Arrival at Pingguo and family meal (and lost SIM)

The nine hour flight was quite ok really. The live cameras on the plane offered much more entertainment than the films I decided to watch afterwards. I nearly managed to complete "Midnight Special" but it just got too much with 17 minutes to go, and some third-in-the-series boring sci-fi about some young kids who find their way out of a walled Chicago, beat some baddies, then meet some goodies and then I don't know what as I woke up to Tan castigating me for snoring. I got back to sleep and when I woke there was only about two hours to go - I estimated about three hours sleep which for me is pretty good. I did have a couple of red wines with the meal though. I tried to watch Eddie the Eagle but after half an hour realised it would not be worth the effort and anyway we would arrive soon.

I appreciated this view of our A380

Arrival and immigration were fairly straightforward affairs, but it still took us an hour to get from our plane to the baggage belt. These days I think all people arriving from abroad need to pick up their baggage unless they have an international connection. But we hadn't counted on waiting nearly an hour. It was just an hour before the next flight was due when the first suitcase finally arrived and the next two followed three long minutes later. And we couldn't rush to drop it off as first we needed to screen all the bags at security, after stuffing in the duty free booze and perfume as China doesn't allow even sealed duty free as carry-on. Then the queue for carry-on security was slow, if not massively long, as the bloke organising it started letting people behind us go first, presumably as their flight was leaving soon. So I showed him our boarding passes, and the fact that it was leaving in 35 minutes but he said no problem. Of course as soon as we did get through there was a final boarding call for the flight and we among the last to get on the bus to go there. At least we weren't delayed as Tan said we would be.

I think we got premium economy as we had more legroom than most, but we didn't care. We were dreadfully tired and thirsty, not having had the chance to drink anything since the previous flight. I was near the front of the plane and the others by the middle emergency exit row. All I remember is literally nodding off, among all the others who had already nodded off. But it seemed as soon as my head bobbed down I was pulled out of any slumber I might have been semi-sucked into. Even counting in German I couldn't make it past zwei yet still I couldn't make it last. So the flight felt the full three hours, but to be fair it wasn't very turbulent and I didn't even ask the stewardess for a beer with my lunch.

Nanning airport seems too big for what it is at the moment, but I imagine it has plans to be a full international airport at some time in the future - it certainly has the infrastructure now, though I'd love to know what danger could fall from the heavens.

What could fall down?

A Heng had driven to meet us, but as usual he was not alone; Er Jie and various other ladies and girls were there to coo over the kids. Leilei was determined to keep his  hoodie on, with its thick, long sleeves, but succumbed to the weather after 30 seconds of being outside. It was quite hot, but nothing out of the normal. And despite the tiredness it felt more like the 4pm it was than how it usually feels when arriving here.

Leilei, Xixi, Er Jie, and some young ladies who may be related

Leilei pretending not to be bothered by the temperature nudging 40 degrees C

Chuan Chuan's new car that A Heng drove us home in

Tan tucking into some chcken feet before we'd even left the airport carpark

The drive home took longer than usual due I suppose to a motorway closure around Nanning. I could tell where we were though thanks to my trusty old Nokia N8, which had a downloaded map of China. You would have thought the maps app "Here" on Android would have had that too, but sometime recently it was removed and I guess got removed from my work phone, rather annoyingly. I'll hopefully find a workaround for Here, as the N8 is getting rather old and annoyingly slow for WeChat etc. As we entered Pingguo it was quite strange. It genuinely felt like home this time; there was no pointing out this and that, that we knew from times before, we just carried on talking as per usual until we got to Waipo's where we would eat - she would like that.

Er Jie with Xixi and Leilei

Tan's gege with Xixi and Leilei

And she did very much, giving the kids little hugs as we entered her flat (she's not really capable of much more). There were of course more people there so instead of eating there we went to a local restaurant around the corner, not even having time to shower (though I changed my sweaty top). It was nice to catch up and have a meal that wasn't in a private room for a change. Chuan Chuan turned up a bit later with her boyfriend Fei Gege (literally "fat big brother" - and he is a little large) and took the kids out to the guangchang while we caught up with the family. A Heng came along and brought along two SIM cards. Now finally I had a number but Tan had not brought along her phone to the meal. I found the pocket on my new shirt was a fake one so put her card in my trouser pocket along with everything else to fit later.

Lovely family meal

Of course as soon as we got home I couldn't find her tiny SIM card. I looked for a few minutes and determined I must have left it at the restaurant, so went back with A Heng. But despite the best attempts by the staff of going through the bin it was not there. Needless to say Tan was angry as she'd have to survive a night without a phone...but come on there's Internet at ours.

We (they) really did do their best to find the tiny SIM in all our leftovers

On the journey we were told that our house would have no electricity till Monday. Now we heard that the electricity cut was only during the day so after the meal we took all our stuff there. Ling Ming had kindly arranged for it to be cleaned and bills paid up so we'd have electricity (hmm) and running water. Ah yes...running water, meaning showers! Or at least that was what we hoped until we found out there was no hot water. Cold showers are still cold showers and not a pleasant experience, but in this case less unpleasant than sitting in the same sweaty clothes for 30 hours in this heat.

More importantly though, Ling Ming had sorted out our Internet. At least that's what I thought. I saw our router sitting on the dining table, unplugged, and immediately plugged it in. Within a minute my phone connected to the SSID "pengduoming" but the password wasn't accepted. Lin Hong was with us and called Ling Ming and he sent the new password. But to no avail - no combination of the numbers seemed to work and I was resigned to going to China Mobile tomorrow to sort stuff out and Tan wouldn't even have internet on her phone. But then somehow it transpired that we shouldn't be connecting to "pengduoming" but some "ZTE" SSID instead. I didn't think this made any sense, but Lin Hong didn't think at all and just connected to it and it worked. My mind really wanted to understand where this SSID came from but at this stage I thought it best to just accept it and connect, with some relief.

After our showers, Tan went out and then Chuan Chuan took the kids back so I got them showered, and finally to sleep in Leilei's room at midnight, by which time Tan was back. I was peckish so told her I'd get some bbq but instead decided to go to the Beihai seafood place. As I arrived, Boss Huang stood up from his table where he was drinking with two mates, and shouted out "Peng Duoming!". He was quite the worse for wear and very happy to see me. I don't think he appreciates how imperfect my Chinese is so I used my trick of repeating every fifth or sixth sentence to show I was following. It was something along the lines of "...America is a different country...UK is a different country...Brexit.....our friendship is more important than all...." and he went on and on about it and I said I agreed (I mean, it's agreeable) but he was also doing his "bro" handshake of curling in his index (or was it middle?) finger and clasping my hand to his that actually quite hurt. I don't know anyone else in the world who shakes hands in such a manner - maybe it's a Beihai thing. I noted that a family group of about eight people came to eat at 1am, with kids under 10 years old. What a nice thing to see!

I only stayed an hour as was fairly tired. He tried to insist on giving me a lift back but in his comatose state I decided it wasn't fair for any pedestrians, and insisted myself on going for a walk as it was my first night back and I wanted to breathe in the night air, which was true really. I was tempted to walk past the many people still eating and drinking and get "invited" to join them but decided against it for now - there should be plenty of time for that. Sleep was not hard to come by as it was nearing 2am - screw you jetlag!

Back after a two-year break

I knew I shouldn't have gone to the pub last night but it was a meeting with many of the dads that I wouldn't see till September. It meant I had to pack late and would probably forget something. I awoke bang on 5.45am a second before my alarm and jumped in the shower after waking up the kids. In the end I had to delay the taxi by 15 minutes to 7am as I was still finding things to pack. But I had some clothes, passports, keys, wallet, and tissues so we couldn't go far wrong. I'd even printed out the boarding passes for good measure.

We'd done City Airport once before a long time ago, but this time we got a 17 minute cab to Woolwich Arsenal DLR, from where it was a short two stop ride to City, and should be the hardest part of our trip considering we wouldn't have luggage trolleys. Tan let it be known that she'd managed to pack all her and the kids' stuff into one large and one hand luggage, while mine took up two large suitcases and three carry-ons. It's not quite true; I had at least two of her pairs of flipflops, plus I'd brought Leilei's skateboard and a Wii Fit board, in shades of 2008 when I justified bringing it by dint of the fact that although we'd only be five and a half weeks, I'd be leaving it as it was a spare. I just hope we'll have a TV to play it on.

Getting on the first flight to Frankfurt - something wrong with Xixi's head

I'm used to arriving at the airport and going straight to security but I'd not built into the plan that we'd need to check in luggage. The place was packed and it seemed mostly with holiday goers. So after queues and all we only just had about enough time to visit the loo before our flight was called. Luckily I'd told Tan not to get duty free here as we'd only have to go through security again in Frankfurt. The flight, even for me, was pretty straightforward, up and down, and on time despite the wet landing.

I knew we'd have five hours to kill and I had a plan to kill them; duty free for Tan and me, and spend the rest of the time in the lounge. What I hadn't counted on was the time Tan would spend buying three bottles of perfume, and the time we'd spend looking for the lounge. The perfume took nearly an hour. I'd already got cigarettes and booze for friends in 10 minutes, which included eight minutes looking for Pimms that didn't exist. But when we asked about the lounge we were told not to go, as it would involve leaving the airport security area and having to come back in. I argued that we had four hours and the woman reluctantly gave us directions. It transpired that the lounge was "landside", as opposed to "airside", meaning before security, not to mention on the other side. But I think the 20 minute walk was worthwhile as when we eventually found it we had food and drink and a calmer environment and better wifi than the airport could provide.

At the lounge in Frankfurt - definitely something wrong with Xixi's head

But I was suddenly struck by a terror, even more severe than that when I'd discovered how much we'd spent on perfume and ciggies. If we were outside security, we were effectively like any Tom, Dick, or Harry coming in from the street. Yet we had four litres of booze and three bottles of perfume on us. Admittedly they were sealed but I had a vision of them being confiscated, so I bade us leave a good 30 minutes earlier than I normally would have done. In fact when we got to security they were fine with the sealed duty free, and I breathed an audible sigh of relief that I hope Tan didn't hear or understand - it would have been my fault of course if we'd had to leave it all behind.

And 10 minutes later we were standing outside a grand Airbus A380 - a rather large double decker passenger plane. I went for a gander when I heard the first call for people to go to the gate - I saw a horrid queue form and inwardly laughed at the people in it; we were all going to get a seat so why stand up for so long? Then I got a missed call from Tan. I guessed she'd heard the call too and went to tell her to relax. But that was the opposite of what she wanted to do. She told me that she'd been told we could get on first as we had young children. Young kids? We can't even park in those family spaces in Sainsburys any more and for at least two years had not been able to take advantage of this on flights. I wanted to believe her so went to the area between first class and economy and sure enough they allowed us on first with our obviously difficult to manage 11 and eight year olds. I told her "well done" but didn't labour the point that we didn't really deserve this.