VacAsian Day Eleven (Tuesday, 13 May, Beijing and Singapore)

Today we leave Beijing and Mainland China. Like every other day, it began with breakfast in the hotel, but this time, there were tearful goodbyes, heartfelt words of encouragement, and warm hugs all around. In the midst of packing and preparing to leave for Singapore, we called and responded to e-mails from many of our friends and family, concerned about us as the news of the Chengdu earthquake played out on the morning news in the US.

We said goodbye to Beijing, as our car took us to the brand new Terminal 3 at Beijing's Capital International Airport. Although we arrived at this terminal last week, it was far too late - and we were far too tired - to appreciate the beauty, style, and grandeur of this building, like so many other things in Beijing, built for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. While it's not "The Bird's Nest," it is a modern architectural marvel - presently, the largest airport terminal in the World - in its own right.

We narrowly escaped an international incident at check-in as we confounded virtually every Hong Kong Dragon Airlines employee (and ourselves) with the questions of how many bags we were each allowed for our flight to Singapore and/or how much of a weight allowance we each had. Ultimately, we checked six - yes, SIX: we did A LOT of shopping in Beijing - bags, and except for a minor hiccup related to our SIX BAGS during our connection in Hong Kong, our flights to Singapore were uneventful. Huey had the opportunity to sample more Asian CAKE during our Hong Kong layover, but the sub par carrot cake only mustered a HACS rating of 4.7. (Get in the game, Hong Kong International!) Fortunately, the meals (full lunch and dinner on each leg of our flight, respectively) were superb.

We arrived in Singapore at about 11:20 PM, and following an almost vaudevillian floor show in which we condensed the contents of our SIX BAGS in to four bags in the lobby of Singapore's Changi International Airport, we drove through beautiful Downtown Singapore to Novotel Clarke Quay (pronounced "key"), where we'll be staying until Saturday. By the time we made it to our room, we were both wide awake (and a bit gamey), so we showered and watched "Juno" on DVD before we fell asleep. In separate beds. Just like Lucy and Ricky.