Homeward Bound III - Homeward Bound with a Vengeance - Part 32

Our trip to the airport after Kip and Dan's apartment was slightly scary. We weren't doing our whole normal "let's get to the airport really early" thing - and we were taking the "Airport Express" toll road which wasn't so "Express". There was bumper to bumper traffic for a while - and Ant was starting to pee his pants. However - all of the traffic got out on the exit before the toll booth - and we were on our speedy way to the airport.

On arrival to Beijing Airport - it was sort of strange... You enter into customs straight away (even before you check in). And no... I didn't tick on the box saying "You are importing things of immoral nature that can do immoral harm to the People's Republic of China"... Unless you call a couple of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake CDs immoral??? More tacky than immoral...

Ant and I did the whole "Qantas Club" Business queue check in - but we were getting somewhat worried about an angry American couple trying to check in on Qantas with excess luggage. Ant and I had four bags with us (2 new) and about 80 carry on items. Ant was doing his dandiest to be nice to the Check-in woman - and it seemed to pay off. What I mean by "pay off" is that we didn't have to "pay" for any excess luggage - despite being 14kg over or something... It was pretty amazing that we had 64+kgs between the two of us (this is not even counting the whole 80 pieces of carry on luggage - which was sooo damn heavy).

We both went to some slut lounge (what I mean by slut is that this lounge whore's itself out to heaps of different airlines including Qantas). Although the decor was worse than the Qantas Club - the drinks and food was way better (all you really care about in a airport lounge). I had some noodles - and Ant got into lots of fried bits of finger food and stuff.

Our flight to Sydney was on time (yeah) and once on board - Ant started befriending the flight attendant (usual story - as I'm quiet on board - and Ant's about an 11 - needs to be about a 2). Anyway - the flight attendant picks up that Ant is a "airline geek" - which he admits it. First step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem... The flight was OK - although my video-on-demand seemed to be more of a "crashing computer on demand". The stewpid thing rebooted itself about 15 times during the flight. It was a bit of a bummer as all of the moofies were the same from December on our way to China... I saw a spanish language movie called "Love's A Bitch" which was pretty cool - and started to watch a couple of movies including Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (what was I thinking??!) but only sort of semi-watched about 30mins-1hr of each as they were all sh##ing me to tears.

Ant sort of got a bit of enjoyment from the flight attendants bitching about one another "...Oh he is so no dedicated...!", etc etc. Apparently - all of the flight crew were of the domestic kind (cheaper than international crew)... Good old Qantas..!

It was a bit bizarre landing in Sydney as we were sitting at the gate (still on the plane) for about 20 minutes. According to the Cabin Crew - Quarantine weren't letting us off the flight. Ant sort of heard in on some flight crew talking - and apparently there was someone really sick in Business Class and I guess Quarantine were a bit jittery about Bird Flu and the like...

On arrival to Sydney airport - I got "interviewed" by a Customs "Bitch" (CB) at the luggage carousel. I was hanging around for Ant to get our "oversized bag" when out of the blue the CB started asking me all of these detailed questions "What flight were you on? Where have you been? What country did you go to? Did you have any organised tour? Did you book everything yourself? Who did you travel with? Can I see your passport? Have you got a copy of your itinerary? Where do you work? What do you do?" Damn! Luckily I had been paying attention during the trip otherwise I might not have passed this "interview"! She wanted to see our "itinerary" - but Ant and I sort of chuck the itinerary as we progress further and further in our holiday (eg: chuck out hotel bookings, etc once you have done them).... Opps! I had thought I was going to appear on an upcoming episode of Border Security - Australia's Front Line... Luckily - she sort of just disappeared after a while and left Ant and I alone.

Out of the blue - the befriended Qantas woman (on our flight) asks us if we had left a piece of luggage on the flight. She hands over one of Ant's 40 carry on bags... Hey - it pays off to befriend the flight crew!

No thanks to Qantas cancelling most of the flights to Canberra - we had to stick around at Sydney Airport for 5 and a half hours for the next flight. Congrats Qantas - Shout out to Qantas - I Heart Qantas... not! I had received a phone call from Qantas saying "we realise you have a 5 and a half hour wait in Sydney - how about if I put you on a flight to Melbourne from Sydney, then to Canberra - that will arrive 10 minutes later. Do you want to do that instead?" Err.. no thanks.

Anyway - to make the best out of a bad Qantas situation - I used most of the time to catch up on the blog. Thankfully the Taiwanese earthquake hasn't affected the speed of the internet here in Australia. Plus I got to put pictures on all of the old blogs - the Chinese Blogger didn't like pictures for some reason.

The flight to Canberra was "chaotic" to say the least - the crew were so in a rush with the food - they were basically chucking it at people - Gridiron style. Huck!

Anyhows - we had a great time at China. No big dramas (unlike good old South America!) and some fantastic sights and scenery. Ant mentioned to me later - did you have any one big standout highlight? I replied no - but I had heaps of highlights including the Li River, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors, etc, etc. The holiday itinerary was all pretty much perfect timing - I don't think we ever out-welcomed our stay in any one place - nor were we ever scrambling for stuff to do (unlike Valparaiso in Chile!). The Hell Hotel in Guilin was pretty much a lowlight for me - but I guess it just makes for good blogging material. The cultural differences were pretty hard to get used to for the first couple of weeks - but by week three - I had gotten pretty much used to things - and didn't notice odd behaviour (staring) or didn't mind the spitting or death-inducing driving... The pollution was a bit of a downer - you hope China can fix its sh## up soon - otherwise everyone in China might end up like "Toxic Waste Avenger"... That said - China is like the "factory of the world" - just check the label and see where your underwear or Big-Screen TV is made... The food was a bit of a mixed bag - although I did find that having Kip and Dan recommend stuff made an improvement. But to me - I prefer Vietnam or Hong Kong for food any day of the week over mainland China. We went a bit crazy with the shopping - but there are so many knick-knacks and lovely things in China to buy - not to mention all of the rip-off DVDs (most of which seem to be pretty good quality - better than Vietnamese DVDs). Our health was a little bit of a downer - with Ant's spectacular "naked pass out" - the low-light. The weather was OK - although Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors was probably the coldest ever. Overall - China is huge, big, heaps of culture, shopping, sites and scenary...and is well worth the effort!

It's Nick (and vicariously Ant) signing off for China - and we will be signing on again in late March for a "Japanese Wedding" with a quick "Eastern Europe" stopover on the way back to Australia. Ant wants to maintain this blog for our trip to Adelaide - which could be a possibility as Adelaide has a lot of "blog potential" in its averageness...!

Anyhows it is "zaijian" for now!