新疆 Day 1 - Airport Hopping

We rose early (5:45am) to drive to the airport. There is something about waking up in an unfamiliar place that makes me awaken faster, as though there are unknowns that I need to be alert and prepared for, things to be discovered, battles to be fought. The traffic of early morning wasn't as crazy as the night before. Though it was a Monday, the workday in Guangzhou doesn't start until 8:30. The highways were cool, there are trees and bushes planted in the middle divider between opposing lanes. It has a neat feeling of driving down a boulevard lined with forest, where Toronto would simply have been gray and urban-flavoured. Of course, seat belts are a joke here.

Our first flight was from Guanzhou's Bai Yun Airport to Urumqi (capital of Xin Jiang I think). The airport was pretty modern-looking (see above) but my uncle and cousin were nervous wrecks already, taking two "esteemed Canadian guests" on a trip.

The customs are pretty slack in China. The officer found a little screwdriver my dad had left in his camera bag, and then waved it around and told us not to use it before giving it back. Waiting to board the plane was conducted outdoors in the heat rather than in an air-conditioned waiting area inside. The tunnel/walkway thing that typically leads from the terminal to the plane was there, but we weren't using it for some reason. The crew and pilot had to squeeze past the crowd of passengers to get on the plane themelves.

On the plane, the seats were definitely not as comfortable as I was used to, but it was a domestic flight anyway. They did hand out drinks and a meal shortly after take-off. There is nothing much to be said about the service as it was mediocre, and the most notable thing was one of the girls dropping a lunch box foil-cover-down onto my dad's leg. At least the foil cover was intact...

We were supposed to catch a connecting flight from Urumqi to the small city of Altay, but the flight was delayed so we ended up with five hours and nothing to do. My uncle and cousin being too timid to venture out into the city in that short span of time, we had a very long and drawn out lunch at the Urumqi Airport's KFC instead. My dad went to buy a cup of coffee which was both pricey and vile-tasting (88 yuan, making it a >$10 cup of coffee, served in a plastic bubble-tea-type cup FTL) I exhausted the possibilities of the airport (there are two very small floors in the terminal, both of which can be navigated in under ten minutes probably), and left the building on my own while trying to dispel a headache. I wandered around the parking lots until I lost the sense of being very vulnerable, somehow crossed a highway after seeing an old lady do it, wandered around a hotel lobby on the other side, crossed back, and made my way back to KFC where I was met by my uncle in a state of crippling anxiety. We then had some really spicy noodles and some really expensive water, and finally got to board the plane.

I'm guessing some of the Mainlanders more accustomed to the inefficiency of their airports choose to pass their time doing things like paying for a 5 minute session in a massage chair and proceeding to fall asleep and remain there for hours. Before boarding I also had a somewhat horrifying encounter with a Chinese washroom, made horrifying mainly by the fact that some of the stalls were missing doors and yet people used them anyway...also the odours were so strong I couldn't stop sneezing, then breathing in more, than sneezing even more.

Finally we got to Altay's airport sometime in the evening, where we were picked up by our guide and our driver with his minivan. The airport was very very very small. The planes parked in an area probably smaller than my school field, and the terminal itself was probably smaller than my school building. Picking up our luggage from the conveyor belt thing was a quick and painless ordeal. =)