We have landed! China Part 1

So the beauty reviews will have to wait a little longer. As I start to recall our trip to China so many other details are flooding my mind that I can't even concentrate on beauty products. Please be patient and come back soon for the reviews very soon...For now please find the first part of our trip to China below, it's choppy but I didn't want to keep you all waiting.

Wednesday, June 8. 12 am (PST) Fly from LAX to TEI (Taipei, Taiwan)

·        Economy plus 14-hour flight – Get dinner and fall asleep for about 6 hours. Try one of my masks on the plane, works fine but ends up spilling into my things inside my purse.

We arrive in Taipei at 9:30 am Thursday (6:30 pm Wed. PST).  

o   Very clean airport, high-end stores everywhere

o   Little English is heard or read but most airport personnel speak English.

o   Take tons of pictures with funny cartoons

(Taipei International Airport)

  Arrive in Shanghai Pudong International Airport around 12:30 pm.

o   Immediately feel so unprepared! My phone doesn’t work!!!! Find an ATM and lady tries to get us a cab, we ask her for help with hotel shuttle, she says no shuttle. I get phone service and call the Shanghai Pearl Hotel and their staff speaks very broken English but is able to tell us that in fact there is a shuttle and that it should be there in about 15 minutes. We wait and nothing! So I have the bright idea to go to the departure floor (3^rd floor) since I didn’t see any hotel shuttles where we are currently standing. Eventually, I realize that in fact, they are on the 1^st floor where we initially were standing. Take the escalator back down with our 3 suitcases, backpack and my 15 lbs. handbag.  On our way down, we both are exhausted and starting to get a bit grumpy when a man in a white button shirt and tie approaches us and asked us something in Chinese. After the cab offer earlier we think it’s another cab driver so we say no and keep walking. Finally, I see the hotel shuttle and we hurry to the small bus. As we get in I remember that the front desk said to that the driver would be wearing a white shirt and it hits me, we just ignored our shuttle driver! We turn back and sure enough he’s on his way to the bus. We apologize in English and repeat the only Chinese we know at this point, xie, xie, xie, xie (thank you).

·         Arrive at Shanghai Pearl Hotel

o   We are exhausted! Joe goes to bed and falls asleep for a couple hours. I am too enthralled in a book I started reading on the plane, “The Distance Between Us: A Memoir” by Reyna Grande (great book btw about a fellow Mexican raised in Northeast LA!) that I stay up reading. Once Joe wakes up I am like a little girl on Christmas morning, too damn excited to stay in a hotel room and I suggest we check out the downtown Shanghai scene. We ask our front desk staff for a cab but decide on using Uber, since we are able to pick up some data at the hotel. Our Uber driver doesn’t speak any English but we are able to communicate through the map and our final destination. 

o   We arrive at the Nanjing Road and instantly I am in awe! I can’t believe this girl from East L.A., ASU Sun Devil, Texas and Kansas living military spouse is in China! As we walk down busy boulevard which I describe as the Las Vegas + New York on steroids of China, we both feel a tremendous amount of excitement and I will admit some fear about the alien world we have just landed on.

To be continued...