Bad dog
Hope the bite isn't too grave and will heal. Myself, most pet problem is already solved. Furry animals aren't good for me since I have asthma.
Now, I'm back in France… What a trip. It was both good and bad. I will go in more details over the bad stuff than the good though, mostly because the good is family matter and stuff to be seen.
Wednesday, flight at 11pm GMT+1, landed in Shanghai on Thursday, 4:30pm, GMT+8. First of all, I don't speak Chinese and neither does my cousin who came with me. We spent 1 hour in the terminal to find our way to the transfer flight. Our final destination is Dalian. In short, we landed in terminal 1, and the next flight was in fact in terminal 2, 6:30pm or something. So far so good. We still had enough time left to register and board, except that… written in red was "cancelled". We tried the counter of the airline company and we got a new flight… Friday at 8:45pm. Of course, impossible for us to know the reason nor ask further detail, so we had to use our joker; phone to sister in law who speak Chinese.
Flight was cancelled because of fog at the destination airport. Thanks to her, we managed also an hotel for the night, 300 yuan / 37 euros. When we got out to take our transport, we were hit by summer. In France summer is rather cold, on my home island, summer is hot, but still bearable, but there… it was like a freaking sauna, hellish humidity.
Better say that it was also rather folkloric; one old and dirty car circling in the terminal until it was full. Cars are parked over 3 lanes, and it's free for all, and abuse of klaxon. It's not the first time I see this but well, when you understand that they have to abuse of klaxon so that people don't ram into a car when the change lane, you understand that driver manuals are useless there.
Hotel… when we got out of the car, again, heat stroke, so we were very happy to have air conditioning in the hall, just to get another heat stroke while going to our room. There, first thing was of course turning on the air conditioning. And after, we didn't move even though we were hungry. We were tired, extremely annoyed by the delay since we were wasting one day ( 25% of the duration of my stay, which is a lot considering the price ), and of course, lost in translation. We didn't see any restaurant so we just stayed in our room, playing on PS Vita. Yes, we were tired, but timelag meant that it wasn't time for us to sleep until 6am. I managed to get some hour before but mosquitoes woke me up.
Friday, 1:30pm, we went back to the airport. This time it was an old and dirty minibus carrying us. That one was so old that the door opened on the highway. There I was pretty anxious because my luggage was next to it, ready to get out if the bus turned violently. So we quickly closed it. Then, it dropped people at first terminal and the driver let the door open as he went back to his seat. A press on the accelerator and the door closed just from the inertia, which left us just lol. And we arrived once again at terminal 2.
First thing to do was grab something to eat. Last thing we ate was in the plane from Paris to Shanghai, at 2pm, so we didn't eat for 24 hours. A good hamburger was the only good thing which had happened to us so far. We had to wait until our flight appeared on the pannel, so more reading/gaming. When we appeared, we went to check-in… and we got our new surprise. Flight was delayed to 11pm and we had to come back for check-in at 6pm. When we went back, delay was then to midnight, and we had to come back at 8pm for check-in… At 8pm, we finally managed to check-in. The guy also told us to go outside, which we didn't understand fully since normally you have to go through a security check inside the airport. So we searched for the normal procedure and got to the gate where we we supposed to board. Nevertheless, since we didn't understand what he said, we checked with the attendant who confirmed that it was the good gate, BUT, also added that the delay was now undefined…
So we sat waiting. Hopping that it wouldn't be too late, we bought some potato chips and water, the only thing we were pretty sure to be able to eat, considering that we couldn't even understand what was being sold. As we waited, the company distributed food and beverage, but the crowd there was like an horde of zergling, swarming to get the goods. Some people stocked on the items, bringing back several bottle and dishes… Seeing that I didn't try much except once, where I managed to get a bottle of water and a pepsi can. I failed with the cup of ramen <.<.
Another funny thing was how people were behaving. Every single power outlet in the terminal was hijacked to charge their phone, and people even took the microphones to spout some joke… I think. Sometimes, people screamed and everyone gathered around for whatever reason. It sounded like a fight but even if I was curious, I didn't go to check.
At midnight, lots of people remained in the terminal. In total, 10 flights were delayed. And the more we were delayed, the more we were annoyed because on that Saturday was my brother's wedding. Moreover, wifi network there was saturated and the phone network was down ( we think that it was down because of a national downtime in France which even affected foreign roaming, just when we needed it; I must be cursed ) so we couldn't contact to tell them our situation and to not way for us. For that, we had to move away from the crowd. Around 2am, one of the delayed flight took of, giving us some hope. But around 3am, I had a little nap of 2 hours and at 5am, we got announcement. Our gate changed, so we had to move in the empty terminal. When we arrived at the new gate, the displays told us that the gate changed once again, to the original gate… That little walk was already 1km long. At 6am, we finally board our flight!
In total 36-37 hours stuck in Shanghai, 16 hours in the airport, and only 1 meal.
Dalian, finally! Sadly, we were already late, and we missed the ceremony. This is even sadder because I had already missed the wedding in France, and I had a role in this wedding as the little brother. But, we arrived, so we could participate in the banquet. Banquet was expeditive, as soon as people finished eating, they left. Only remaining was my family and just the parent of my sister in law. That was strange considering that there was 400 persons! And in the end, the 20 French remained longer. Talk about a difference of culture. Afternoon was photo session and after, I could finally rest!
The hotel was awesome ( we also did the banquet there ), a 4 stars hotel with an awesome bed. For those who don't know, most bed in China are plain bad; like concrete hard. Air conditioning was also quiet, large bathtub, pretty room and a room service in the afternoon which would even leave a small paper in my room with weather forecast and close the curtains for the night.
I hit the bed at 10 pm, just so I get a better schedule, but as I expected, my circadian cycle doesn't like sleeping more than 7-8 hours so I woke up at 6am.
Sunday, japanese restaurant for lunch, finally ate a lot since I was no longer tired. Afternoon, visited a museum and some landmark. That night, I tried to sleep at 11pm but woke up later. Here we go again with a 3 hours nightsleep. So for Monday, I packed my luggage and followed the group. Visited some more place, good lunch, visited a nice park and had a run of alpine slide. I didn't do this for like, 10 years so it was fun. From the look of it, was long but, as we had one of the employee leading us on the rail, it was fast. I might have used the brake like 3 times during the minute long descent because I concluded I didn't reach the top speed since the gap between me and him grew larger. In the end he did get ahead but then after, a major difference remained, I'm a lightweight, and he seemed a lot heavier than me, so faster.
At night, time to leave. Had some chinese fast food in the airport, aka, ramen and direction Pekin, leaving my family who is going to visit the rest of China. Pekin, I transferred without problem, and finally, I had some luck and got premium class seat instead of economy class. This meant more room for me which is big plus considering that I'm tall and that restricted space is really uncomfortable for my long legs.
Ok… this was almost too good… The flight… wasn't cancelled. However, my struck of bad luck is ironic and decided to attack elsewhere. In the middle of the flight, I woke up and realized that my glasses disappeared. I checked several time and searched every corner of my seat in vain. Before landing, I asked some help to the hostess, and after people left, we checked… We found my glasses under the seat of another passenger, broken.
At the moment I have no choice but to use my sunglasses if I even move a little. One branch barely hold my glasses. Sunglasses are really annoying in interior since it's already dark, and the color are all wrong… Well, this isn't the first time this has happened and I did want to change glasses since they were getting old. The problem is that it's urgent, and ophthalmologist are taking their holiday meaning I can get an appointment at best at the end of August. If I don't go see one of them, I will have to pay the full price of a new pair, which is 369 euros since I have a very strong myopia.
And that's conclude one week of traveling. Glad to be home after all that. At some point I felt like rage quitting this, but I would have missed some nice stuff, but still, I got hit by incredible bad luck...
PS: This wall of text is over 1800 words.
