Chengdu Trip #4 - Chengdu

I'm back in Chengdu and it's freezing. I'm pretty much wearing my ski jacket everywhere, even in the office. Even though I'm cold, the weather is actually warmer than a few weeks ago so there's less demand on electricity which means the power is back on in the factory.

The weather during our last day in Sanya was rainy again. Regardless, I still went to the beach in the morning and waded a bit in the ocean. I haven't been in ocean water for awhile, even though I live in Southern California, so I don't know if it's normal that my skin was all sticky after I got out of the water. Even though the Crowne Plaza hotel is not right on the beach, they have a small private section next to the public beach so at least I was able to get towels and stuff. The beach was actually pretty crowded but there were very few people in the water.


More appropriate beach attire... although it was raining. She was the only non-Chinese person on the beach, and the only one in a bikini.


The only other person in the water during the rain

Anyway, I checked out of the hotel at 2pm and basically sat around until 7:30pm when they picked us up to go back to the airport. The airport in Sanya is pretty small, about the size of John Wayne Airport back home. There were a lot of people departing so it took forever to get through security. Usually if you set off the metal detector (belt buckle this time), they use a wand to check you. This time, the lady at the security gate also used her hand in addition to the wand... weird.

The flight back to Chengdu was delayed for an hour since they didn't have a plane available. When the plane did show up, an Airbus A320, it was a different type then originally scheduled so the seat numbers were all different. Some people's boarding passes were for row 33 when there were only 30 rows in the plane. There were still passengers standing in the aisle when the plane was leaving the gate so the flight attendants told everyone to just grab any available seat. I ended up next to an old lady carrying two huge bags; I helped stow one for her under the seat in front of me so she could put her legs down. She tried talking to me a couple of times but I couldn't understand her accent/dialect at all.


Lots of Chinese tourists on the beach


Crowne Plaza's beach bar


In addition to the regular hotel rooms, the Crowne Plaza also had villa and townhouses on-site.


Lotus flower


Some Engrish at the Sanya airport

Leon is arriving this afternoon so it's back to work... :)