Instead, it will be Beijing - high-priced, polluted and tension-riddled.

But then again, they’re not searching for their own storybook ending. They are following their son, who has chased his dream to the Far East.

After months of planning and headaches, Temple’s Mike and Darlene Hazle are booked for a trip to Beijing, where they’ll watch their only son - a former multi-sport standout at Temple High also named Mike - compete for the United States in the javelin throw at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The journey will cost the Hazles about $22,000 and they’ve already encountered numerous obstacles, from overbooked flights to vaccinations.

“We had to get our visas and our shots. Now we’ve been vaccinated for typhoid and hepatitis A,” Mike Sr. said. “We’ve spent, it seems like, three days getting shots. My arm still hurts.”

Yes, the land down under would have been much more pain-free.

“We offered to go to Australia (in February) to see him compete,” Darlene explained. “We wanted to go to Australia, and it would not have been as costly, and we speak the language. We thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to watch him compete in a foreign country.”

“And we really wanted to go to Australia,” Mike Sr. interjected. “The money we’re spending on Beijing would buy us a lot of nice things.”

Their son, however, had a different point of view.

“When I e-mailed Michael about going to Australia,” Darlene said. “His e-mailed response was ‘Are you crazy?’”

So that was that. Mike Sr., a science teacher at Travis Middle School, and his wife, a vendor relations specialist for PDI, began in January to make plans for an August journey to China.

“We thought, ‘Hey, this will be a piece of cake,’” Mike Sr. recalled.

But the planning was anything but sweet.

The couple first checked with American Express, which had already sold all of its packages, leaving the Hazles to piece together the trip on their own.

Then the hope of flying non-stop and business class - “I wouldn’t have made it in a coach seat for that long,” Mike Sr. said - went out the window. Forced to choose between one or other, they opted for business class.

They’ll fly from Houston to San Francisco to Seoul, South Korea, to Beijing, with three-hour layovers at each stop to ensure they won’t miss a connection, for the price of about $12,000.

“We’ve heard so many stories from Michael about traveling abroad and flights being delayed that we didn’t want to miss any connecting flights,” Darlene said. “Because if we missed one flight, we would miss the Olympics. We’re going to spend a lot of time in airports, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

As for lodging, the first contact was a tour group recommended by USA Track and Field that mentioned nightly fees so high Darlene assumed something was wrong.

She checked with travel agencies in China, only to be informed that the Chinese government had booked 80 percent of the rooms in town.

“I still have an e-mail from China where a lady tells me that the only rooms she can get for us are $900 per night,” she said. “And that was in January.”

She finally found another tour group recommended by USA Track that could book some rooms. All she had to do was call and confirm as soon as her son officially qualified during the Olympic trials last month. The only catch was that the javelin finals were on the final day of the trials, making for some anxious moments.

“Many of the parents of the other athletes who had made the team had already confirmed their rooms through the same group, so we were a little worried,” Darlene said. “Luckily, it worked out.”

It worked out to the tune of six nights for $6,900.

With the major obstacles cleared, all that was left was smaller hurdles such as visas, vaccines, cell phone usage in China and deciding how to make it six days in a foreign culture.

“I’m going to have to learn to eat with those chopsticks, I guess,” Mike Sr. said before adding, “The deal is, we’re probably going to lose some weight.”

But his wife is prepared.

“Actually, I think I’m going to take some plastic silverware in our suitcase,” Darlene assured him.

They’ve watched a video that explains what the signs for concessions and mens and womens restrooms will look like, and they picked up another important piece of information.

“Supposedly, the hotels have some of the things that we’re used to,” Darlene said. “But if you’re not at the hotel, you have to have your own soap, your own hand sanitizer, your own tissues and your own toilet paper because they don’t stock those in public facilities.

“Sometimes I look at Mike and say, ‘We’re spending all this money and we won’t even have toilet paper.’”

The Hazles admitted they didn’t believe it would cost so much to make the trip.

“We’re getting ready to retire in a few years, and this was not on the budget,” Darlene stated.

Added Mike Sr.: “Our friends have said it all to us. They’ve said, ‘Great for you,’ and they’ve said, ‘You can’t do that.’”

But what has the person they are following to Beijing said?

“Them going is just as important as me going,” the younger Hazle said by phone from the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif. “It’s part of the whole thing. I couldn’t have done this without their understanding and patience.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why all three Hazles will be in Beijing.

“For all of the other ways we’ve supported Michael, it’s important that we be there for him,” Darlene said. “Because I think he views this as his payback to us for all that we’ve invested and supported him with.

“And so there are some things in which money doesn’t matter.”