So, we kissed Lizzie goodbye, and left with the kids to the airport.
This was the itinerary that I had planned.
15/12/09 – fly to Beijing, connect 2100hrs flight to Yanji, take a 2hour cab ride to Hunchun, reach there about midnight.
16/12/09 & 17/12/09 – business trip in Hunchun.
17/12/09 – take a overnight train ride of 10hours, from Tumen to Harbin, I had planned this to let Daddy, Donald and Toria experience an overnight train journey.
18/12/09 & 19/12/09 – Harbin
19/12/09 – flight from Harbin to Beijing, check into a Courtyard style hotel
20/12/09 – 22/12/09 – 3 days in Beijing
22/12/09 – take a red-eye flight back to SG, arriving on 23/12/09.
So let’s see how this trip works out…
Daddy is a PPS club member, so we all went to the krisflyer lounge to have breakfast.
We took a morning flight, so the kids were wide awake, and enjoy watching the inflight entertainment.
We reached the Beijing Airport in the afternoon, but our flight to Yanji was late at night, about 9ish, so we had a long wait. Meantime, I tried to buy tickets from Harbin to Beijing, thinking that buying over the counter was cheaper, but it wasn’t! It was cheaper on www.ctrip.com.cn, so I called them, and ordered the tickets over the phone, and waited till 6pm for the tickets to be delivered to us at the airport.
Meantime, we waited at Burger King. Daddy was busy with his conference calls, so I used my laptop to touch up some pictures. Before we embarked on this trip, we had foreseen that there will be alot of waiting time, so we bought 2 sets of Nintendo DS Lite, 1 for each kid, to keep them entertained. Then Daddy realised that it was much cheaper in Holiday Plaza, so he got me a set too. He himself had a PSP.
Well, I must say that the Nintendo was a life saver. Imagine 2 whiny kids driving you nuts for 7hours??? With the nintendo, they were well entertained. 
Even Daddy agreed it was a good buy. But I had to figure out how to “control” the usage of it, cos I had seen the “bad” side of it… kids playing games while waiting for food at a restaurant, parents looking bored cos the kids were pre-occupied. I personally don’t like that, and don’t wish my kids to turn out this way… so parental control is a must…
Beijing Airport had the kiddy push trolleys! Wow! The kids were so excited! So we were pushing them here and there, really fast, doing “drifting”! Toria’s hair was getting all static, standing up and sticking to the roof of the car-trolley! Hilarious!
So by the time we got on the flight to Yanji, they knocked out. Didn’t even budge for landing and take off. Normally, Toria would experience quite severe ear disturbance, being unable to equalize… I wonder why…
When we reached Yanji, it was SUPER COLD! It was -17deg c! We were trying to locate the cab that we had booked, so walking around at night in the cold was no joke. The kids were struggling, I could see. Anyway, we were glad to finally reach my Dad’s house at nearly midnight, we all just plopped into bed and called it a night.
