I remembered I couldn't sleep the night before the flight. It was close to 1 or 2 am and I was still pretty much awake. I guess part of it was because I'm officially off work for the year 2015 and best of all, I'm off to New York for Christmas...yay
I woke up around 8 something on 17-Dec, doing my last minute packing to ensure all my daily facial stuff are packed. I did a final check on all the luggage, making sure that I have packed everything that I need and I don't missed out those important documents like my passport, Visa and etc.
We called our regular cab guy to come at 10.30 am and off we go with 4 big luggage (filled with food from Malaysia), 2 hand carry luggage and 2 laptop. I bought 2 luggage lock at the airport before we dropped our luggage off at the counter. We did have some minor hiccups here and there with the medical equipment that AK needs to bring over but overall, we are good.
After we dropped our luggage off the counter, we are only left with like less than an hour before we need to pass thru immigration, so like always, we had a quick bite at McD and proceed to our departure gate. Here comes to the fun part.....
At the departure gate, we saw a long queue at the gate where the ground staff will do the final round of checking thru your luggage before you board the plane. Well, since we took China airline, I wasn't surprise to see majority of the passenger were China citizens. After I have walked thru the scanner arch thingy, I saw the guy in front of me collected his luggage and was busy checking his document. I could see a lot of luggage came out from the scanner and it was all piling up because of his luggage. He just stood still, checking his document and continue to ignore the whole situation. In normal circumstances, once I said "Excuse me.....could I.....", normally people would quickly excuse themselves or picked up their luggage and apologized or they would offered to hang over my luggage since it's right in front of them. But this ignorant China man, just stood there and continue to ignore me completely. I'm like....WTH....seriously?? I just showed him my annoyed face and pushed my way thru to get my luggage. I don't think he was bothered at all but I'm sure he knows I was annoyed. I texted Mariah and I spent like 10mins ranting to him thru Whatsapp about this incident. How inconsiderate..... Oh well, eventually we boarded the plane and off we go to Guangzhou....a land filled with more ignorant people.... sigh....
It was a 4 hours flight and we reach Guangzhou at 5.50 pm (local time). The weather at Guangzhou was cold and if I heard the captain correctly, I think he mentioned it's 8 degree. Anyways, the air was cold and dry, just the way I like it. Little did I know.....how annoying the next 8 hours will be....
Long story short, a couple of incident that happened in Guangzhou:
- The ground staff gets annoyed with us because we did not truly understand what they were trying to say or explained
- Due to long transit time (more than 8 hours), we were suppose to get onto the shuttle that will bring us to our hotel room but the staff who is supposed to guide us to the shuttle was rushing her way thru the crowd, not putting into consideration that majority of us are not familiar with the airport.
- In total, she was suppose to bring 20 of us to the shuttle but 12 of us were left stranded in the airport because we could not find her. We spent more than an hour asking around but none of the people could tell us where to go.
- By the time we managed to locate the counter and shuttle to bring us to the hotel, it was already 8 pm. 3 hours of running around in Guangzhou airport like headless chicken looking for the mother hen.
- We reached the hotel around 8.10 pm and it took us more than 40 mins to register. Talking about efficiency.... speechless.
- The hotel staff forgot to give us a reminder call to remind us on our shuttle back to the airport
Oh well, after all those hassle, we are all ready to board our next plane to New York at 1.50am. As I was entering the gate, I told myself, I don't think I would ever want to plan a visit to China, unless it is necessary. This 8 hours experience is enough to tell me, China is not going to be a place that I could possibly survive or enjoy......
