About the Buyer

Dino's Travel Blog

China - Airport Nightmare

Sat August 1, 1998

THE LAND OF THE HORKERS AND SLURPERS:

As I sit here in my room in wet and rainy Bali listening to the hard rain and thunder, smoking my Indonesian clove cigarette.

I’m pondering about my recent two week visit China and think to myself that I should write about my stories and observations before I forget, because I know that the longer I wait the more it becomes a blur.

I guess this could be classified somewhat as a diary, one that I know I will share with my family and friends worldwide.

This is a bit long, so if you don’t have the time right now then come back to it when you do.

When I started traveling through South East Asia over two years ago I used to always write about my traveling adventures and since I’ve been back more than once it just didn’t seem so much like a novelty anymore; but hey, who’s kidding who here, these places are still foreign to most of us and still very exciting for me.

Now visiting China is new to me and quite an eye opener. Are you wondering why I called it “The Land of the Horkers and Slurpers “? Well I’ll get into that a little later; let’s just say these were prominent noises heard in the restaurants and on the streets.

First off let me talk about my first day in Shanghai, in hindsight it’s actually a funny story! .

After a long flight as you can imagine, I was feeling jet lagged exhaustion and straight to bed I went. I was to catch a fairly early flight out to a city where my furniture contacts were just a short flight away.

Shanghai has 2 airports, one in the suburbs known as Pudong and the other one who’s name escapes me, it is only a half an hour away from downtown. So since my ticket only indicates the Pudong name as the airport, I obviously confidently head out there only to find out that I’m at the wrong airport, oops!

Too late to catch my flight, the lovely airline worker at the counter assures me that she could get me on another flight with a different airline at this airport and does something administratively to my ticket and off I rush to check in. After the manager inspects my ticket and checks with authorities on her walkie-talkie she tells me that they cannot honor this ticket since it was issued by a different airline. After what seemed to be a long protocol check she assures me that the only way I could now catch this flight is if I buy another ticket and ask for a refund on my original ticket in Canada.

Well I didn’t have that many choices and since I had one of my suppliers meeting me at the other end I decided to ‘bite the bullet’ and buy the damn ticket!

So I check in my luggage and with boarding card in hand I rush off to customs and realize that I need my passport; I insist that this is a domestic flight as if they don’t know. Now this wouldn’t normally be a problem, however since this was a domestic flight, I had stored my passport safely and confidently in my checked luggage that just got loaded on the plane! Yikes!

So I rush back to the check in counter and of course it’s closed and there’s nobody in sight! Finally after what seemed like eternity, they find the manager, who quietly assures me in her own way that there’s no hope in hell that I’m making this flight. Crap!! They eventually show up with my sad luggage to a sad owner, and they refund my ticket.

Well that’s just great, but now what?

So how many people do you know that missed 2 flights in the same morning?

Ok. Dino, take a deep breath and think Zen…what are my options?

Well first I should call my supplier’s cell phone and tell him what’s up. Unfortunately all the pay phones operate exclusively with a phone card and at 8:30 am I can’t even buy one!

Eventually a card is purchased, but for some reason I can’t get through and I’m getting an automated message but I don’t speak or understand Chinese or Mandarin (whatever!).

So I’m trying to get the lesson here but without a drop of coffee in my system, my brain ain’t kickin’ in too swiftly. However my stomach was awake and there’s nothing like a good bowl of Chinese noodle soup for breakfast to re-group my thoughts!

As I’m waiting for my soup to arrive all I can hear around me is ‘slurping’; a slurp here and a slurp there…women and men alike are all slurping up their soups!

“Oh man, it’s way too early for me to be listening to this right now!”

So I drag the waitress off to the pay phone with me and after re-dialing the phone # again, she translates the stupid recorded message and tells me I have to dial ‘0’ before the #, who knew? (She obviously did). I finally get a hold of my supplier and inform him of my dilemma.

So I start asking around about my options and it’s either a really long and expensive taxi , boat or train ride or I wait and get the early evening flight. I wasn’t really all that excited about spending a whole day in the airport although it is impeccably clean and organized; I mean the floors are cleaner than any kitchen counter I’ve ever seen, well at least mine anyway.

Now if I’m going to spend a whole day in the airport then I’d want to do it in comfort, like in a VIP lounge where I can use my computer, check my e-mail and eat and drink for free, but how?

Since I now had soup and especially coffee, my brain was working on a scheme…

So I’m thinking …… if I got a refund so easily on my last flight missed, then why couldn’t I buy a ticket on the next available flight out to any destination where I can book first class, casually use their lounge, intentionally miss my flight and get a refund back on my unused ticket? Sounds like a viable idea, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work?

So that’s exactly what I did!

“ Hum, excuse me, but can I buy a ticket to…”

“Where? Well anywhere…” as I scope out the board, “well umm, what about that place?”

So I checked in my luggage in one of those luggage lock up places and check in like normal with only carry on luggage. With my boarding card and passport in hand I strutted through to the first class lounge, which ended up being bogus after all, and their Internet computer was broken, however it was better than being out there in ‘airport people land…’

The hardest part was listening to the loud repeated calling out of the final boarding calls, and eventually looking for my seat as I was casually eating lunch (who me?).

Well I obviously couldn’t go back to the lounge at this point.

So after my flight was long gone, I proceeded to get a refund on my ticket with an unexpected but well deserved 20% fee charge.

So when I finally did the legitimate check in procedure, I managed to sneak myself back to the lounge based on familiarity. Those customs officer’s must of wondered what the hell I was doing, mind you so was I at times!

I finally made it to my destination. Whew!

Until next time au revoir, and a la procaine… Dino.