July 4, 2024
Brief Beijing nostalgia, and just a few good views from the avia.
My Southeast Asian/Chinese business trip was drawing to a close…
Japan – done;
Hong Kong – done;
Beijing outskirts – done.
So far – so good: meetings, events, public speaking, plus the mandatory insertions of micro-tourism along the way – just how I like it.
Just before setting off back home – we had a night in central Beijing. And while there, in my hotel room, I came over all nostalgic…
// Brief digression: you see the clouds in the sky? You know what they mean? That the Beijing air has cleaned up its act. Respect! I wrote about this back in July of last year.
Now, where was I? Ah yes: nostalgia. I got all nostalgic when I saw out my hotel room window that Hilton over there. I stayed there, supped beer there, sipped whisky there, in… March 2002! ->
Now, 22 years ago, behind the Hilton – there was nothing at all to be seen in terms of buildings; all there was were fields. Today, well – see for yourself! ->
In the other direction there are still some older, lower-story apartment blocks:
And that, finally, was it for my China/Southeast Asia tour. Later, in the plane heading west the weather was so bad there was nothing to be seen at all out the window. Things started to clear up a bit when we were over Mongolia:
But even there the pics were spoiled somewhat by the filthy window:
Where this was I don’t know, but it’s still a wonderful view! ->
Once in Russian airspace the nice views disappeared again so we missed a sighting of Lake Baikal completely. Only somewhere over the Urals did visibility improve:
There’s Nizhny Novgorod ->
Here it’s more visible:
Not long later – and we were touching down in Moscow…
