I was here our taxi driver decided to take a short cut down a five wide one way street the wrong way. Needless to say we got in an accident. We got drilled by a BMW. Nobody got hurt but it was eye opening!! Some four way intersections do not have stop lights or stops signs. Its like a huge game of chicken. Whoever has the most guts makes it through first. The intersections that do have stop lights are pretty cool though. They all have counters that count down how long the light is going to be red or green.
It was about an hour and a half drive from the airport to our apartment in Shenzhen. Our apartment is located on the edge of a 216 hole golf course called Mission Hills. It takes about 45 minutes to get from one side of the golf course to the other. A lot of famous golfers have their own designed course there. There are huge billboards of Tiger, Jack, Phil and pretty much any other famous golfer. It is the largest golf course in the world. Most of the courses a regular person can even get on. They courses that you can get on cost about $200 for 9 holes. That’s outrageous especially for China. There are four huge club houses on the course. Check out the link below
http://www.missionhillschina.com/information-level/golf/clubhouses.aspx
It is actually cheaper for us to rent a 3 bedroom apartment here year around then get hotel rooms when ever we come over. It is definitely much nicer too. I got to our apartment at around 11:30 PM. Tracy, the guy from Minster, wanted to get a couple drinks. After 16 hours on a plane I was exhausted but a beer sure sounded good. The beer companies here were taken over by German beer companies during World War 2. So it is really good beer. Tracy, his very cute Asian girlfriend and I went to this hotel/bar/nightclub/casino/everything else. It was a very fancy hotel, like something you would see in Vegas. The bar was awesome. No guys worked there, only really cute girls wearing very provocative clothing. At bars in China the bartenders play drinking games with you. It is like liars poker but with dice. They are damn good at it too. I probably drank three or four beers to their one. Oh and when they are not playing drinking games with you they are dancing on the bar and on poles. I wish I could have taken pictures in there to make every guy I know jealous!! Also did I mention that they love white guys? They especially like blue eyes and blond hair because nobody in China has blue eyes and blond hair. I have the blue eyes thing going but my brown hair is still very rare. Don’t worry though I behaved. Damn morals of mine…
We got back from the bar at about 2am (which is 1pm in OH) and I had a call from Ohio. Evidently one of our customers in the US wanted to have a conference call. So needless to say I’m pretty drunk and haven’t slept in a long time but at the last minute the customer rescheduled to Monday. This customer is in California so the call was at 7:30am their time, 10:30am Ohio time and 11:30pm in China.
Day one is over, its bed time for me!!
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