Mar 24, 2005 - Day 261 in Chongqing, China

Sarah writes: Flying out of Kunming has presented several problems for us. This time the plane boarded and de-boarded two times before they said that the plane would not take off after all. During this debacle, we met an interesting Australian man who was some kind of foreign security expert who has been to 92 countries. One minute he was talking about the nude beaches in Australia and then next he was saying we could call his international cell phone with an emergency any time. We did not know what to make of him but he gave us some great travel advice. Eventually our plane took off and we landed in Chongqing where we faced some of our most significant language barriers. It took the first hotel we visited over one hour to communicate that they don¡¯t take credit cards for the deposit. The second hotel was very clean and nice however a funny thing happened. A young Chinese maid came to the door to clean the room and Charles happened to open the door as she was turning the handle. When she saw him and his red-beard she screamed at the top of her lungs and ran down the hallway. Two minutes later the housekeeping captain was at our door with two face towels. Behind her, the maid who ran from Charles was standing shaking and wiping away her tears. Charles made me come to the door in an attempt to de-vilify him. The puffy-eyed little maid started to calm down enough to wave to me but I have a feeling the red beard will reappear in her nightmares.