20251007 Viking Gems of China and Japan Day 3 - Doha, Qatar to Beijing, China

Viking Gems of China and Japan Day 3 - We arrive in China

After getting a snack in the Qatar lounge in Doha, we moved to the lounge's outer area with more comfy seats and charging plugs to top off phones and laptops. With a couple of hours still to go until our flight, we had time to kill. 

The Qatar Airlines Business Class lounge here in Doha is enormous. There is an upper restaurant area with a buffet and an open bar. The lower area has a light bites area on one end and a ton of casual seating spread out through the middle area. It wasn't overwhelmed with travelers, so we thought it was very nice.

We've been in several business class lounges all over the world, and recently, every one we've been in has been a zoo. Montréal's lounges were almost standing room only. Istanbul's lounge is also huge and offers a ton of food. But wow, it was hard to navigate through there because of all the people. The Al Mourjan Business Class Lounge has been a pleasant surprise.

The next surprise was boarding. We boarded our very modern Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner via stairs. Yup, no jetway. The plane was parked out on the tarmack and a bunch of busses were used to transport everyone to the jet. We schlepped our carry-ons up the stairs and got settled in to Boeing's inferior (but still way better than coach) business class pods. They just aren't as comfortable or roomy as ones we've experienced on Airbus aircraft.

The flight was operated by XiamenAir, again, a bit of a step down. We've been spoiled with hundreds of in-flight movies choices, including new releases. Here we're XiamenAir's offering, not counting Chinese movies. Not much new.

Oh well, we made due for the 7.25-hour flight.

A little after 2 pm Beijing time, we started our approach into the airport.

The haze looked worse from the air than it was on the ground

Luggage retrieval and immigration went smoothly. We walked out of the secure area and found our  Viking rep waiting for us. We met another couple who are on this journey. As it turns out, they live in the Orlando area and were on all three flights with us. Funny how that works.

Our ride to the hotel was a Buick

The four of us, and our luggage all needed to fit in this vehicle. It didn't go well. Arlona was in the third row seat with two large bags. A small bag sat between the seats in the middle row and my backpack was between my knees.

The drive took almost 90 minutes in the crazy Beijing traffic.

We arrived at the Ritz-Carlton and got checked in.

We have full international phone coverage with our Verizon cell phone plan. As soon as we landed, I turned on the phone and immediately had coverage. I engaged my Nord VPN so I knew I could access services at home like Facebook and Google. All was right with the digital world.

Then, we got to the hotel. Like we always do, we turned on Wi-Fi and joined the MarriottBonvoy network without issue. Well, there was one issue. We couldn't do anything online. OK, we expected that since China locks down the internet. I turned NordVPN on and...nothing. it couldn't connect to a VPN server. After doing a little investigating, it appears that the hotel's network blocks VPN traffic. This means the Wi-Fi is useless.

So what, right? Well, not if you write a blog. Without my laptop to process photos, doing the blog while we're in China is going to be a challenge.

Trying to use the desktop interface from a tiny phone screen, and without a mouse and all it's clicky goodness is already proving to be difficult.

Having to process photos on my laptop and then transfer them to my phone so I can include them in the blog is another hurdle. Perhaps it will be different in the next hotel. But, if I lose cellular data, I'm dead in the water.

So, we will see how it goes. Don't get too mad if there gaps in travel coverage until I get clean internet access.

We settled in into the room. It is a pleasure staying in a hotel civilized enough to have a bidet.

Ahh, the simple pleasures

Of course, you can't drink the tap water, so I guess it's all about tradeoffs.

A little later,  wandered across the street to a shopping mall. There was a huge food court, but we couldn't make sense of what everything was. Couple that with the fact that the exhaustion from this marathon trip started landing in earnest and we weren't feeling adventurous. We came back to the hotel and got club sandwiches for dinner.

The weather today was lovely in Beijing. Partly cloudy and temps in the 70s. Tomorrow looks like 60s and rain and it goes downhill from there. Tomorrow at 10:30, we will go on a tour that will take us to Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square. Our real adventure begins then.

China is our 109th country.