Going to Bangkok and horrid landing

Up at 9.30am, partly as I knew I had to get a flight at 5pm, but still I could have made it later if I’d tried. I should have packed last night but oh well...so that was my morning...well actually my afternoon too until I realised I was running out of time as there were no more places on trains going to Nanning. So I ended up going to Huang Lidan’s beauty shop and asking her for help, as she’d sorted out my taxi from Nanning a few days ago. Sure enough she made a couple of phone calls and said someone would call me within a few minutes. Shit that meant I had to sort out the rest of my stuff and withdraw money. Money withdrawn I got a phone call from the taxi driver who’d picked me up from Nanning to say he couldn’t pick me up, but that someone else would call me, which is what Huang had told me. Still, it was good to confirm. I rushed home and brought down my suitcase. Then thought I would have time to get lunch at Luwen’s as I hadn’t eaten, but as soon as that thought had entered my mind I got another call from the other taxi driver. This time I had to explain where I was and though I thought I’d given a good explanation he didn’t understand. Probably because I still don’t know the roads on which we live. So I gave the phone to the shopkeeper next to me and she explained and said he’d be there in a couple of mins. Of course, so I grabbed a couple of sausages from her shop, with some crappy crisps and some glucose water, and waited for him.

As I opened up the sausage a white car arrived and beeped at me. How the driver could have known it was me waiting for the car god only knows. Before I grabbed my suitcase I bit a mouthful of the sausage as it was the only thing I’d had today. Yuck..bits of stuff broke off in my mouth and I ended up spitting most of it out. The driver hadn’t been told I had a large suitcase and wasn’t prepared, as there were already three other passengers. At least they weren’t all in my situation and we managed to squeeze the suitcase into the boot by a spare tyre that should really have had somewhere else to sit. This is another reason I prefer a strong but not hard suitcase - they tend to fit in to places slightly better and are a tad lighter, and if I had had a hard case today I might have missed my flight due to this.

My first concern was that not all four of us would be going to the airport. My fee was 150 kuai, which was a bit steep if all of us were paying that - 70 quid for two hours work for the driver was pretty lucrative regardless of how many people he might be taking back. I started to get concerned when he was saying something about dropping people off. I guessed I would be dropped off to get another car or something and realised it could be tight getting the flight. I got out the sausage again as I was starving but I heard the in the front passenger seat say something negative. I wasn’t sure what, but I felt too embarrassed to take a big bite, so thinking it might not cause so much offence, took a smaller bite. Normally this would have been a stupid thing to do (and actually the reasoning behind it was), but once again there were bits in the sausage, and so the smaller bite meant fewer bits to spit out. Then I looked again to see what horrid sausage I’d bought and found to my chagrin it was not a sausage but a duck’s neck. And I’d bought two. My hunger would go on.

I think I could have been excused for thinking it was a sausage...

We seemed to be taking the appropriate turn-offs to Nanning airport until we pulled up by the side of the road at 2.30pm. I was about to ask what the hell when he told everyone else to get off and get into the taxi that was pulled up at the side. Ah...this was pre-arranged for them, who were probably going into central Nanning. It reminded me of when a driver was taking Awl and me to the airport for Awl’s flight home, but had neglected to inform us that he was dropping off people in Nanning first which added a good hour to the journey, and made him nearly miss his plane. Just telling us these things in the first place would greatly assuage fears but it seems that might be some time off.

I asked the driver how long it would be to the airport, and he said half an hour if we took the quicker road. So I said let’s take the bloody quicker road, to which he replied it would be 20 kuai on the toll. As if it mattered at this stage. He also told me he had to have the money first as he couldn’t be seen to be taking it at the airport, presumably as he wasn’t an official taxi. Car-pooling has grown as an unofficial business here since before phones had internet access, and I quite appreciate the organic, entrepreneurial way in which it has evolved. But I would like to know certain things up front.

As it was we got there shortly after three to find that bag drop would only start at 3.25pm - for a 4.55pm flight - it made me almost glad the lounge was dry. And of course I was quite far back in the queue so by the time the bag was dropped off there was only an hour till the flight and I still needed to do immigration. But I’d had an email that the first of my two flights back to the UK had been cancelled, so went to the China Southern desk to sort it out. I had been due to take a 6pm flight to Wuhan then spend the night there and fly the next afternoon to London, but that flight to Wuhan had been cancelled. Instead they wanted to put me on the 8.40am flight to Wuhan much much earlier, which I wasn’t happy about as it would have meant a hotel in Nanning (not to mention a very early flight). The woman was quite helpful although she spoke in Mandarin and I was too embarrassed when I didn’t understand but I did understand when she said I’d better go for my flight as it was due to leave in under an hour and I still had to do immigration.

I’d forgotten about that. Yes I was leaving China so there was customs and stuff, but I made it 30 mins before the flight which meant I had time for a quick trip to the lounge to stock up on water and lemonade. I asked the woman at the desk if it was time to board and she said no, she’d come and tell me when it was. At that time a woman was leaving the lounge for my flight and the desk woman told her she didn’t need to, but the leaver insisted. Five minutes later the desk woman came to tell me it was time to board, 20 minutes before the departure time. When I got there I saw the familiar “Closing” sign and no-one to be seen. I was clearly the last on board by some time and we were in the air 10 minutes later, ahead of schedule. The flight was notable only for the dreaded announcement that arrival would be delayed due to bad weather in Bangkok.

Almost immediately we were bounced into some of the worst turbulence I’ve ever encountered. Without shame I reached for my little carry-on bottle that didn’t contain a liquid pertaining to toiletries and poured it into what was left of my lemon soda water appropriated from the lounge. It took the edge off just enough, but it was a horrible descent (they didn’t even tell us we were on approach) until we could see the lights below. Then through the next cloud and we were plunged into a thunderstorm and you could hear the torrential rain hitting the plane, and a massive flash of lightning seemed to hit us. As we got lower the same happened again and I grabbed the leg of the pretty young lady I’d been talking to previously, and was almost as embarrassed as I was scared, as I moved my hand to the armrest. We seemed to be facing down as we came in to touch down and even the Chinese were making worried noises. It was quite a firm landing and took a bloody age to stop, but I’d survived the scariest landing of my experience. I mentioned to the woman to my left about the lightning, as if it excused my errant hand. Then lightning flashed again and I realised it was just the under-wing light, and I felt like a right tit.