In Transit

October 12-13, 2007. (Friday and Saturday)

1am. OK, now this trip seems real. Boarding a plane makes it real. I find my center (sigh) seat. In the window seat is a young-ish (let’s say under 40) lady bundled up in a warm coat and mittens, a huge tote bag stuffed beneath the seat in front of her, and another bag stuffed into the seat pocket. I smile at her tentatively, thinking (let’s not antagonize the crazy mittened bag lady), and she gives me a blank look. Okie dokie, we’re off to a great start. The aisle seat next to me stays tantalizing empty until five minutes before take-off, when the arrival of a middle-aged guy dressed in all denim (matching denim shirt and jeans) puts a kibosh on my master plan to steal the aisle seat after take-off and put some much needed space between me and Crazy Mittened Bag Lady. The Row 63 Trio is complete. And so my journey begins – Snarky Mable with sidekicks Crazy Mittened Bag Lady (CMBL) and Denim Man (DM).

First order of business: Establishing armrest territory. To her credit, CMBL gave up her armrest without a fight. DM, on the other hand, tried to hog his left armrest. After some not so subtle maneuvering on my part, I was able to uphold the unwritten rule of “center seat gets the armrests”, and declare victory in the Row 63 Armrest Conflict. Mission Accomplished with Strategery.

Thankfully, I slept for the first three hours before dinner is served. Our options? Beef, chicken, or pasta. CMBL wanted a vegetarian meal, but didn’t order one in advance. She began getting a little shrill (into my left ear, mind you). The flight attendant saved the day by assuring her that the pasta had no meat. CMBL (henceforth known as CMVBL, Crazy Mittened Vegetarian Bag Lady) grudgingly took her meal, and I gleefully choose beef, as does DM. The beef is dreck, aspiring to be a TV dinner, but falling short. That doesn’t faze me, though. I make a point of finishing every bite, stabbing the beef pieces with ferocious gusto, all for CMVBL’s benefit.

Refreshed from Passive Aggressive Beef Consumption (along with a passable strawberry mousse cake and a yummy dinner roll – really, how could something slathered in butter, NOT be yummy --), I explore the in-flight entertainment options. I am happy to see that we all get our own screens, and that we have a nice mix of Western and Asian movies and mixed entertainment. I catch Knocked Up, along with bits of Pirates 3 and Die Hard 19, before drifting off to sleep.

I awake to the comforting aroma of Cup o’ Noodles. I notice a lady in the aisle catty corner from me has a steaming Styrofoam cup of rehydrated goodness, and suddenly I am ravenous. I push the attendant button, and within a minute, our impossibly gorgeous Chinese female flight attendant is attentively at my beck and call. I decide to mix things up a little (I had spoken in English the last couple of encounters, as CMVBL spoke English to her) and try out my mandarin. I ask for “bei men” (cup noodle). She smiles and brings me back my very own MSG-laden cuppa shortly. And as luck would have it, a Canto-pop Charity Concert is beginning on the TVB channel. Bliss. I feel a bit like a Hong Kong local – slurping cuppa noodles with chopsticks while watching a TVB charity concert.

After my snack, I channel surf again catching bits of a couple of Hong Kong movies, an old episode of 30 Rock and Fraser. I am slightly drowsy, and think that I’m watching a special 3-D version of Fraser when the image begins to move towards me. Three seconds of “how cool” before I realize that it’s actually the dude in front of me, deciding to take full advantage of the “lounge back” button. Resignedly, I begin the seat back daisy chain, and lounge back as well. I picture every center seat occupant behind me longing back like dominoes.

Our captain, in his purring British-accented voice (he sounds quite dashing, like a bit of James Bond – Daniel Craig, mind you – with a touch of Wesley from Angel) announces that we are a couple hours away from Hong Kong. We are served breakfast (choices: seafood congee (jook, or rice porridge) or ham and eggs. I decide to go local and have the jook. CMVBL, who again, did not order a vegetarian meal in advance, must make due with no entrée and an extra banana-nut muffin and fruit cup supplied by the gracious flight attendant.

We’ve arrived! In true Hong Kong spirit, the seatbelts go clicking off the second we land, with no one paying any attention to the flight attendant or the lit “seatbelt” sign. We all hustle to get our bags from the bins, as if there is no time. People, we’re in Steerage, Rows 60-80. If we get our bags now, we will have to hunch uncomfortably with them for nearly 15 minutes while Rows 1 to 59 de-plane before us. Of course, CMVBL is determined to get her bag NOW, so I join the fray and grab my bag, hunching uncomfortably for a good 10 minutes before we can begin inching forward.

6:15am. Hong Kong Airport. I have a three-hour layover here. My connecting flight to Shanghai doesn’t have a gate assigned yet, and the main Transfers gate isn’t even open to allow for the security check yet. I hightail it to a restroom to freshen up, then re-join the grumpy line at the Transfers gate. At the security check, my $3 bottle of water purchased at SFO causes me to have my bag pulled off the line. Thankfully, all they want is for me to surrender the water. I would have hated to be wanded and what not. You do not want to wand me after a 14-hour flight, guys.

I wander the terminal, waiting for the stores and food court to open. This is a huge, gleaming terminal. The shopping is pretty impressive, with high-end boutiques galore. And the food court is pretty cool, too. Western brands like BK, Popeye’s and Pizza Hut, but also some great Hong Kong chains like Café de Coral, which is a franchise of “tea restaurants” that serve awesome coffee and tea drinks, along with comfort food like sammies and noodles, at affordable prices. Many locals were eating there, because, as it turns out, while everything at the food court was inflated in price, this local Café kept their prices at pretty much the same level as their other branches outside of the airport. So for $4 US (which would have barely gotten me a cup of coffee at the Starbucks counter nearby), I had a steaming bowl of noodles, a pineapple butter roll, and a cup of hot, yummy “Mandarin Duck”, a drink with half coffee and half milk tea. I heart Hong Kong tea cafes.

After that lovely interlude, I take advantage of the free Wi-Fi and log on. My battery beeps weakly, and I dash off a couple of emails before shutting down.

9am. I board my Dragon Air flight to Shanghai. I love the name Dragon Air. It could be impressive and majestic (as it is meant to be), or it could be juvenile and giggle-inducing. Guess which one it was for me. The 2.5 hour flight, well, flew by. We were served brekkie, and I decided to try the dim sum. Not bad. Though the pork bun was as hard a rock. As we descend into Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, my window seat gives me my first glimpse of Shanghai. I see much green land, canals of water, charming single story houses, and large buildings, which I suspect are factories. Pudong, the area where the airport is, is madly being developed, but there is still a lot of open space on the outskirts, and it’s a nice site to see.

12pm. De-plane onto the tarmac. How cool and retro. Hop onto a shuttle bus to the terminal. After I hand in my form declaring that I did not have improper relations with livestock or chickens, I get in line with my entry card at the immigration desk, “Foreigners” section. I am a foreigner! How cool. I get some weird looks when it’s my turn at the desk and they peruse my passport. I guess they can’t believe I’m that old. I’ll take that as a compliment.

12:30. Nothing to declare at customs, so I sail past into the Arrival gate, where mobs of people waiting to greet the arrivals are. No paps, so no stars on board. Check. Lots of peeps holding signs. I spy a woman holding up a sign with my name on it. Oh I get a sign, too! After exchanging awkward “Ni hao”s and Hellos, my school liaison, Seven, takes me to the taxi stand and we a hop a cab from Pudong, to the Hong Qiao District, where my school and hotel are located. It’s a 45 minute cab ride. A prayer-inducing, white knuckled clutching, “oh my God I need Dramamine” yearning, “I will not die like this” chanting, cab ride. You know how I said you need a pair of brass ones to drive in Costa Rica? You need a huge pair of brass ones to drive in Shanghai. My lord. They drive with abandon, cutting each other off at the last second, making multiple lane changes in one sweep, navigating sharp curves at full speed. I would start cussing/honking my horn/flipping a birdie if I got cut off the way my cabbie did. But he took it in stride. I think the fact that he in turn cut off another car made me think that this is normal. And in fact, it is. Horns are for alerting people that you are about to do something wacky, and that’s that. Between the praying, the white knuckling, and vomit suppressing, I manage to catch glimpses of the high-rises, and the bustling city. We stayed on the expressway the whole ride, so I couldn’t see much except for the high rises. The Pearl Tower, a wacky, tall, slightly phallic structure jutted out amidst the speeding blur, as well as the various construction cranes.

1:30pm. I check into my hotel, New Garden Hotel, a charming place with a Suzhou style garden and ponds. After handing me my welcome pack with itinerary for orientation day on Monday, escorting me to my room, and making sure I have her cell phone number, Seven takes her leave. I collapse on my extra firm bed in exhaustion. I barely have the energy to call home and report that I made it there ok, before I begin sleeping off my jet lag.