One night in a Chinese city -- from a person who does not know Chinese: Prelude

12/21/2008 - tata


It was a fine Sunday morning when I left Suvannabhumi airport. I had a connecting flight in Kunming, China, to attend a workshop in Nanning. I knew I had just an hour between the flights, and the first flight was half an hour late. Therefore, I asked a kind flight attendant of Thai Airways to help me in catching the next flight. He let me move to the business class before the landing so that I can get out of the plane first. He also told me he contacted a ground officer at Kunming airport to guide me through the immigration to the check-in booth. I thought I was lucky; everything worked out; I would be fine.

I arrived at Kunming half an hour before my next flight had departed. I got through the immigration 10 minutes later and waited for my luggage for almost 10 minutes. The ground office led me to the ticketing booth, and the first bad news came. It was too late to board the next flight. (Damn it!) He said I had two choices: buying a business-class ticket leaving that night or waiting for the next available economy-class ticket, which is at 3pm the next day. Because it costed Y950 for the first choice, and I was being in the mood for some adventures, I chose the second one.

The second bad news came soon after the first one. An employee at the ticketing booth of China Eastern (MU) Airlines at the airport told me I had to contact the MU office in town for rescheduling my flight; it cannot be done at the airport. (This was not a short conversation because she was not good at English, and I am bad at — meaning: know almost nothing about — Chinese.)

That's all I could write during my flight back. I will tell you about my adventure in the next part. :)


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