A Visit To The Motherland

For the past few years, I’ve wanted to travel with my mom to China. The reasons were threefold:

1. For her to see how much China’s changed since she immigrated to Canada in the 70s.
2. For me to see where my ancestors came from.
3. For us to bond with some mother-daughter traveling-style.

The Air Canada red-eye flight to Beijing would take just over 11 1/2 hours and we would arrive just after midnight local time. So I made sure to try to sleep as much as possible on the plane, as the tour would start the very same morning we get there.

In my years of traveling, I’ve learned you got to just roll with the punches, as there’d inevitably be hiccups along the way. Like not getting the vegetarian dinner as I requested.

And as I thought I’d just be filling up on nothing but just dinner rolls and dessert until breakfast many hours later, the flight attendant surprised me with a meal from first class – seared ahi tuna on a bed of greens. On a plate. With silverware!

I felt so classy while all the other passengers around me were shovelling down chicken and pork dinners with their plastic utensils. Thank you, Air Canada!

The challenge with traveling with my mom was that she’s scared to fly. Like bordering on white-knuckle levels. But she did great on this nearly 12 hour flight. And she did get a bit of rest too.

And it’s always tempting on these long haul flights to not sleep, as there were recently released movies being offered. Good thing my mom did not see me watch White House Down. Judge away, but I like Roland Emmerich/disaster movies.

I was somewhat surprised the powers-that-be decided that this movie was alright to play on a plane. I’m talking about the scene where Air Force One is shot down from the sky.

Although it doesn’t bother me, I can’t imagine this is reassuring for those who are phobic about flying?

Upon landing, we met up with our tour guide, Jeff from Amber Holidays and were transferred via bus to Maya Island Hotel, a hop, skip and 45+ mins ride away. (at least that’s what it felt like at 1am)

By the time we got settled in, we would have less than 4 hours of sleep before meeting our tour group in the lobby. Jetlag, be damned — adventure awaits!