Guiyang Here We Come

Bruce the giant

The Sheraton in Guiyang

Roughing it in Guiyang

The lobby chandlier

A life of luxury

Lobby fountain and sculpture

Guiyang is no small village

The roundabout in the center of Guiyang

(This was taken from our room)

Sunday morning we met our original guide Laura in the lobby of our hotel and headed to the airport. We arrived there with no worries but then we began to worry as it was obvious that Laura was fairly young and inexperienced. She was unsure where to take us once we were there and asked us for our tickets. She then had a look of panic and started to make a cell phone call. Eventually, kind of by trial and error we made it to the right counter to check in for our flight on China Southern airlines. We made it through security and had some time to kill so we grabbed a cup of coffee and made our way to the gate. We got lots of looks in the gate area we were in because we were the only westerners and I was the only person wearing shorts as it was rather chilly. The gate was not your traditional one as we were all ushered out to a bus and then driven out to our plane on the tarmac. We were happy to see that it was a decent sized plane, actually a Boeing 737 to be exact. It took about 2.5 hours to get to Guiyang, but the flight was pretty uneventful. When we landed we made our way to the luggage claim and out into the terminal area. There we were met by our local guide Michael and a driver who welcomed us and then gave us a ride to our hotel. Guiyang is a big city by our standards with about 3.2 million people. Michael said we were staying at the Sheraton which is hands down the best hotel in the city. When we arrived it was obvious that in any part of the world this would be considered a 5 star hotel. Michael helped us check in and get to our room which had a beautiful view of the city. He then escorted us to a nearby Wal-mart which was only a couple blocks away but underground. It actually was under a beautiful city park and completely hidden to the eye (It would be nice if all Wal-marts were underground). Anyway this was not your typical Wal-mart environment as it was extremely overcrowded and not very clean. We picked up a few items and made a quick exit to our wonderful hotel. That evening the anticipation and some anxiety was beginning to build as we knew we were less than 24 hours from receiving Aubree.