Destination China - 2nd Leg

The flight to Singapore was 7 hours and it seemed to go by quickly. I spent most of the time watching movies, which included, “The Hunger Games”, “Prometheus”, and “Red Dog”.

A cute, Australian film based on the true story of an Outback dog

We arrived in Singapore at about 6pm and had to wait until 10:30pm for our flight to Beijing. My plan was to take the Singapore subway to the city and enjoy a dinner, but we had a baggage snafu that required us to be in the terminal during the entire layover. It turns out we should’ve paid for the overweight baggage back in Brisbane and we’d have to pay the fees again during our connection in Beijing. Kudos to the Singapore airport transfer desk for helping us out and saving us a lot of money on luggage transfer costs by re-booking our final flight from Beijing to Yantai on the same airline, Air China, that was taking us from Singapore to Beijing.

The red-eye Singapore-to-Beijing flight wasn’t full so we had plenty of space to sleep during the 6-hour flight. We arrived in Beijing at around 7am on Monday. We only had an hour and a half to get through immigration and customs to catch our next flight to Yantai.  The immigration line took about 20 minutes to get through, this time without incident, and, miraculously, our bags were the very first bags to come off the baggage carousel. Our good luck continued as we walked through customs without having our luggage checked.

Next, we had to figure out where our connecting flight was located. Our tickets were printed in Chinese so we couldn’t figure out what the explanation of the numbers meant. There was a “1” printed on both our tickets near the flight number and departure time, so I assumed this was the terminal number for the flight. We were in terminal 3 (formerly the largest terminal in the world), so we took the 20 minute transfer bus ride to terminal 1. We had 50 minutes to go when we arrived to terminal 1 – still enough time to check-in for a domestic flight. We walked around looking for an Air China check-in counter but we couldn’t see one. We checked the departure screen and there weren’t any Air China flights listed! Confused, we asked the information desk about our flight, and they told us that we had to go to terminal 3! Deflated, we went outside to wait for the next terminal transfer bus, but we know it would be another 10 minutes before the next one arrived.

Rather than wait for the next inter-terminal bus, we decided to take a taxi. A Chinese man kind of hanging out by the curb seemed to understand our concern and urgency. With a lit cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth he offered, in half Chinese and half broken-English, to get us to terminal 3. Violating one of the cardinal rules for travel overseas (not using a proper, accredited taxi service), we accepted his offer. For all we knew this guy was waiting at the terminal to pick up a family member and was taking advantage of a chance to make some money off of us to pass the time. We defied the laws of physics by cramming all four of our suitcases, our backpacks, and 3 people into his tiny car and sped off towards the correct terminal. The trunk was wide open with our bags precariously hanging out and held intact by a thin piece of string. The car was noticeably riding low in the back and the engine was working hard to keep up with the flow of traffic. During the trip, the driver was excitedly and constantly speaking to me in Chinese, laughing and slapping the dashboard to point out the unnatural angle the vehicle was driving in. He also said the word “policeman” several times in English, made police siren noises, and gestured that we’d have to pay money if we were pulled over. I nodded in agreement, laughed timidly, and just hoped we wouldn’t get pulled over. Next, he pointed at the passenger side mirror and, from what I gathered, commanded to me (in Mandarin) to keep a constant watch in the mirror. I wasn’t sure if he was telling me to watch for our falling luggage or to keep an eye out for the police. I kept a steady eye for both and, thankfully, neither caused us any problems as we approached terminal 3. Visibly pleased with himself, the driver happily helped us unload everything, accepted my payment (probably double what it should’ve been, but still only about $7USD), and waved us farewell and “Bye-Bye.”

Beijing Airport terminal 3 - built for the 2008 Olympics, it was the largest terminal in the world until the Dubai Airport terminal 3 surpassed it 

We looked at the departure screen for terminal 3 and saw that we only had 15 minutes until the flight was to depart.  We knew we were going to miss the flight and our only hope was that we could get on a later flight to Yantai. When we got to the Air China check-in desk, we were informed that our flight was delayed for 2 hours. What a relief! We were going to make it! We checked our bags, passed through security and enjoyed breakfast at one of the few restaurants available – KFC. Much to our delight the sausage breakfast sandwich tasted like a sausage sandwich from the US (not that weird Australian version of sausage). I also had a bubble tea (milk tea) to drink that had the yummy ‘pearls’ in the bottom.

The flight from Beijing to Yantai only took an hour. It was getting apparent that we were moving further away from Westernized China and venturing into the true, “rural” China. All the other passengers were Chinese. All of the announcements were performed first in Mandarin and followed by extremely thick-accented (and sometimes unrecognizable) English. In-flight magazines didn’t have any English in them. And last but not least, the in-flight snack was noodles with sauce, a bun, and a boiled egg.

We gathered our luggage at the baggage carousel in Yantai and looked around the tiny terminal for a person holding a sign with our name on it. The company-appointed driver was nowhere to be seen. We had the phone number of the company travel liaison, but our cell phones didn’t work and there weren’t any working payphones! Our only hope now was to use somebody’s cell phone to call the liaison. I approached the information desk and asked the lady if I could use the phone. Her puzzled looked told me that she didn’t speak any English. I made the international gesture of using a cell phone (thumb and pinky extended, held to my ear and mouth) and pointed to our liaison’s phone number on our printout. She understood my gesture, pulled out her personal cell phone and called the liaison. After a brief conversation, she gestured for us to wait – wait for what and for how long, we weren’t sure. So we waited. Five minutes later a man on his phone bustled up to the information desk holding a piece of paper with our names on it. We found our driver! After waving our appreciation to the lady at the desk, we gathered our bags, trudged out to the parking lot, and shoved our bags and tired bodies into the mini-van. We had finally arrived and settled in for the final stretch of our journey to Penglai.

Click here to read the next post, "Destination China - Home Stanky Home" 

Click here to read the previous post, "Destination China - First Leg"