Last day in China…

It’s 07:00 in the morning and it’s pouring rain. Mr. Chen arrives in his van to pick me up to take me to the airport. It’s my bumpiest ride to the airport ever. The first bridge that we cross in Wuchang is all pot holes. There’s a pot hole every five centimetres, I kid you not. I don’t remember ever going over a bridge like that in Wuhan. The rest of the ride to the airport is smooth though. I am scheduled to pick up my paper ticket at the Ctrip Counter #38 between 08:00 to 09:00 in Terminal 2. I arrive on time. So good, so far. I stand in front of the monitors looking for my flight number to figure out which area I go to check in my luggage. After about 10 refreshes, I find it! Sections A08-16. I head there and find a tour group of 20 standing around in front of the counters in a haphazard queue, if any. Check in just opened, I have lots of time so I wait patiently behind them. It’s finally my turn after some random guy–not part of the tour group–decides to cut in line right in front of me. I keep my mouth shut, though my mind rolls its eye at him for being so rude.

My luggage is checked. I head to the waiting area but remember that I have a bottle of grapefruit juice in my bag. I sit down and finish my drink while listening to some music playing on someone’s laptop and watching whatever is playing on the huge monitor in front of me–it looks like some Victoria Secret fashion show of Santa lingerie. All done. I find myself a recycling bin and head to the “Safety Check Area.” No liquids? Check. No lighters? Check. Some man is boarding in 10 minutes, I let him go ahead of me. Carry-on scan time! “I have a laptop.” “Okay, take it out, please.” I walk through the detector, green light, I’m clear. I don’t have to take off my shoes this time because I’m wearing my Crocs. I pack up my laptop and head to the departure gate. I set up shop a couple rows from my departure gate. I’m in denial and think that Wuhan has turned to the light and decided to offer free Internet at their airport. No luck. The only unsecured wireless network is China Mobile’s and they require a CMCC account. It’s about 08:30 and my flight isn’t scheduled to take off until 10:20 so I end up listening to music until about 09:30. I look at the monitor above my departure gate: “ETD 11:50″ Delayed 1h20m! Fine. Listen to more music, stand up and stretch a million times, open up a bag of Chinese chip-style rice-cake-like snack to nibble on because I’m getting hungry.

I see the plane! Time to pack up and sit and twiddle my thumbs while all the passengers get off the plane and we can finally board the plane. There’s the announcement. China Eastern Airline cardholders get priority boarding. Okay, twiddle my thumbs a little longer. There’s only two people left in the line, my turn. Seat 19A. Window seat! 19B is empty, yes! I pick up the safety booklet (because you’re suppose to review it every time you get on a plane!) and read it through. I chuckle at the baby doll a woman is holding and the photoshopped water to show how to use the seat as a floatation device. We sit around for a while and we hear an announcement on the loudspeaker. Due to poor weather conditions en route to Shanghai, the flight has been delayed indefinitely. I shuffle through the 3-4 publications in the seat pocket in front of me. Oooh, Shanghai Expo 2010. It’s in Chinese and English. A little while after, they tell us they’re going to start serving lunch. The flight attendants serve the back 3 rows when another announcement is made. It looks like the weather en route to Shanghai has cleared up, we’re taking off in 5 minutes. Lunch is on hold, time to prepare for take off. *rumble* That’s the engines warming up. I look out the window. The wing flaps are adjusting, we’re almost ready to go! The plane heads to the runway. We’re on standby for, what feels like, 10 minutes. I nod off. I wake up to the plane moving. Finally, we’re taking off! As we rise higher and higher, Wuhan slowly grows smaller and smaller until it finally disappears below us as we enter a fog of white clouds. That’s all we see for the rest of the flight. We hit a bit of turbulence once we get into the clouds but it only lasts about a minute before it calms down.

We’re almost at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, we hit some more turbulence that feels like the drops on the Mindbuster. About 5 minutes before the announcement to land comes on, we change elevations and my right ear doesn’t find it’s equilibrium even after trying to swallow 20 times. It slowly starts to feel like my brain is being pulled out from my ear and I have this ache all along the right side of my head. Is this what a migraine feels like? The ache doesn’t go away until we’ve landed and we’re rolling into the passenger drop off. The pain is gone! My ear drum isn’t going to explode! *cheer* Arrival time, 13:40.

I get out of the plane and walk down the metal stairs that don’t have coloured strips to tell you where the next step is. I took care, didn’t stumble and didn’t look like a klutz. I boarded the shuttle that drops us off at the domestic arrivals door. I’m one of the lasts, so I squeeze in. Some girl doesn’t take off her backpack and ends up taking up blocking my only path to go further into the shuttle to make room for more people. I end up squishing between the backpack girl, some 50-year-old Japanese guy and a 60-year-old Chinese lady. I can reach the overhead handle, I feel gigantic! My arms start to give because I’m holding my carry-ons in one hand but we’re almost there! Must… hold… on. I make it! We walk through the domestic arrivals door and I’m heading the pack. Baggage claim, up the escalators. The escalators aren’t turned on yet. Incentive to walk the stairs! Halfway up the stairs, the PVG employee gets to the escalator and turns it on.

I follow a series of signs and head down another flight of stairs and I arrive at baggage claim. Monitor says we can find our luggage on belt 2, to my left. I pick up a trolley and head to belt 2. First one there. At the start of the belt. Baggage starts to roll out. A total of one bag in first/business class. o.O Roll, roll, roll. Not mine, not mine, not mine. Of course, first to check in, last to get her luggage, as always.
I walk to the exit and they check to make sure I didn’t take someone else’s luggage by checking my luggage receipts. Right, you’re not an idiot, you can go through. First stop, SPD bank machine. Withdraw some cash and head to currency exchange. They sell Canadian in Terminal 1, yes! I get my cash and head to Terminal 2. Terminal 2 is packed, a flight just arrived and people were streaming out of departures and clogging up the hallway. It just so happens that my destination is on the other side of the crowd. I make my way through the crowd and get to my destination, the “Cash Recycling” machine, also known as the ATM. I pull out more money. There’s maximum withdrawals per transaction. I didn’t want to stand at one machine putting my card in multiple times, so I just go around to different machines–strange, I know. The guy behind me is a foreigner too. At first, he walked past the machine not realizing that “cash recycling” meant ATM before the security pointed him in the right direction. I mean, duh, who doesn’t know “cash recycling” means ATM, right? *boggle*

I have nothing else to do so I head to check-in. They tell me my flight has been delayed five hours. “Would you like another flight that connects through Vancouver?” The first and last time I connected through Vancouver I missed my connecting flight because Customs took to long. “Mmm… no thank you, I’ll wait.” Oh, I get a 70 RMB coupon for food, valid in any Terminal 2 restaurant. Score! I can’t find a vegan option anywhere and I’m starving! I didn’t have breakfast. I pick coffee with 3 packs of brown sugar and noodles in soup with seafood. It seemed like it had the least animal product in it, but, in fact, it came with half a boiled egg as well as two pieces of fish- or shrimp-meat chunks. It came with pink kimchi too!

I spend the remaining 7 hours of my wait at gate D75 surfing the web and dealing with tax stuff for my last two months of salary. Shanghai is awesome enough to offer free wireless or at least someone named “spia-guest” gives us free wireless. Since my last visit, they’ve added little outlet hubs with universal plugs where people can plug in their laptops or other electronic devices so they can burn energy while they wait. I used to use the plugs in the floor that no one seems to know about.