Return to China with Awl

After two and a bit weeks working in Belgium, with a couple of weekends at home, I got to my "airport hotel" which was in fact a few km away at around 10pm after a meal with colleagues. My last day at my clients saw me dressed in light, tight, white cotton trousers with a summer short-sleeved t-shirt and bright red canvas shoes. As I entered the office, before I could apologise for my less-than-formal attire I was greeted with smiles and compliments on my more relaxed appearance. I thought they were joking at first but it was genuine and in the future I will happily dress more casually there.

I tried to sleep as my packing didn't take very long and managed it around 2am. But at 3am I was awake again and feared not waking up at 5.30am as I'd booked the 6am shuttle bus to the airport for my 8.15 flight to Amsterdam. I called the reception to cancel my wake-up call and had a longer shower than I had anticipated. Then as I was about to leave the room I got a wake-up call but thought better than complaining about it.

While waiting at the hotel reception a taxi turned up and the driver walked in. I was wishing Tan a Happy Birthday on Skype and thought nothing of it but it appeared he was my "shuttle". Ok. I got in and he set his fare as "airport" and it appeared to be a set 12 Euro fee. I was a bit annoyed as I expected a shuttle service to be free. But as I got out my 12 Euro 10 minutes later he told me that the hotel paid for it. Phew.

For the first time, I got all my boarding passes on a single piece of paper, which made sense. The silly flight to Amsterdam was ok as I was so tired. I was commenting to myself that the pilot was weaving in between all the clouds to avoid turbulence when the pilot gave a message to say he was doing exactly that. I thanked him profusely in my head and we arrived more-or-less on time at Amsterdam only to have to wait half an hour in some immigration queue that made little sense to me.

But the lounge was nice and Awl, who thought he would be delayed, turned up a couple of hours later as my guest with a smile on his face that said he'd been on the vodka since 6am. As it was gone 11am, and 5pm in China, I joined him for a couple of G&Ts before spending an extortionate amount of money on women's night cream shit. Awl wanted a last DVDC near the gate but I refused and got to the gate to find we were the last people there and called him to hurry up. I had to ask around but we managed to find someone who would move from his seat so we could sit together and play Tell Me for the early portion of the flight when it was a bit turbulent. But after a meal and a couple of wines (nothing stronger on China Southern to our dismay) we managed to drop off which was good as there were no screens in the headrests in front of any seats. That seems criminal for a 10 hour flight these days.

Three to four hours kip on a 10 hour flight is more than average in my book so I wasn't complaining when I saw there were still over four hours to go when I woke up, but the rest of the flight took forever. Then, in Beijing, China Southern made us wait 45 minutes for our luggage, pick it all up and go to check it in again (Air China didn't do this in Beijing a few weeks ago, and they had tvs in the seats). What was worse was that when we re-checked in our luggage mine got stopped and I had to open it. The security guard asked me if I had any guns in there and I said yes, I had five, but they were children's guns that fired foam bullets. But I had to get them out and show them etc. and it took more time when I was already tired and groggy. At least they didn't confiscate them.

To make matters worse, at Terminal 2 I couldn't use my Priority Pass so we couldn't even get a lounge. But after all that hassle we didn't have that much time and boarded our plane to Nanning soon after I'd sorted out Awl with his Pingguo SIM card. I was pleasantly surprised to see the aeroplane was exactly the same model as that which had taken us from Amsterdam to Beijing (an A330-200 I think). I was pleasantly surprised as I think larger planes are less prone to turbulence and this was significantly larger than any other domestic flight plane I have taken before.

There was some turbulence, and we were at the back of the plane so got more of it but we were bloody knackered and I was dozing on and off the whole time. It makes me care a lot less. I was constantly aware of the chattering around me though so I tried a bit of German counting which must have worked a little as I could never get beyond forty. Awl fared a little better although he was feeling sick, and snored most of the journey.

Si ji was there waiting for us at the airport and we got a lift in A Ni's Toyota as A Wu was busy at that time. The drive to Pingguo was as normal as any and we checked Awl in to the International Hotel around 1.30pm as none of us felt like eating. There I met Tan and A Wu and A Ni. I told Tan I stank and she agreed so after Awl was booked in I went home for a shower and a little siesta to bring me back to life. I needed to see the kids first so I called Chuan Chuan and she happened to be taking them to our house so met them outside for first time in 16 days. Of course they wanted presents so I gave them their nerf guns and water balloon slingers.

Seeing the kids for the first time in 16 days - on Chuan Chuan's UK-style modped

It was so nice to sleep horizontally for a change even if it was a brief siesta. Awl had had a minimal amount of kip in his hotel room so we made a bee line to the local supermarket and bought some room-temperature Coke Zero and some snacks, plus some V and G for good measures.

We were peckish by now but had already been invited to the Mao Zedong restaurant, so got picked up and were there by 6pm. Unfortunately they didn't have ice cubes, so I asked them to put Awl's Coke in the freezer. Then, after Boss Liang arrived, when the beer was poured, we got one of the still warmish Cokes and A Wu proceeded to pour about a quarter of the 40%, 750ml bottle of vodka into a large jug. He then poured half of the 500ml bottle of Coke in and asked Awl if it was enough, and said "no!" and told him to pour it all in. Awl did do some gan bei's but I told him to sip a bit as it was significantly stronger than our 3.1%ers.

Me with the lady of the night at the KTV

Although it was Tan's birthday yesterday, tonight was her night out so we went karaoke with friends and the kids around 9pm at the place on the corner just down the road from ours. I was very tired now but had to sing one English song. To my dismay there were hardly any in English and very few I'd even heard of. I picked something like "You don't know you're beautiful" as I'd heard the kids singing it for the last few months, but that meant I only knew the chorus. I had the good excuse of taking the kids back so Awl and them and I walked home and I left him to go to the hotel. Chuan Chuan had ridden back from KTV and was there before us but I did the showering before letting them sleep with her. Tan was back around midnight complaining of being a little tiddly, but I cared as much as I could keep my eyes open and fell asleep shortly after.