Day 1. Fly to China

We had a long flight to China with two connection flights. Our first leg was United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong (11:50pm on June 18 - 5am on June 20). Our second leg was China Airlines to Beijing (10:30am - 1:55pm). Our final leg was China Airlines to Dunhuang (5:05 - 9:00pm) 

Hong Kong

We arrived at 5 am in Hong Kong airport. We got our luggage and got to the China Air customer service counter. It was too early and nobody was there. So we sat there and played with our phones. After 7am, shops at the airport were open and we had a nice breakfast. 

After 8am, one lady showed up at the customer service counter. I asked her whether she could issue our boarding pass, and she did. She told me that she was actually in charge of helping customers for multiple airlines at that counter. 

Beijing

We arrived at Beijing at about 2pm. I bought a SIMS card for ~$35 (250RMB) and put in my phone. The hotel in Dunhuang offered a free shuttle service for airport, which I had called to confirm on days before the trip. They told me at that time that I should give them a Chinese cell phone number when I had it. Now that I got my Chinese phone number, I called the hotel and shared the number with them so that the driver could contact me.

Dunhuang

Once our flight landed at Dunhuang, a lady from the shuttle service called me. We met with her afterwards and she took us to a parked van and went back to the airport to pick up other guests. Once she got all the guests, the driver started the shuttle and dropped off guests at different hotels.

The lady told us that they offer discount tickets to local shows with free transportation. The price was indeed better than what I saw on ctrip.com, so I bought two tickets to the show Dunhuang Celebration 敦煌盛典 for next day (578RMB, ~$80 total for two people). She said that the driver would come to our hotel and contact us before the show.

Our hotel was Dunhuang Zhongzhou International Hotel 敦煌中洲国际酒店. It was really nice. The welcome gift included a camel toy that Claire really liked.

Preparation before the trip 

Before the trip, I had booked all flights and hotels using ctrip.com, which is the same company as trip.com. I had installed (and tested working) apps like Alipay (payment), WeChat pay (payment), Meituan (to order food and other items for instant delivery), Amap (map), Baidu map (map), Didi (shared rides). 

I decided to pack light with 3 changes of clothes. Accordingly, I had chosen several hotels with free laundry service during our stay. In total, we only had two carry-on luggages. 

I had read the luggage rules for each flight at the time of booking. Several Chinese domestic flights were budget airlines and only allowed a purse as carry on, so we had to check in our luggages and pay in advance by weight. I had checked and recorded the weights of my luggages before we head to the airport.