Wo-manning?

Only here twelve hours and I’ve already been ripped off by a cab driver, found someone in my room who wasn’t me or a travel companion, and eaten something and had no clue what it was. All I can say, dear reader, is welcome to China. 

After my eleven hour flight yesterday, I ended up in the Tokyo-Narita Airport. I know I said Atlanta was the worst, but Narita is now, definitely by far, my least favorite. Even though I was getting on the same plane, I had to disembark and go to another gate. Strange, but no big deal, until I found out: I HAD TO GO THROUGH ANOTHER SECURITY CHECK POINT!

I’m fine with security check points. I don’t mind TSA being thorough, keeps us safe, blah blah blah, but my expectation when I walk through an airport is that I only have to go through ONE security check point. One. That’s it. But, nope, I had to go through another.

 At Tokyo-Narita, international connectors are all run through the same place, but to add insult to injury, they only do it with THREE metal detectors. One line for first class, Two lines for regular passengers, Three altogether for up to TEN full flights of people. I waited at least forty minutes to run stuff through that had already been run through. It was indeed the cruelest of all airport pay backs…

Once I finally made it through that and headed to the gate, I did get a little uplift as some friends who were on their way to Shanghai happened to be in the same terminal. We chatted until I had to board and I got another little blow. What I thought was a two and a half hour flight is actually three and half. Long enough for them to treat it like another transoceanic flight. WHY?!

Well, it turns out that I now have a vested interested in seeing the North Korean government fall or open up. Yes, human rights violations are terrible, starving in the streets, I get that, but it turns out that since NK is a no-fly zone, planes headed to Beijing have to cut over South Korea then hit a diagonal to the mainland. If we didn’t have the NK problem, think of how much time we would save! (The Pythagorean Theorem, it works, guys.) Either way, I was obviously stuck and just tried to go to sleep. They fed me second dinner on the flight, so it wasn’t terrible.

(Side note: I have no idea why people complain about airplane food, I found it delicious. On my Portland flight I had shrimp cocktail and international service has free alcohol. Not saying I would partake, but that’s pretty awesome. I think I will only travel internationally from now on because if they are going to feed me every two hours and water me pretty much every thirty minutes as well as give me a pillow and blanket, then I’m sold.)

Getting off in Beijing and going through customs was a cinch and I met up with my TA. I’ve never been so happy to see an American face. Everything about China right now is sensory overload. The people, the food, the smells, the TV, everything invaded my poor sleep deprived brain. We managed to find two cabbies that weren’t actively trying to rip us off and loaded into the cars. My bag was too big for the drunk and we ended up careening through the streets of Beijing with the trunk open. 

Quick, here’s a simple math problem. 200 kuai – 2 (88 kuai cab fare) = ? If you guessed “Steven got ripped off,” you get the gold star for the day. Turns out, our hotel was a) so close to the airport we could make out the people in the LANDING AIRPLANES, and b) that the cabbie only gave me 10 kuai in change. By that point, I was too tired to care. Luckily, the staff was very nice and we got our room keys and straight to bed.

But, not really.

First, the hotel wanted a copy of our passports as well as a deposit for the room key. Fine, whatever, took care of that and after I escorted my female travel companion to her room, I went straight to my room, only to discover SOMEONE WAS IN IT! Put in the room key, opened the door, and got stopped by a door chain and some old woman yelling at us in Chinese. To add to the fun, we held the door open too long, setting off an alarm, and causing security to come get us. Security turned out just to be the small Chinese girl who had been manning (wo-manning?) the desk when we came in. She put us in a new room and I finally collapsed into bed.

Adding insult to injury, this morning, I went down to breakfast and it turns out you need a room number to eat in the restaurant. Unfortunately, after being switched to a new room I couldn’t remember the number and felt like an idiot as small Chinese girls giggled at my misfortunes. Finally I was able to pay with cash (no 10% surcharge for me!) and sat down to breakfast. I piled my plate with food, and what I expected to be a meat filled dim sum bun, was actually filled with some purple sweet paste. No clue what it was, but it was tasty.

More food experimentation to come,

Mr. Mockler