We went to Xui Shui market which was situated in an area near the embassies. By the way, one of the notable things of the sights here is that there is a Chinese guard standing outside of each of these embassies. And they stood at attention under the sun. Wow, I felt like I wanna become Mr. Bean and try to grab their attention!

After Xui Shui market, the Beijing Lufthansa Center and lunch, we were on our way to the airport. We reached there very early - I believe nearly 2pm. It was time to bid farewell to our Xiao Kuok and the bus driver. Unfortunately, I did not manage a proper goodbye to them as I wasn't aware that they would not be parking somewhere at the airport and send us off at the departure hall. By the time I realized that they would be going off for good, I was only grateful to have waved a very sincere goodbye to Xiao Kuok as fortunately he looked my way when the bus left.

I'm not sure about this trip whereby the beginning wasn't good and then the ending part was turning into an unexpected difficulty as well. We sensed problems were surfacing when 12 out of 24 of us were told by Mr. Wong to go ahead to the departure gate. Mr. Wong did not want to alarm us but we found out later that 12 of our names (include mom and me) were not in the flight list. He was arguing with the person in charge of the ticket counters but did not get any helpful results. He had to phone back to Malaysia's office to check and found that everything was in order. Add to the problem is that the ticket counter computer was down and they couldn't make a confirmation. What's worse was that the person in charge came and told us that Mr. Wong's agency was to be blamed and said he doesn't know nuts about anything. But Mr. Wong needn't worry because the rest of the tour members were friends (they live in the same neighbourhood) of his anyway. Mom and me had confidence in him, so despite the person in charge attempt to find fault in others, he made us despise him instead. As a person in charge, he should not be blaming others especially when the cause was still unknown. That gave us a bad impression in how things were managed over there.

According to Mr. Wong's theory, it was most likely that someone was trying to make some extra bucks by trying to put off our flight bookings in the hopes that we would bow down to them and give some 'under table' money to them in order to give us any tickets available. It was highly unlikely that something went wrong with our bookings as it doesn't make sense that half of us did not have problems at all. There were similar cases before - unfortunately we were the ones to encounter it again.

If we did not get on this flight, our next direct flight to Kuala Lumpur will only be until next week. Our next possible move was to go back by taking a flight to Japan and take a flight back to Malaysia from there. That would be on Friday, another two more days in Beijing!

To be real honest, I was the only person who doesn't mind staying back a few more days in Beijing - especially when I don't have any commitments to work then! That would give me opportunities to do what I haven't done in Beijing. However, the rest of the tour members weren't too happy if this arrangement was to happen. All of them had families to return to. Mom was afraid that she might fall ill during the wait - she didn't want that to happen. I didn't want that to happen either, so I also had to hope for the best which was to somehow attain any available seats on the airplane.

We waited from 3pm till 4pm. Pau Chu, one of the tour members told us not to start worry till 4pm as that's when they will close the counter to give away the boarding pass and by then we would know our fate - whether there are enough seats left for the rest of us. So everyone waited anxiously but calm as well. So, finally, the moment arrived and though the atmosphere seems that there wouldn't be any seats left, the opposite turned out. All of us got seats and we were so relieved - and still calm! That's cause we all walked coolly - no rushing to get pass to the airplane. Mr. Wong said to walk slowly and let them be the ones who are anxious as the airplane can't stay long as the "parking" lot was expensive.

We managed to hear the person-in-charge talked apologizingly to a gwailo on the way to the airplane saying something like sorry and there were overbookings which happened. Some kind of bias behaviour here - he didn't say sorry to us nor gave us assurance in helping in any manner.

So, I believe I had the opportunity to be the second last person to board on the airplane (the gwailo was behind). Cool - like I'm some kinda VIP and all have to wait for me before we can take off!

The rest of the tour members who got on earlier were relieved to see us as they were so worried that something had happened to us.

Well, we got seats at the back of the airplane - no complaints - at least we were on the plane.

We had to wait for 15 minutes as the air traffic was heavy as other planes were using the run way. The take off was smooth and again - lots to eat and drink on the plane. I even had a can of beer. Wanted to keep the blood running.

For the in-flight entertainment, I watched Stuart Little and tried another music channel. This time I found another favourite song (always liked those "soaring songs") by Jim Brickman, sung by Michelle Wright (I think - I really have bad memory - and you know what I have actually forgot the title of the song!!). I keep getting mixed up on the title as I always think it as "Greatest gift of all" where these lines were sung but there was another song with this title on the same channel. I think the song is "Your Love". Someone help me and my amazing memory.

I'm going to write roughly the same thing as the flight to Beijing. We touchdown at 11.45pm. Mom pinched me again. We made it back from China!!

Our flight was delayed by an hour. The bus had left with another tour group. So, the other members were scheduled to go back by vans again. As for my mom and I who were the only ones from Seremban town, Mr. Wong got us a KLIA limousine (the white Wiras with the obnoxious "turbans"). We thanked him for a wonderful trip and we thanked Mee Lan for sending us off as well.

Was back at our home sweet home at 1.30 am - the limo sped at 140km/h.