Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Three flights and a taxi to get to Pingguo

I’d been wondering what would happen at Sanya. We were due to fly on from there to Guangzhou, but the flight number was the same. Were we going to sit down on the tarmac for half an hour while a few people got on and a few people got off? I’d had this conversation with Adrian and Andge down the pub just a couple of days ago and they reckoned if you were going to Guangzhou you’d stay on the plane, but if Sanya was your final destination you would get get off - just no-one would get on as it would be a nightmare from a ticketing perspective.

As it was we all had to get off and take our hand luggage with us. Then in a rather unorganised way we were somehow taken through immigration, which made me glad I’d filled in my landing card on the plane, together with Waipo’s address, or should it be Jiuma’s now? That wasn’t too much of a kerfuffle, but then we were obliged to do security again, and they discovered two cans of lemonade I’d appropriated from the lounge in Heathrow. Had I known about a security check (and remembered the drink) I’d have left them in the plane. One for next time…. At least I managed to quaff the last bit of pre-mixed G&L before I got there...the last I had and still two flights to go.

Now we were put in a waiting room, from which we could see the plane from which we deplaned 45 minutes ago. I don’t know what the wait was for but I decided to try to connect to the wifi as my bloody Chinese SIM card, which was working seven weeks ago, no longer was. It was one of those landing pages where you had to put in your phone number to get a text with the code. It was pre-filled with country code 86 for China in very faint numbers. I added my number but it kept saying there was an error but not what the error was. I was frustrated but calmly swapped SIMs, as I’d just done an hour ago in the plane, and tried again with my English one. Ah, this time I found that the faint 86 was actually a drop-down field and you had to specifically choose a country code. The faint 86 was not pre-selected, but just somehow to give an idea - I would have had to actually select 86 from the list to make it valid. What a crap user experience but I doubt it will change any time soon. So at least I managed to ping Li Kun to say where I was.

We eventually got back on the plane and it looked like not a single person had got off at Sanya, so it was purely for immigration - that seems rather a waste of resources as they can do that at Guangzhou...I mean landing and taking off just for this. Quite annoyingly I was due south from Nanning and a flight there would be under an hour from Sanya, but we flew due east to Guangzhou and at least it was fairly turbulence-free. At Guangzhou there was no bloody lounge to sneak a snifter in, but also not much time. I did find a shop that sold beer but I had no bloody cash and my WeChat pay still wasn’t working. In hope I asked the information desk where I could find an ATM and they told me there was one landside. If I’d had a couple of hours till the flight I may well have gone through security again just to get some money and a couple of beers. Another annoyance that won’t happen once crypto becomes the norm. So I took my seat and managed a quick video call to Haiwei and his son before being called to board.

The flight to Nanning was quite calm and totally sober except for single I found in my carry-on at take-off. A Pingguo neighbour had put me in contact with a driver and for the first time in my life when I exited the airport customs there was someone with my name on a piece of card: “彭多明“ I was quite happy to recognise it but he recognised the fact I was the only foreigner first and called over to me. It was 12.30am so not really possible to find a car-pool to Pingguo from the airport so we’d arranged this at 300 kuai - which would have been less than a night’s stay in Nanning plus travel to and from the hotel.

To my sad surprise the driver and I got on a bus. I sincerely hoped it was not a bus to Nanning. Thankfully my fears were quashed when he said he needed to park near to but not at the airport, and the second stop of the bus confirmed that. We got my stuff into the car but there was a bit of a pause as I had picked up a bit of a cold during the three flights and fancied a bit of tonsil paint, as I think they called it in the Wild West, for the journey. It was the usual 90 minutes drive, made slightly easier with the drink and the conversation. I felt I was really back “home” in a weird but welcoming way.

We stopped off at the bank and I got cash for the driver and for the house service until next year. He was grateful and I told him to hurry home to his wife and family, not that they would be up at 2.30am. I dumped off my stuff and walked to the guangchang where I knew there would be something to eat, and indeed there was. It may have been 3am, and there may have been the tiniest chill in the air, enough to consider wearing long sleeves, but there were people, some turning up like me. I treated myself to a dish of lamb and a single bottle of beer. It was a bit sad to be alone this time, but it was good to be home.