Well, what an interesting few days I have had. After going to KL where I spent the evening in the very hospitable home of my sister-in-law, her boyfriend and their house mates, I had an uneasy sleep in the living room. It was comfortably hot and suffered the ever present fear of not waking up in time for my flight.

That said, after eventually falling asleep, I woke up beating the clock with 10 minutes to spare and got ready for the day. We cut preparing to go to the airport a bit fine, but Saiful, sis-in-law Helen’s boyfriend, made up the time by turning the highway into the Sepang Circuit. Checking in for the flight was timeous and without incident and we sat having coffee right next to the forex desk - where I DIDN’T exchange the Ringgit I had as there was a queue. I thought it would be no problem to do it in China…

So I waved goodbye to Helen and Saiful and proceeded through customs to board the Malaysian Airlines flight to Guanghzhou. Thanks to my travel agent I had a very nice seat at the bulkhead which had plenty of room, with a window seat located in front of the engine, to give me a nice view of where we were going. The service, as I’ve had all the way on Malaysian Airlines, was again outstanding and the flight attendants were indeed very attentive. The flight felt shorter than it was. We flew over Guangzhou on the approach for what seemed like and eternity and from the air the airport looked small, like Cape Town’s airport - so I had no real concerns for my 1 hour 15 minute connection.

We disembarked and spent some time in the queue for customs, and I had some time to clean the mess my sunblock made as it’s contents got squeezed all over the inner pocket of my backpack when it got pressured by neighbouring luggage items on our decent. Once I had finished with that i proceeded to the luggage collection point and still had to wait for my bag. At this point there was only 50 minutes left on the clock. I then had to proceed through customs, but despite the fact that you had nothing to declare, everyone had to snake through a narrow passage to have their bags screened. I started to get a little frantic.

Afterwards I sped into the arrival hall only to realise that Guangzhou airport is quite possibly the largest airport I have visited. Expansive is probably a better description, because it’s like a huge containment area with lots and lots of space between stations. My current location was 3 floors up and in the wrong terminal to where my domestic flight would depart from. After going from left to right and left again, I finally managed to find the passage that connects the two terminals and ran down the tunnel CARRYING my 16kg bag in my hand along with my 10kg backpack on my back.

Once i reached the other terminal I was sufficiently lost and cleverly asked the lady behind the clearly marked INFORMATION desk where I should go, and made sure that communications didn’t bamboozle me by showing her my ticket. She directed me to counters in one quarter of the terminal where I tried to go to, only to be stopped by security with them pointing to a departure card. Odd for a domestic connection, but I had no time to think about that. I hastily filled in the unnecessarily detailed departure card and rushed through to the counters, but was told that I am in the wrong part of the terminal. This was in fact again, international departures.

The check-in personnell gave me instructions on how to complete the next 1km of my journey. Eventually I reached the check-in desk, 25 minutes prior to departure. Unlucky for me I was pointed to the sign that states check-in closes 45 minutes prior to departure. That was a major blow and I had all sorts of colourful expletives in my head directed towards my travel agent. Luckily they changed my non-changeable ticket in a flash for the next flight 1 hour and 30 minutes later.

Having checked in my increasingly weighty bag and having changed my sweat-soaked shirt to something dry, I was more relaxed and could now focus on buying a phone card to inform the people picking me up of the delay. But before this though, I had to change some money as I was carrying only Ringgit. My quest again began to find a money changer which was easier to find than I thought (after being misdirected back to the original terminal in error). I stood in the queue for a short while before noticing that they only change Euro, Dollars, Yen and a fourth currency I now can’t remember. Not a problem, apart from the fact that I had nothing but Malaysian Ringgit, and in my small stash of collected money from around the world were no currency they would accept.

I was a wee bit stuffed, but didn’t really mind, as I thought I would simply make a collect call to my agent who would then alert the people who would pick me up… finding out how to make a collect call was impossible, as I had no coherent way to explain such a thing to a non-English speaking populace, and with my very poor Chinese vocabulary, I had no words which made any difference to this situation. In the end, I bugged one Information lady so much, she offered me her cellphone and I managed to make a call. I hadn’t be that close to tears on my travels for a looooooong time, but I would like to blame tiredness and not any other factors.

After that it was easy sailing and getting onto the China Southern Airlines flight was a pleasure. The plane was new, the crew was friendly and efficient, and in the 1 hour 10 minute flight they managed to swing the drinks trolley past twice. I even managed a nap. The plane was quite empty, but the seats were roomy in any case. I rate it as the most enjoyable flight of the trip. In Wuhan I had no rush and meandered from the craft to the luggage carousel, where I nearly fell over when my bag was waiting for ME. A first for anywhere.

This is where I met Jack, but more about that later. It’s dinner time and I have followed Prince around the whole day sitting in on his classes, so I need to tend to my growling stomach. More later, or perhaps tomorrow.

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