Leg one of this trip took me literally months to plan. Now, you are probably wondering why did I decide to go to China in the first place and not go to Japan. Well, it is because I have met someone on the internet. Now, normally I am a rather strong believer that this is probably some joker, or pediphile, or bored hacker or some police agent or something like that. But our relationship has spanned a year now, so I felt it is time to get off my ass and figure out once and for all, whether or not she is really real or whether or not it is some big set up or practical joke. After all, my chances of meeting a real woman sitting behind ICQ or MSN is probably about the same as getting struck by lightning the day I win the lottery. So what does she look like? Well, have a look for yourself. |
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So on with today's story. So after a lot of consulting with friends, and even some professional help, I got my ass in gear and got the papers ready to get me there. The tickets cost me around $1500 Cdn return. There is also like $300 Cdn in fees/taxes/chargers, and I also bought insurance, so my total was just under $2000 Cdn. Now there is a small amazing story with the travel place. When I went on my November trip to Prince George, I went to this hole in the wall location of the Flight Centre on Georgia Street downtown. My agent was this very helpful salesperson Peter Moors. Well, when I went back to buy my China ticket in Feburary, I walked in and went to him again. It totally shocked me that he actually remembered me as the guy that flew up to Prince George for a high school reunion. I mean this is like 3 months later through one of the busiest times of the year. He must have served 100's of customers after me and yet he remembered a little ol' customer like me. I chose, (actually Peter chose it because there was a promotional sale) a flight with ANA (All Nippon Airlines). However, they don't fly out of Vancouver. I was going to need to take a connector plane to San Francisco to swap planes. Also ANA only flies 3 times a week to Shenyang, so I was going to need to stay overnight in Narita Japan. All right, a chance to look around in Japan! |
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Bright and early in the morning of Feb 18th, 2005 at 5:30am, I go to the Vancouver International Airport (strangely located in the city of Richmond). It was a flight with Alaskian Airlines. I checked in my cursed luggage (you will learn why) and boarded without any problems. Everything was cool until we ran into a problem with oil for the engine just as we were on the runway. The flight was delayed 30 minutes. For me, this was deadly because I needed to catch my connecting flight at 10:40am, thus being 30 minutes late only gives me 25 minutes to run through the airport. Well, sure enough, I landed in San Francisco at around 10:30am so I was getting pretty worried. Fortunately for me, just as I was getting off the loading platform, an ANA flight person was standing there asking for my name and holding up a sign with my name on it. She rushed me through the airport to a gate at the other side of the terminal. We even zipped through US customs. There was a lineup exiting the US, but we were able to bud in right to the front of the line. We were rushing so much I had walked too fast through the x-ray machine and I had to go through again. They scan your carry on bags seperately, your computers separately, and now recently they now scan your shoes seperately. Also by running through the customs, I didn't need to spend too much time talking with the passport officer. He just looked at it, scanned the barcode thingie on it, and waved me through. It was great with all this running I made and caught my plane. However, with all this delay stuff, my check in baggage didn't make the connection. |
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This is not suppose to be a page where I get paid to do endorsements but for anyone who wants to fly to Japan and doesn't want to pay the extra for JAL, I would definitely recommend ANA. At first, I just thought they were another discount airline that flys cheap to Japan. But when they had sent a representative to get me at San Fransico, I was already impressed. Not only did the rep guide me all the way through the SF airport, she also helped me through customs and she also got me my free hotel stay coupon voucher that I was suppose to get that the ANA counter, and she also got me my boarding pass. This is truly impressive service. However, it didn't stop there. When I got on the plane, they had a really cool entertainment system all set up for me to pass my time away. The food was great. It certainly made it easy to pass 11 hours of sitting in the stupid plane. This new digital flat LCD flat screen technology is great. First of all, there is a big projection screen in front of the cabin. It first shows a cockpit cam showing what is in front of the plane. Cool for watching take offs and landings. Secondly, they also have in front of each seat, a small LCD TV. The TV is controlled by a Super Famicom (SNES) joystick looking like remote (see picture to the right) and allows you to pick the program you want. They had a cool 80's music videos show which had "Photograph" - Def Leppard, "Loser" - Beck, "Heat Of The Night" - Bryan Adams, "Layla" - Eric Clapton and more. They also had a video track of Gackt but it wasn't available for economy class. On the games side, it lets you play SNES games like Shanghai II, Street Fighter II (yea the real old one), Mahjong, two types of Golf games and more. I burned a few hours playing MJ and Shanghai. The in flight service was great. It was a pork rice, with a cold udon noodle for lunch with tea, and Sapporo Beer. The snack food was those mini rice cracker mix bags and of course more beer. |
Day 3 (Sunday 20/2005) : Entering The RED Zone
So at 5:00am, Matt helps me buy a 1450 yen ticket to train me back to Narita Airport. The station is so big, becasue so many lines that connect here. We ended up going down several floors to get to the stop we needed. But it was good, Matt got me on the right train and I ended back at the Airport. The next problem I had was that the ANA shuttle from the airport to the hotel doesn't start until 7:45am. That would be too late since I am suppose to show up at the check in desk at 7:30am. So I ended up catching a cab for the ride, it costed me 1300 yen for the taxi. | |
So I got to the hotel, packed up my junk, shaved and checked out. It was here were I put in an inquiry about where my luggage was. She said she would look into it. Yea right... I was not going to hold my breath. Anyhow... I got back on the shuttle to go to the airport. I passed by bag checks and customs check pretty easy. While I was waiting at the gate, I had a little snack to eat. A small plate of chinese soy sauce noodles was 450 yen, a 500ml bottle of Coke was 150yen and a small box of 4 packs of Pocky was 200 yen, and by the way, a Pringles Can of Chips was 300 yen. During the boarding, I got a page over the PA microphone. It was the ANA attendant, who told me that I should see the agent on the China end to see about my luggage. Wow, I was now moving from very impressed with the service I got from ANA to extremely satsified. I got on the plane. It was going to be a short flight but we still used a plane that had the high tech entertainment seat. It didn't take long, and we were alright finished with lunch and it was time to land. I didn't even finish my game of Shanghai. | |
Landing in China is probably no different than most other countries. The one thing that is clearly different is the number of armed soldiers at the airport. This made me nervous yet safe. Of the many airport stops, they had a stop to collect up medical disease forms, then a second one line up to check your passport. The guy I got tried to ask me a question in Maderin, but I asked him to repeat in English. He didn't and waved me through. Ah.. lucky!! As soon as I got through the passport checks, a woman from ANA was in the baggage claim area holding a sign with my name on it. Well, of course, I walked up to her and said I am William Chow. She unfortunately, was only good at Maderin, and functional in Japanese and close to no English. She called another agent over to help me. Apparently, my guess was true about my luggage. The transfer from my Alaska Flight to the ANA flight failed so my luggage was left behind in San Fransico. Wow, does the song "I left my BAG in San Francisco" come to mind? The agent said, it was enroute to Japan now, and won't be arriving till Tuesday. She gave me a card for a hotel and contact information in Shenyang City of where my bag will be. Of course, by the time all this was done, I was the last one to leave the baggage claim area. I walked straight through the customs check and baggage check area. There were like five soldiers standing around waiting to do searches but since I was only one guy, they didn't want to be waste their time bothering me so I walked through. Hahahaa, if I knew that it was that easy I could have got the smut in Japan. (yea right...) | |
I entered the receving lobby and there was a thinned out crowd, but the crowd was not the attention stopper. It was the smiling face of Ami which caught my eyes. I was worried that it was going to be so busy that I would accidently miss her but because of my delay, that made my job much much easier. She had brought her daughter to see and the driver was her brother's friend. We would take a ride with his car to Ami's house. | |