Service experiences......

Wow, I think I am getting spoiled (kinda).

Going thru security at the Shanghai domestic airport - Hong Qiao, everyone needs to have ID cards of some sort; you know, movement to be tracked. The security guards were so polite! They smiled and greeted you; then received your ID card and boarding pass with BOTH hands!!! After couple stamps and electronically captured your face et al, your ID card and the boarding pass were handed back to your BOTH Hands!!!! Then, when I went thru the security, the Chinese adopted the US no liquid rule. However, I asked if I could bring along my bottled water; well, he smiled and opened the lid; using his right hand, he made a wave motion to draw out the air inside the bottle to check. That was it. I walked thru with my water; no fuss, no heighten panic... Quick and simple.

Then at the Beijing airport today, we discovered there was an earlier flight with a different airline back to Shanghai; being Audrey, she wanted to hurry; so we changed our flight to a different airline with NO fee penalty!!! How odd was that!!!!! And on top of that, we had the airline's employee escorted us thru a "special" line. No queue. You know, we still had 35 minutes before boarding; but nonetheless, we went thru the no queue line.

Now, that's big cities for you though; when we were at the Great Wall; things were a bit dicy. Well, different standard of education as well as training. At the Great Wall (Simatai section), we kept getting harassed if we had pay our room, or a pass to the gate; well, #1, there was no gate, #2, there was no lobby to check-in. In order to do both payments, we had to get to the hotel restaurant and asked. I believe Miss Audrey was getting "pissed" of being harassed; after an "exchange" with the staff (still a bit foreign to me at this time), she had "provided" improvement of the way things run - logistically. I believed the staff/employees around the wall, the hotel and the restaurants were from surrounding villages that had no formal business organizational knowledge. Thus the poor service.