Whenever you think all is going smoothly, guess again, because something will probably go wrong.
THE HUBEI COUNTRYSIDE, AS SEEN FROM THE CHAMP MOJO BUS.
Case in point.
We disembarked from our Yangtze River cruise vessel at 7:00 am sharp and were on the bus and heading east across Hubei province to Wuhan by 7:30.
So far, so good.
MOJO BUS MAYHEM.
While everyone slept or relaxed on the Mojo bus, I sat up front and read Hessler’s Country Driving and watched the rural Hubei landscape slip past. More than ½ of China still lives in the countryside, and the miles and miles of farms and fields are testament to China’s roots as an agricultural civilization, even with today’s exploding economic growth in the eastern cities.
Then it occurred to me.
I better confirm our Beijing hotel rooms at the Junguo Garden hotel for tonight.
I asked Linda, our fabulous Wuhan-based tour guide, to call the hotel.
Sure enough, the hotel had NO ROOMS booked for us in Beijing for tonight. Or for the next two nights.
WTF?
Very bu hao.
Planet China strikes again.
Linda and I called Steve, who agreed to help us find another Bejing hotel, and I ran our travel budget numbers to see how much money we had to spend.
I confess to being a bit concerned.
Not having a hotel in Beijing for all 21 of our travelers for the next 3 nights would certainly put a damper on the trip.
Extreme understatement.
We then learned that the CRP was holding a big national meeting in Beijing and were commandeering all available hotels in the downtown area for their wingding.
Aha.
I don’t suppose we could bunk in Beijing with Hu Jintao?
The CRP now owes us a favor – not sure we can cash in on that guanxi.
Good news.
Huge Xie Xie’s to Steve Wilmarth (yet again) and his In-China team for finding us another hotel – the Green Tree Inn – by the time we arrived in Wuhan for lunch in the Hancou district of the city. We wire transferred 500 RMB to ensure that we actually had the hotel rooms for the night, and then my heart rate slowed.
MOJO A'PHOTO.
MOJO'ER MAX GETS REVOLUTIONARY WITH SOME CRP ART IN DOWNTOWN WUHAN.
After a hilarious epic Bank of China money exchange dance, in which our awesome Mojo’er Andrew Chung and I cashed 21 different piles of Mojo spending money, he doling out the funds and me running them out of the bank to each individual Mojo member, we headed to Wuhan airport by bus for our flight back to Beijing, saying good-bye to our awesome tour guide Linda, who had proved so helpful and accommodating to us the past several days while we were in Wuhan.
MOJO - GOODBYE WUHAN, ON TO BEIJING!
And one last adventure – when we arrived at the Beijing airport and claimed our bags by 10:30 pm, we learned that the airport train (which we were told ran all night) only ran until 11:00.
RIDING THE BEIJING AIRPORT TRAIN LATE NIGHT.
Sprinting onto the train, we literally caught the last run into Beijing for the night, and then had to hop 6 cabs at the Dongzhemen station one last leg to our hotel. Again, thanks to Andrew, who led the negotiations with our aggressive cabbies, we made it intact to the Green Tree Inn by midnight, completely fried after a full day of epic travel on Planet China.
But we had hotel rooms.
Wen Hao.
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