Goodbye China for a few days

I woke up at 6am after three hours’ kip and feared closing my eyes would be an expensive mistake so got up and went for breakfast. Normally for breakfast in a cheap hotel in the UK you would at least be able to find scrambled eggs but here it was just noodles and other stuff I have just not got used to eating for breakfast. No meat but there were boiled eggs at least. And no coffee, which really got me annoyed as Chinese tea is an afternoon drink. So I didn’t stay long and walked the three minutes to the airport bus place and ended up at the airport at 9.35am for a 12.30pm flight. As it was, the woman at the desk was clearly new and everything took ages.... By this time I was really starting to need to go to the loo in a way I’ve only ever felt in Pingguo before. It got to the stage that it was so painful I asked if I could go then come back but she didn’t answer. I was too embarrassed to ask again but nearly ran there instead. Finally after copious phone calls the boarding passes materialised and I walked as straightly as I could to the closest loo that I had been eyeballing for 20 minutes.

Of course once inside I went for the first door that showed it had a normal loo rather than a squatter, but in there the door didn’t lock. The next one’s seat had gone AWOL, and the same for the third. After that it was just squatters. So I went back to the first thinking that the embarrassment of having the door opened on me shitting was less worse than my shitting myself outside. I put my heavy carry-on bag against the door to stop it opening of its own accord, and this seemed to do the job as I relieved myself of the effects of Nanning bbq.

I took my time to rise

Then I realised I could actually lean over a bit and hold my hand against the door lest someone should still try to open it, and got a bit of merriment from the warnings written on the door. All in all one of my better Chinese public toilet excavation moments.

The lounge at landside at Nanning has the main advantage of having its own security, effectively being a fast track channel with a nice waiting area. As there was no reason to wait around in the lounge, and there is now one on airside I just went through security there. I found the new lounge and to my expectation there was no booze in the fridge, as seems the way for any airport in China now that is not Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. But at least I was flying to Guangzhou, and it was still the morning. No sooner had I sat down and seen a Westerner for the first time in a while, than annoyingly my flight was called, so I grabbed a couple of bottles of the least sugary fizz I could find and went to board.

A couple of hours later I was in the shiny new part of Guangzhou’s T2 building. The next flight was at 3.30pm and I’d pretty much resigned myself to missing it, given I’d have to go through immigration. My main concern was that there was no other direct flight to Toronto so it could mean stopovers, meaning more time and more landings, which I don’t like, after having just had one. But the flight here had taken off 10 minutes early and the shiny new terminal didn’t have any queues so by about 2pm I was in the right area. I even had time to visit the lounge. Well, it was true I had time but when I got there I found my card wasn’t valid there. The bloody terminal was so new Priority Pass hadn’t set anything up yet according to the woman at the desk.

Damn, I’d had three hours’ sleep, just got off a flight with a bit of stress about missing a connection, and now couldn’t have a customary G&T before a 15 hour flight. I did at least grab a bottle of Bombay Sapphire for the other side, and noticed they had Esse cigarettes, a reminder of Beihai with the boys in 2013...gosh was it already five years since then? I sent a picture of the fags to Andge and Awl and for some reason they were both up and said to get them. They also advised me to go to a cafe or shop and grab a beer - an idea I hadn’t entertained as I was 98% sure I wouldn’t find anything. But to my surprise I was able to get a can of Qingdao (miss-spelt “Tsingtao” on the cans) for 10 kuai.

Esse

Tsing-tao - actually a Wade-Giles transliteration so not really miss-spelt

With that my flight was called so I finished off and went to queue. But it was one where the queue hadn’t started moving and was massive, so I sat down at a small fast food place where to my surprise they also had Qingdao, but this time for 11 kuai. I didn’t argue, and enjoyed watching the queue not move while getting jealous glances from some of the people in it. Then I realised I’d need a wee so found the bog next to a small shop which also had beer! I got one for the journey and to use up spare change. 15 hours was about three more than what I’d done before but the lack of sleep with a couple of beers and some Phenergan allowed nearly half of them to be slept through. Though it was a particularly turbulent flight, the drug of tiredness ushered away many of the concerns that normally accompany it.

The route pretty well went over the top of the world, narrowly avoiding the arctic