Beijing - take 1

SO we had managed to get the University to re-arrange our flights to leave Dalian on the Friday, allowing us a day to look around Beijing before heading home on Sunday. On Friday morning we had a leaving ceremony at the University where we were all given certificates for completing the summer school, and grade sheets of how well we'd done in our classes (we had to write a mini-essay for our Chinese history class and had short Chinese speaking and written exams). We all said our goodbyes then headed off to the airport, arrived at the airport, and stayed at the airport for a very long time... No seriously, a very long time. Turns out the fog, that we had come to accept as part of Dalian, was particularly bad and holding up flights. Our flight kept getting delayed for longer and longer. I am so glad someone had cards because unless you're a fan of shopping for dried sea cucumber, Dalian airport holds very little entertainment. When we hit the 3 hour delay mark we were given a free dinner. After about 8 hours of waiting in the airport, our flight was cancelled. Finding negotiating new flights in Chinese very difficult, our trusty guide came to help us out. Unfortunately, getting 21 seats on a plane for the next day isn't easy so the only flight we could get was late in the evening.

Group nap at Dalian airport

In the mean time, our guide explained how to get to a hotel for the night. Although we ended up at the wrong hotel, we stayed there, which was great as our rooms were really big! It was a strange set-up though. The rooms had permanent beds then also camp-beds to fit more people in, and some rooms just had rows of recliners. We decided to have a look around, especially to find the spa, which we figured may provide some entertainment if we weren't leaving until 11pm the next day. We found the spa on the bottom floor and tried using our limited Chinese and their equally limited English to ask questions. However, the biggest barrier we had to overcome was constantly being told 'take your clothes off''! Turns out it was a naked spa and no matter how loud we tried to shout 'mingtian' (tomorrow), they couldn't understand that we didn't want to go in the spa there and then. Eventually, we just got in the lift and left.

Investigating the other floors, we found the lift couldn't stop at floor 4, so we took the stairs. We were greeting by the sight of a girl in a sailor costume and a couple of other people sat outside a door, from behind which loud music was coming. We tried to ask what was in there. We were told 'music and dancing'. Was it karaoke? no. Can we go in? 'take your clothes off''! We were offered lounge wear if we wanted to go in. Eventually they let us go in and sit at the back to watch, what appeared to be some kind of show. We had managed to walk in to some kind of Chinese gentleman's club. First, a girl in a rather see-through dress gave a dramatic dance with a parasol. But what happened next was very strange. The girl wheeled out a trolley of vivariums. She then put an entire snake in her mouth, then took it out. She then put a spider in her mouth, followed by a live iguana (just its head went in her mouth). She then danced around a bit, before removing the head of the flailing iguana and the spider. IT was truly bizarre.

The next day we got a telephone call to our room at 6am "leave you must leave". Then a knock at our door making us leave the room. We gathered in the lobby, confused and dazed to be told the hotel knew we wanted to get to Beijing and woke us up as there was a flight at 7am. However, there was not necessarily room on the flight, and getting to the airport at about ten minutes to, we missed it. However, we did managed to get on an earlier morning flight to Beijing, which was only delayed by an hour or so...