Saturday Oct 13 was a long travel day for me. Sydney to Beijing, 15-1/2 hours from take-off to final touchdown, two flight legs on China Southern Airlines.
Up at 5:30am to get a 6:30 cab and be way too early at the airport.
First flight was Sydney to Guangzhou (what we used to call Canton). That was the long segment, almost 9 hours. The seating configuration was 2-4-2, I got lucky and had a window/aisle row to myself. So room to stretch out, easy to pop up and down but no getting whacked by carts and passengers in the aisle.
The transit through Guangzhou was ... an adventure. Huge spread out airport from what I could tell. I cleared through customs there. Three separate forms filled out, three separate queues, none of them excessively long waits but it all added up. Then an interminable wait for the luggage.
I hadn't been paying close attention to the time as my schedule said I'd have 3 hours in Guangzhou. But at the transfer counter where I had to recheck luggage for the flight to Beijing, the agent got very excited. Her English was good enough to make me understand that I had to hurry but not good enough for me to understand just where to go! Turns out that I had 15 minutes before my flight would board. I was tired and a bit disoriented and just not "getting it".
Finally one of the young guys handling luggage grabbed my backpack, motioned for me to follow and took off at a trot through the terminal. They had been trying to get me to follow another young guy in a sort of bellman uniform. Turns out he drove the cart (which cost me $US2 to ride!).
After a bit of hurry up and wait we ended up with a full cart of mostly Chinese passengers and headed off through a maze of empty walkways. After a 10 minute drive from the A terminal he dropped us at the B terminal. Up the stairs, through security, down the stairs just in time to join the end of the boarding line. But this boarding line led to jam-packed buses bound for the actual gate... back at the A terminal. Up three flights stairs to the outside access to the jetway and onto the plane.
When the plane pushed back it had been maybe 45 minutes total from when I dropped my bag at the transfer counter. So I figured it would be a miracle if my bags actually made the flight.
But it all worked out. Two and a half hours later in Beijing, my bag was one of the first half-dozen on the carousel. The office had arranged a car to the hotel. I managed to follow the right exit sign and meet up with the driver. So probably 15 minutes after the plane started to unload I was in the back of the limo on the road into the city. Hit the hotel at midnight and was exhausted.
I planned to call back home, Alice and Aryn are off to "Dr. Penny's" wedding this weekend and I thought I could catch them... but I couldn't figure out how to dial home from my cell. The cell actually works in Beijing, a first for all my travels.
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