Chinese Fire Drill Part II: Back to Japan

How to Transit Through Beijing Airport in 48 Simple Steps

Newark (NJ) Airport – China Air check-in counter

January 12th - 10:00am

“Your flight is going to be delayed,” said the man with the cheap jacket and the airline tie. I'm surprised he knew I was there. He'd spent the last ten minutes ignoring both me and the check-in girl trying to process my family’s five tickets, eight passports and ten 50-pound pieces of luggage.

“They’re late getting in from Beijing,” he told me. He looked proud of himself for having the knowledge.

I stared at him, this man whose apparent lot in life made mine seem more tolerable.

If we took off late we'd be landing late. We'd miss our connection to Tokyo. My kids would go bananas waiting around Beijing Airport for however many hours.

The beer on our flight would be free, but they'd only let me have so many.

Okay, Mr. Tie. “How late?”

He glanced past my shoulder, at something or someone behind me. “About ninety minutes,” he said. “But don’t worry, the pilot will make up the time in the air on the way back to Beijing.”

Whoa. On the way back to Beijing? You mean the pilot? The plane? Both??

There were no good answers for this. A plane that keeps going back and forth between Beijing and Newark? Some Chinese airlines still use planes from when there were ashtrays in the armrests - and no auto-pilot for the guy flying us back and forth either.

I was going to need my wife to order a bunch of beers for me.
 



Welcome.



Newark Airport Security Check

10:25am

 We’d unloaded our 500 pounds (no exaggeration) of luggage at check-in. But we were still hauling a lot of crap through the terminal. To wit:

- (Me) A carry-on crammed with twenty-five pounds of books and a large backpack with all the clothes I’d brought for our month in the US.

- (The wife) Two shoulder bags packed with passports, cameras, files of mysterious (to me) paperwork and all the souvenirs she’d decided to buy at the last minute. And some kids’ clothes. And some of hers. And some that didn’t seem to belong to anybody I knew.

- (Kid #1) A carry-on cardboard box full of Legos and a backpack filled with clothes, games, books and snacks.

- (Kid #2) The portable DVD player he and his siblings got for Christmas and a backpack crammed with wrinkled clothes, one book and too many toys and snacks.

- (Kid #3) A little plastic zippered carrier bag full of toy dinosaurs and a backpack full of things she won’t use.

Plus the wife had a massive plastic bag with more souvenirs, extra clothes for all three kids, her second jacket and, by now, a little plastic zippered carrier bag full of toy dinosaurs.

My 3-year-old daughter has a disability that prohibits her from walking – and sometimes standing – on her own. She has a walker, which we'd have all the way to our gate. The TSA agent had no idea how to fold the thing so it would fit through the X-ray machine. (I was already through and trying to gather up all our x-rayed crap while keeping my daughter from falling down again, I wasn't about to go help him.)

After a moment of indecision he shook his head and handed it to his TSA cohort on the other side of the metal detector, bypassing any sort of check on this contraption made of hollow metal tubes that could be hiding all kinds of things.

"If they ask you for help too many times do this..."

30,000 Feet over the Siberian Arctic

Time & Date unknown

To date my personal experience with China had consisted of a 24-hour layover in Shanghai in 2006 (which included one damaged piece of luggage) and last month's overnight layover in Beijing on our trip from Japan to the US (outlined in all its rule-ridden anarchy in this post). In short, I didn’t like our chances of catching our connection in Beijing.

Then again, if China could get 1,000 people to do this then surely they’d be able to get five people and a bunch of carry-on luggage from one gate to another pretty quickly.

Our odds of getting to Beijing Airport on time increased with the fact that our pilot was on crack and made up the three and a half hours before we were through the Arctic Circle. Those same odds decreased with…basically everything else.

We’d sat near the front of the plane, so when we came to a complete stop I barricaded the aisle with my body and started getting my three kids and all our carry-on luggage ready to go. The line of people in the aisle right behind me were getting restless but no cigarette-craving curmudgeons were going to squeeze by me and take up minutes or even seconds of our time getting to our next gate which, if there was a god, would be somewhere in the vicinity or at least the same zip code of the gate we were exiting from.

We stepped off the plane onto one of those wheeled staircases.

We commandeered the front of the shuttle bus so we could jump off as soon as we got to the terminal. Then we waited ten minutes for the bus to fill up. Tick tock, tick tock.

"Simply proceed with transfer procedures..."

Beijing Airport Terminal 3

1:15pm

Travelchinaguide.com explains transferring at Beijing Airport from international flight to another international flight like this:

Arrive at the International Arrival Level at 3F of T3-E → proceed with transfer procedures → pass through the Transit Inspection in special passage in the east or west → take special elevator downstairs to International Departure Level at 2F of T3-E → accept Security Inspection in the special passage → go through the customs sample check of hand baggage if necessary → Waiting & Boarding

“Proceed with transfer procedures”. That’s like the IRS saying “Fill out tax forms.”

And that pretty much sums up the insanity that is Beijing.

  How to Transit Through Beijing Capital Airport in 48 Simple Steps  

Please, put your seat back and enjoy.

1.   Exit shuttle bus by stepping into covered, exhaust-choked unloading area and fight with everyone else trying to be the first through the semi-automatic sliding glass doors.

2.  Hurry around to escalator that will take you up toward and then past the floor where your next gate is located, dumping you off one floor above.

3.   Get herded toward the immigration area to stand in line to have your passport checked. Never mind you and everyone else on the plane have been closely guarded since stepping off of that rolling staircase thing, you need to have your passport and boarding pass for your next flight ready. And please remember to look at the camera for a security photo.

4.   Remain confused as to which line to get in as no one present in any official capacity will make a move to assist you unless you ask. Three times.

5.   Follow the non-Chinese people around to the line for international transfers, which is conveniently hidden behind a partition wall.

6.   Try to talk to the airport person walking past you, heading for the front of the line while saying something in what might be an actual language. Get totally ignored.

7.   Try to talk to her on her way back. Have her point you toward the front of the line as she passes without breaking stride, a disgusted look on her face that is undoubtedly your fault.

8.   Apologize to everyone as you cut to the front of the line. Have the immigration woman point you toward the back of the line as if you are so stupid as to not notice the long line of people already waiting.

9.   In between breaths (from carrying a three-year-old in one arm and dragging an entire children’s section of books in a carry-on behind you) explain that you are trying to catch your soon-to-be-leaving connection.

10. Listen as thoughtful immigration woman looks at her watch and tells you that you might not make it.

11.  Tell idiot immigration woman you don’t give a shit what she thinks and to check you through now pretty please.

12.  Listen as inspired immigration woman asks if you’d like her to call the people working at the gate. Say yes. Almost drop your daughter as you watch Ms. Time Management sit on hold waiting for an answer on the flight’s status while NOT checking your passports.

13.  Watch as mute immigration woman hangs up the phone and begins checking your passports without saying a single word about your flight’s status. Hell, she doesn’t even give any indication she was even on the phone.

14.  Get everyone’s picture taken, grab your passports, adjust the daughter in your aching arm and run from super immigration woman and down the stairs – to a line that winds toward a baggage security check. Say something like “WTF” under your heaving breath.

15.  Cut to the front of the line, apologizing to a hundred people, then get pointed to the back of the line in the same disgusted, wordless manner as before. Explain your situation. Three times. Then twice more to another person. Get passports checked again before being ushered into baggage check world.

"...And if anyone tries to cut the line do this..."

16.  Have kids take off their jackets, take daughter’s off for her while holding her up since she can’t stand on her own, get all jackets and bags and crap into separate baskets for the x-ray machine, take off shoes and put them in baskets, explain why you have to go through the metal detector with your daughter. Explain again. Show security people that she can’t walk. Get waved through.

17.  Watch as family walks through. Go to get all your stuff. Get stopped because you have to stand on a box and have a metal detector wand passed all over your body. Tell daughter to wait for you there next to your luggage as it rolls out of the x-ray machine. Tell her not to stick her fingers in between those rolling things again. After getting the magic wand treatment hold your daughter upright on the box so they can do the same for her, dangerous as she looks.

18.  Get your stuff, get your shoes on, get your kids’ jackets on, get everyone loaded up and walk about a quarter mile.

19.  Get on line for another passport check. Get pictures taken again. Grab passports and try to get kids to hurry up which only pisses them off.

20.  Find out your gate is another quarter mile away. Throw all baggage and family members onto the oversized golf cart that has appeared out of nowhere, driven by a guy who seems all too excited to whisk you to your gate.

21.  Listen as Golf Cart Boy starts asking you for money over the sound of his horn. Hang on desperately to both cart and daughter as he weaves in and out of people. Consider trying to reach for your wallet, then instead tell the guy to just do his goddam job. And for fuck’s sake watch out.

22.  Ignore Golf Cart Boy’s cries for money as you pick up four bags, one kid and lead the charge downstairs toward the gate.

23.  Find the gate deserted except for a young man who, without irony, tells you that you took too long to get there and have therefore missed the flight.

24.  Listen as Gate Boy tells you to go somewhere upstairs and get tickets at an unspecified location for the next flight to Tokyo.

25.  Start snarling at Gate Boy about the goddam security and passport checks that made you late before telling him he needs to bring you to where you can get new tickets because his explanation made no sense.

Just another day in Terminal 3.

26.  Start yelling at Gate Boy when he refuses to go with you. Demand that he get the kids something to drink too. Say thank you with as much sarcasm as you can muster when he refuses to get the kids anything to drink but agrees to take you upstairs to that undisclosed location.

27.  Follow Gate Boy – who apparently has not noticed you are carrying a thirty-five pound human and lugging an entire library wing behind you, and apparently does not care if you and your kids can’t keep up.

28.  Apologize to kids for all the walking, tell them they are doing awesome, silently plead with younger son to not start crying like he seems about to do.

29.  Go the wrong way through a passport check to a transfer ticket counter run by two women who are underqualified and outnumbered for handling the crowd of people in the same predicament as you. Notice that they are talking and laughing with each other.

30.  Put your daughter down, happy in that your arm has not fallen off and your kids are excited to not be walking. Adjust your fantastically sweaty boxer shorts.

31.  Befriend another Japan-bound traveler who offers to carry your son’s box of Legos. Talk to a Chinese girl also trying to transfer on to Japan. (“This is China being China,” she whispers.) Watch a tall blond woman walk from the counter, ticket in hand, as she tells you to hurry up, the next flight leaves in fifty minutes. Wonder why you need to hurry if you still have fifty minutes. Remember the last hour, pick at your boxers again and tell the ticket girls to hurry the fuck up.

32.  Notice the row of luggage carts over to the side. Go get one. Immediately get ordered by a woman who was not there a second ago to put the cart back. She looks pissed off at you for even thinking about it. Tell her to go screw herself, but only under your breath because you realize she has never had to drag three young children through an airport since she is Chinese and would have had any children after her first-born taken away by the State.

33.  Struggle to understand the maybe-English explanation of your seating arrangements.

34.  Struggle to keep from asking for one seat far away from the other four.

35.  Get tickets, go through nearby passport check, the correct direction this time. Get passports checked again along with the tickets the passport checker just watched you get.

36.  Find yourself at the same immigration check area that first escalator dumped you off at. Head for the secret line behind the partition wall. Go through another passport/ticket check. Get pictures taken again.

37.  Go downstairs, realize the kid with your son’s Legos is nowhere to be seen. Hope he appears and keep moving – down the stairs to the line for the passport check before the security baggage check. Cut the line again, get passports checked again, go through the entire fucking baggage x-ray metal detector routine again. Hand your daughter off to one of the security people in disgust when you are told to get up on that box again so they can wave their magic wand over you again.

38.  Get up on box and pull off your shirt to save everyone a little time. Start undoing your jeans before they start saying something in Chinese in an increasingly loud and urgent way. Don’t pull your pants down because you remember this is China where people disappear for blogging about the wrong things, even if they keep their pants on.

39.  Get the family loaded up again. Tell the kids how amazing they are doing. Lie to them and say you think you are all just about done with the whole bleeping circus.

40.  Along your quarter mile walk find a luggage cart. Thank the god that is by law not allowed to exist in this airport and dump your daughter on along with as much baggage as possible. Watch your younger son’s eyes well up with tears because (a) he is exhausted and (b) his sister is getting a ride on a cart. Pick him up and carry him because you love him so much and you want him to stop crying so you don’t throttle him to death.

41.  Hustle for your gate. Almost get run over by Golf Cart Boy.

42.  Look back. Watch wife’s knees buckle under the weight of all the passports and souvenirs and paperwork and clothes and dinosaurs. Wonder where the kid with your son’s Legos is. Put your forty-five pound son down while hoping your arm doesn’t drop to the floor right along with him.

43.  Pick son back up as he starts crying again. Tell him it’s okay, you’ll carry him a little more. Tell him that China, by the way, is the devil.

44.  Listen to wife yell at you to keep going, like a wounded soldier telling his comrades to go on without him. Wait a few more seconds, just to show your support, then start walking again because your son is sliding out of your arm as fast as your sanity is slipping.

45.  Pass the stairs to the gate, listen to wife yelling about how you just passed the stairs for the gate, stop in front of elevator manned by the only person in Beijing who knows how to smile. Put down your son so can punch him right in that smile.

46.  Listen to Chang Wong Smiley tell you that the elevator doors are opening. Tell him to wait for the rest of your family. Then tell him don’t. Then tell him yeah okay wait I guess.

47.  See your friend with your son’s Legos walking up behind your wife. Laugh like you have a bi-polar personality disorder. Tell your sons you found the nice man with their Legos – simultaneously telling them that, for a while, their Legos were gone. Try to distract them by telling them to push the elevator button.

48.  Get to the gate and almost piss your sweaty pants as you realize you made your flight. Go through another passport check and walk down the tunnel that leads not to a rolling staircase but right onto a plane with ashtrays in the armrests but who the hell cares just get these goddam bags in the overhead and get these kids in their seats and ma’am can I get a beer?

Haneda Airport, Tokyo

9:30pm

Our 500 pounds of checked baggage has been waiting for us, on the floor next to the baggage carousel. Half our boxes have crushed corners. A couple of them have their sides partially ripped open. They’ve been taped over, and not by anyone with a Chinese surname I’d bet.

Luggage carts are free, but like most everything else in Japan they are too small. I try to snag a big flatbed cart but I get stopped by someone who very politely tells me that those carts are only for airport staff. I point out the fact that no one is using it and I certainly could. But like most everyone else in Japan the guy favors rules over reason and very politely invites me to use one of those small carts.

I use three.

Quick and smooth customs and immigration check and we are released from the journey. Except the part where we have to send our 500 pounds of luggage plus my library section, the dinosaurs and a few other things via overnight delivery to our home, three hours away.

We’ll spend a comfortable night in Tokyo, at my friend Ki Joon’s guest house in Shinjuku. We’ll spend a leisurely morning enjoying a nearby playground, riding the subway, taking in a view of Tokyo from the top of the Metropolitan Government Building and making things out of aluminum and copper at a random workshop going on in the bowels of Shinjuku Station. We’ll have lunch in the basement of a noodle shop where a bunch of beer-drinking businessmen could scarcely care less how much all their cigarette smoke might be bothering my wife and kids.

And we’ll take a highway bus home to Matsumoto, where I will decide that being able to spend some time in the States with family and friends made that trial of sanity and fortitude called Beijing Capital Airport worthwhile.

After a good night’s sleep I’ll come to my senses and say next time I’ll spend more for a flight on a non-Chinese airline.

Then again, I’ve said that before.

Chinese Fire Drill - Part I

Japan to the USA via Beijing

What's the difference between China and Kanye West?

Kanye has grown fantastically wealthy by dressing flashy and unabashedly promoting a shitty product. He likens his escapades to "the highest form of contribution to society" while attacking others and then pleading not guilty. He says to Kim "your ass is mine". He's "a proud non-reader of books" and considers the drive to go and find someone to screw "valuable".

China on the other hand never said "your ass is mine" to Kim. They only said it to Tibet.

I'd sworn before that I would never again fly with a Chinese airline. But once again they offered the cheapest fares, and when you're buying five tickets to the other side of the globe and back you can't afford to be too picky (unless you're Kanye West, who can afford two tickets for Kim's ass and three for him and his ego on any airline he wants).

The China Air flight we found also went from Haneda to Newark, a geographical and logistical bonus for the trains across both Tokyo and New York City that we wouldn't have to take. But the kicker was the overnight layover in Beijing. Call me a masochist for getting excited about the journey taking an additional twelve hours, but as far as I'm concerned injecting a mini-vacation into your trip, even if it's just one night, is a satisfying extra.

Unless of course you're dealing with a shitty product.

 

Free of Charge and Worth Every Penny

I thought I’d found a decent deal on a hotel room for our overnight layover. It was right next to the airport if not in it. It wasn’t the Ritz-Carlton but it did have a vending machine with beer.

My online booking process ended with a confirmation number and an interesting side note:

“Final cost of your room might be higher than the stated price” or something equally intriguing.

Sure enough I got a phone call the next day from China.

“I'm calling about your hotel reservation,” the girl said in English that was heavily-accented and impressively glib. Which only happens when the person is reading off of a script. "Your room will actually cost two hundred yuan."

She paused. Her script must have said something like "wait for customer to say okay, then proceed with the following:"

“No it won’t,” I said.

A long silence as she scanned her paper for the answer to that.

I didn’t bother arguing. I knew I couldn’t win out over a sheet of paper and a glib accent. I just told her to cancel my reservation. Not because the equivalent of $40US is outrageous for what was likely a dump (aside from the vending machine) but because she and her country needed to learn there's no value in trying to screw someone.

I’m sure that showed her. And the rest of China. And Kanye if he's reading this.

The next day my wife happened to be chatting with a travel agent in here in town. (She has this uncanny knack for finding the right people to talk to, in any situation not involving my career as a writer.) After trading an extended series of state-mandated pleasantries the agent told my wife that China will provide us with a room in a hotel near the airport free of charge because we have an overnight layover.

On the hotel’s website the place actually looked nice.

"Welcome to Customer Service Heaven, Stupid Foreigner."

Wikipedia says Beijing Capital Airport boasts the second largest terminal building and the sixth largest building of any type in the world, and is the busiest airport in Asia and the second busiest in the world. I'd add that BCA offers the rudest, most obnoxious group of so-called workers the history of airports has ever seen but for some reason my edits won't show up on the wikipage.

In addition to free rooms for overnight layovers, China allows for a visa-free stay up to 72 hours. This of course providing that those laying over behave. Otherwise their layover will last indefinitely, spent in a place that would not look nice on the website if it had one. There was no line for 'Overnight Layovers' but there was a line for '72-hour layover transit passengers’. My wife and I got on line, figuring we qualified more for this than for 'Chinese Passports' or 'Stupid Foreigners'. But when we got to the front and my wife tried to explain that we only had an overnight layover and had a hotel room reserved the girl behind the control desk just said something angry and pointed us to a place somewhere far away from her.

“Where do we go? Which line?”

Her angry expression turned communist red as she started jabbing at the air with her finger as if to say "Just go far away from me, stupid foreigners!"

We picked a line and waited. And got sent back to the finger jabber who, oddly, though by now thoroughly disgusted with us, decided to check our passports and our boarding passes for the next morning’s flight. Then she motioned for us to get out of her face, using only her Middle Kingdom finger.

We'd been told we could pick up the shuttle bus to our hotel at Exit E. This was perfect, as the staircase behind Ms. Kingdom Finger came with a sign with an arrow and the words 'Exit E'.

Downstairs we found nothing but signs for A, B & C and an escalator down to the train that ran back and forth between us and Exits A, B & C. With my daughter in my arms I led my family down the moving staircase to see what else we could find – and found ourselves trapped in a long glass enclosure, the only way out being that train to Exits A, B & C but not E, or even D.

Down near the other end of the enclosure I saw two men in pilot uniforms. If anyone knew what the hell was going on, they did. Plus they didn’t look Chinese, heightening dramatically the odds of them willing to help us.

“Yes, take this train, when you get off you’ll see Exit E ahead and to the left.”

They were friendly. They were smiling.

They were from Singapore.

Along with Exits A, B & C that train did in fact take us to the place where Exit E was, and Exit D, and every other Exit in the airport. Whatever idiot from Conde Nast figured that BCA was tops in the airport world for 'clarity of signs' in 2009 must not have had to find his own way to his free hotel room.

Next to the massive glass doors of Exit E was a large counter, a half-circle inhabited by a half dozen people who would probably give up their citizenship if it meant they could be anywhere but inside that half-circle. Off to the side a loose gathering of tired people with carry-ons stood and sat, presumably waiting for the shuttle bus to their free hotel rooms.

My wife had a printout with our reservation information. The way the two girls sitting behind the counter were pounding their keyboards you'd think they used to work under that ’72-hour layover transit passengers’ sign. At first it seemed they were angry because they had to find us in the system. Then it became apparent they were angry because they couldn’t.

A guy who had been standing motionless at one end of the half-circle walked over. He looked lazily at my wife’s piece of paper. He glanced over at the closest computer screen. Then he went back to his corner to resume his motionless duties.

My kids were tired but eager to get to the hotel so they could jump around on the beds. I was tired but eager to get to the hotel so I could fall onto one of the beds. My wife was all hyped up at her premature conclusion that we weren’t going to any hotel and, in her cute, maniacal way, continued to try to talk the situation into working itself out. Ten minutes after I told her to give it a rest our uniformed mannequin moved from his corner, grabbed a piece of paper from one of the Punchy Girls and walked over to us.

“You,” he said, holding the paper out to us. “Give front desk...Don’t lose.”

It was this sort of stellar performance that earned BCA the title of "World's 3rd Best Airport" in the 2011 Airport Service Quality Awards, bestowed by the crack staff at the Airports Council International.

A few minutes later we were all led through the terminal and out Exit B to a large passenger van. As we waited for the driver to put it in gear a young man in a long black overcoat and black-frame glasses got on the bus and barked a series of orders at everyone in Chinese. For a moment he stood there like a pissed-off teacher waiting for one of his students to admit they shot the spitball at him. With no such admission forthcoming he said a couple more angry words and got off the bus.

And we were off, grumbling into the Beijing night, barreling down street after wide, desolate four-lane street. Flanked by nothing but deadwood forest, these roads were exactly what you’d imagine roads in a communist country fifty years ago would look like.

We turned right and left at a half dozen intersections before roaring down a narrow two-lane street, up to a control gate and into what any sane person would call a compound, surrounded by chain link fence topped with barbed wire.

Evidently China prefers not to allow their guests to go out and enjoy their layovers.

All That Glitters is Gold-Plated

The lights of the vast glass-encased lobby lit up the carport like police spotlights. Two huge stone foo-dog lion creature statues stood guarding the entrance like this was some kind of temple. The lobby breathed with warm, stale air. The walls and floor and ceiling and reception desk were all made of something resembling marble. The three girls behind the front desk worked semi-frantically to get everyone checked in – not because we were tired but because they were.

“The bus to the airport leaves at 6:30,” the one girl who spoke good English told us. “Do you want a wake-up call at 5:30 or 6:00?”

It was already past midnight. Our flight wasn’t until 10:30am. This wasn't customer service, this was no-frills crowd control.

“What time is breakfast?” I asked.

“5:00 to 7:30.”

“Okay, can we get a call at 5:30 then?”

“Yes,” the girl said, and handed us back our passports and the keys to not one but two rooms. “Elevators are that way,” she said as a send-off, pointing behind us where we saw nothing like an elevator, or even a dumbwaiter. But we did see two young men standing at the corner of a side hallway.

As we approached one of them stepped in front of me. “Where you going?”

I showed him our keys. B203 and B207.

He put his arms out, one to rope us in and the other to guide us around the corner to the elevators (read: keep us foreigners and our kids from wandering the hotel and compromising the security of the State). Once he had us secured in the elevator he pushed the button for the third floor. "Third floor," he said as an extra security measure.

We stepped out into a hallway as wide as a minivan is long. Tacky red and gold patterned carpeting ran wall to wall. Big thick dark wood double doors hid conference rooms for the business people who never stayed here for the conventions that were never held. (Pure speculation there but the feeling was too thick to ignore.) Ten yards down a big red illuminated sign with a thick white A stuck out of the wall. The B was another fifty yards away. C was halfway to Shanghai. Our electronic key cards got us through the locked door under the B on the fourth try.



"This bed is funny!"

B203 was spacious and dim and had two double beds. B207 was a suite, twice as spacious and just as drab, a king bed on one side and three single beds on the other.

The kids got right to jumping on all of them.

The lights in the room had two settings: 'barely on' and 'off'. The TV reception could be best described as ‘snowy’. The rooms were so big they felt empty, despite all the beds. The pillows were filled with tiny marbles. The mattresses were filled with bigger marbles. The bathroom could accommodate a badminton match and an impressive amount of mold in between the tiles. At the sink the faucet handle came off in my hand.



For the first time I can remember I passed on the complimentary in-room coffee.

“You get on the bus now!”

5:45am

The kids didn’t want to go to sleep. Now they didn’t want to wake up. They felt like they were filled with marbles.

Breakfast was served in the cavernous banquet hall just off the front lobby. A hundred round tables with white tablecloths crowded the room. Eleven thousand chairs sat shrouded in yellow cloth so bright the Easter Bunny wouldn’t know what to do. The long table running down the middle of the room, also dressed in yellow, held two dozen of those fancy covered metal catering serving trays with the burners underneath. I knew what most of the twenty-odd dishes were: vegetables. For all but three of them I couldn’t get more specific than that. On the long table along one wall was the coffee and tea, milk and a kind of juice, and lots of cheap white bread that felt like it had passed its sell-by date. The toaster that couldn’t melt an ice cube provided no remedy.

I felt like I was back in college. And ate like it too.

As I explained to my kids how the clock hands meant we had to finish eating and go, another young man who looked similar to and acted strikingly like the angry kid on the bus the night before stood in the doorway to the hall and began barking at the back wall a quarter mile away. We took this to mean we better load up and get back on the bus.

"This food tastes funny..."

It was still dark as we bounced back out of the compound out onto those wide, abandoned communist bloc avenues. The sun was just making its appearance when we got off at Beijing Capitol Airport, that shining jewel in the middle of the Chinese wasteland.

"This shit ain't funny."

In the airport convenience store a can of beer cost about a dollar. A bottle of water cost two. A large coffee at the kiosk cost eight.

I decided to wait until after take-off when all of it would be free. Because paying for anything now would be simply unprincipled.

My kids were fully awake, giddy from having gotten to stay in a 5-Star hotel (as far as they and China were concerned). They voiced their excitement about finally getting to bang their little fingers on their private little in-flight entertainment system screens on the seatbacks in front of them. I ran through my head what I would say to the people sitting on the other side of those seatbacks.

My wife was excited for another trip to America, to see my family and visit our friends and go shopping for cheap post-Christmas decorations at Target.

I was just happy we were all there and on our way. And appreciative in a weird way about our overnight layover, in this country that I (and probably Tibet) wish was a little more like ass-grabbing not country-grabbing Kanye West.

Guest Post - 'Overnight Delivery in Vietnam'

With my good-intentioned bus master and friend. (You owe me, girl!)

My clearest memories of Vietnam revolve not around the famous sights and the guidebook-prescribed places but the unexpected, unpredictable moments of during and in between. Hoi An was wonderful, but it was the old woman with the leprous hands who peeled my mango for me that I can't forget, as much as I'd like to. Our trip to the hills up north was nice, but the brick that came flying and crashing through the window of our berth on the overnight train as we slept kind of heads the highlight reel.

Even on that boat tour around Vietnam's crown jewel of Ha Long Bay, the indescribable scenery, the captivating karsts take a back seat in the caravan of memories in my head. The grumbling, almost resentful attitude of the people working on the boat; the overload of French Fries at every meal; my gastrointestinal bout with some expired pineapple juice I drank; these are what stick in my mind, for better or for worse.

After a month it seemed Vietnam was entirely incapable of providing a dull moment. I couldn't even take a bus without having another memorable moment pounded into me. One bus ride in particular is the subject of 'Overnight Delivery in Vietnam', a recent guest post written exclusively for Manouk Bob's travel-inspired BunchOfBackpackers site.

Manouk has a lot of good stuff going on over at BunchOfBackpackers, so take a few moments to poke around. And check out 'Where These Roads Went', the travelogue that shows you in fantastic detail how not to travel through Cambodia. (Print version coming soon, for those of you who prefer paper to plug-in.)

p.s. - every detail of the story is true, even the part about the flying mangosteen.

Travel on!

Kevin

Tazawa-ko: Akita’s Deep Blue Jewel

Facts, Logistics & Fun

Photo： Agustin Rafael Reyes on Flickr

Tazawa Lake in Akita Prefecture is a near-perfect circle – and a perfect representation of Akita itself: unassuming, unspoiled and sublimely spectacular. Surrounded by mountains and laced with legend, this million-year-old volcanic crater offers the comfortable beauty of natural Japan without all the crowds.

Upon closer examination, we also see that unassuming Tazawa is quietly decorated with quirky details. But first…

A Few Facts

Initially thought by some to be an impact crater from a meteorite, research into the lake’s depths uncovered geological evidence of a tremendous volcanic eruption 1.4 million years ago that led to the lake’s present form. With no natural inflow or outflow, Tazawa’s waters consist entirely of eons of rain and snow.

With a surface area of roughly 10 square miles (26km2) Tazawa-ko sits well down the list of Japan’s largest lakes. But at 423 meters (1,388ft) she is Japan’s deepest. Drop Tokyo Tower into the lake and the top would still be 90 meters below the surface. Lake Tazawa sits at 249 meters above sea level, which means the deepest parts of the lake reach down lower than the waves crashing into the shores of Honshu. This translates into the lake never freezing over, no matter how harsh the Tohoku winter.

Read more at Taiken Japan...

enRoute to Tokyo

Canadiantertainment

 

Air Canada kicks ass.

 

I’ll give you three reasons why.

 

1. They have this check-in person named Janet who doesn’t care if every single one of the ten duffel bags and beaten cardboard boxes you throw at her goes overweight. “That’s what these are for,” she says as she sticks another bright orange HEAVY tag on another HEAVY box.

 

2. On overseas Air Canada flights the beer is free – and that includes the Molson, not just the crappy American beer in the stupid uber-patriotic cans.

 

3. Air Canada’s in-flight magazine is pure and genuine entertainment; unintentionally purely and genuinely entertaining. Like young children. The New York Mets. Donald Trump, you know.

 

Last month I flew Air Canada from Newark to Toronto to Tokyo. The 90-minute first leg consisted entirely of beverage service and my two sons wrestling for dominance over the arm rest controls. (If you have to ask why my two sons were fighting if they each had their own arm rest controls then you obviously don't have two sons). My kids kept hitting the call button, driving the flight attendants so absolutely nuts I began wondering how many more times it would be before they came down the aisle waving torches and pitchforks.

 

Talk about pure, genuine entertainment.

 

Settling in for the Toronto - Tokyo leg of the journey, while my kids were going bananas over the video entertainment system (and I was going bananas over the impending free beer system), I noticed that the seat pocket in front of me – and every other seat pocket within reach – still contained last month’s edition of enRoute, Air Canada’s mis-capitalized in-flight magazine.

 

My first thought: How can the guy on the cover look so happy carrying his twelve-year-old son around a museum on his shoulders? And while wearing red pants no less?

 

My second thought: Why can’t my kids just figure out the god damn touch-screen?

 

In-flight magazines are always good for a laugh. Continental/United offers up supercilious travel articles like this, while any given Chinese airline will, true to form, produce the cheapest crap on the planet, right down to the idiotic English translations.

 

Rarely, though, will an airline mag provide unwitting humor front to back. This sort of literary feat is normally only ever seen in the Wall Street Journal Magazine. But by the time I was finished confiscating my sons’ riot-inducing mini-pretzels and stuffing them into my seat pocket I’d realized two things. One, our plane’s video system was malfunctioning, not my sons’ brains as I had been suggesting for the past two hours. And two, Air Canada brings in-flight magazine entertainment to a whole new level. This back issue in my hands was so good, in fact, that I only had one beer the entire flight. One! And did I mention they were free?!

 

For any of you not lucky enough to have flown Air Canada lately (and who knows how long this June 2014 issue has actually been gracing Air Canada’s seat pockets), do not despair. For here I give you the 30 greatest highlights of this most recent outdated eNroUTe.

 

1. Editor In Chief Ilana Weitzman gets the ball rolling by stating that her magazine is going to show us how globalization, rather than prostituting local cultures, “can, in fact, revive local traditions”. She then goes on to say one company they spotlight this month (and who knows how many months) is helping to “evolve local traditions” – another way of saying “changing the way other people do things so they are more like we do them”. She even bolsters my sarcastic and wholly accurate view by explaining how one Canadian is “bringing Turkey’s heritage carpets to Canadians in a new way, revamped for contemporary tastes”. Nice try, Ilana. Interesting color scheme there, but the pattern is sooo not Eastern Canadian. Can you re-thread it a bit to make it look more like a herd of caribou?

 

2. As with any rag that places style before substance we see plenty of self-indulgent advertisements early on. Subaru rolls out a two-page ad touting their 2014 Impreza as “Beautiful on the outside…and the inside.” What a load of bull. Sorry Mr. Subaru Ad Manager, but I used that line all the time when I was single and it never, ever worked. (I will concede, Sir, that your use of the phrase “well-equipped” does work in your case. In mine it only got me slapped.)

 

3. Hugo Boss’s ad for sunglasses urges us to “Master the Light.” Judging from the cheap burgundy sport coat, textured pink dress shirt and black knit necktie combo the guy in the ad is wearing I imagine Hugo’s shades must pretty much block out any and all light.

 

Lesson: Don’t wear Hugo Boss sunglasses when you are getting dressed.

 

4. An ad from Ciroc, makers of some kind of distilled coconut-flavored drink made from grapes (don’t ask me, I just point these things out), tells us to “Celebrate Luxury”. To be honest I have no idea what that means. The manifestation of the concept, though, is probably something like this.

 

5. A half-page ad for Sterling Metalsmith jewelers showcases an impossibly beautiful woman dressed in jewelry and nothing else, her arms positioned over her breasts as she touches her manicured fingertips to her smooth, impeccable complexion in a way that makes it impossible for me to put my tray table down. “Free Charm!” it says alongside the perfect features of her face. Sterling Metalschmucks! You think she needs charm to get by?

 

6. In a one-page tourism pitch Mexicotries to lure potential visitors to her capital by asserting an 18^thCentury castle in the middle of a modern city is “unexplainable” – and therefore worth seeing, I guess. First of all, sure, Mexico City is modern in terms of population density, crime rate and pollution levels. But as far as finding a castle in the middle of a city, I guess we can’t explain Salzburg, Ljubljana, Osaka or Lhasa (which we can now classify as modern thanks to China’s methodical destruction of its heritage) either. Tip: all these places are much safer and cleaner than Mexico City (except Lhasa thanks to China’s myopic tyranny and paranoid rules for being a good little tourist – or Buddhist monk).

 

Il est bon d'être le roi.

7. On Page 25 Calin Rovinescu, President and CEO of Air Canada, brags about his company’s planes’ “next generation inflight (their typo) entertainment system”. Seeing as we were somewhere over Manitoba before they could get the in-flight entertainment system even half-working I’d say Calin, President and CEO of Air Canada, needs to stop celebrating his own luxury and take a closer look at the company he is ostensibly running.

 

8. Among a collage of blurbs about attractions in Amagansett, Long island, New York (one of them the Sea Slug Lounge, talk about free charm) is a perky bit about “Vicki’s Veggies”, where Vicki “keeps her mother’s great blueberry pies hidden behind the counter because everybody wants them”. Not exactly sound business strategy there Vicki.

 

9. The first two pages for “Discover America”, a Please-Travel-The-US magazine within a Canadian in-flight magazine, is an ad for Puerto Rico. I guess this is the beginning of the end of political correctness about our 51^ststate?

 

(Note: #2 in this sub-magazine’s 20 Great American Adventures? Puerto Rico.)

 

10. A two-page ad for the U.S. Virgin Islands (this sub-mag should be titled “Discover the American Empire”) poses the following question: “Why dress in layers when you could layer on sunscreen instead?” Ilana Weitzman and her cadre of editorial assistants (as it may be) certainly missed that one. Hey people! Freeze your ass off in Quebec or kayak naked in tropical St. Croix?

 



Screw Canada, eh?

11. Wisconsin, casting her line into the tourism waters, tries to lure us north by mentioning golf, fishing and “a thousand other ways to put a smile on your face” – ways that, by virtue of their non-mention, probably don’t rank as high as golf and fishing. Hoo boy, get me to Milwaukee yesterday, eh?

 

12. This Go USA! sub-mag ends with a piece titled “8 Great US Cities to Explore”. Sounds like a build-up to seeing some intriguing, unheralded spots across this great big nation, doesn’t it? Well, fasten your seat belts and get ready to be whisked away to… Philly, Atlantic City, Vegas, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. Wow, how inspired. The only wildcard in there is Branson, Missouri – presumably included since Visit Missouri bought the next three pages of Go USA! advertising space.

 

13. An interview with Denys Arcand (yeah I never heard of him either) opens with a question about how he felt when he moved to Montrealat age 12. His answer? “My school was right near Eaton’s, plenty of taverns and the bars of Boulevard Saint-Laurent. Soon I felt right at home.” Guess Mr. and Mrs. Arcand weren’t exactly the milk and orange juice type.

 

14. The piece on page 43 features a shoe salesman with a fancy title that essentially means “shoe salesman”. In the photo he’s wearing a gray dress shirt that, 3/4 of the way down, turns a darker shade of gray. It makes him look like he was very recently standing in about a meter of water. He led a nomadic childhood, he jokes, noting that “the first time I went to the same school two years in a row was in Grade 8.” Which means he either went to eighth grade twice or he never learned to count to two at any of his schools. Maybe both.

 

15. Next up we see an ad for a clothier who sells at least one dress that makes the wearer look like a cross section of a pear. A red pear. With feet, and a head. Okay so maybe she doesn’t look like a pear, exactly - though she could definitely pass for a Monsanto pomegranate.

 

pomegranate - (noun) a chambered, many-seeded,
globose fruit, having a tough, usually red rind
and surmounted by a crown of calyx lobes,
the edible portion consisting of pleasantly
acid flesh developed from the outer seed coat.

16. After a lengthy piece on great Londonmuseums for children (can’t disparage that) we get our look into the world of “old Turkish rugs that have been spiffed up for a contemporary look”. At first this struck me as farcical as whacking a wooden table with a bicycle chain to give it that great and false antique flavor, or selling at twice the price jeans that have been fashionably pre-ripped. But then it occurred to me that I had it all backwards. What they are doing to these “old” rugs is more akin to painting the faces of today’s beautiful, soulless celebrities on DaVinci’s The Last Supper. You like my rug? Well thank you, it’s Turkish… Yes I know, well it looked too, I don’t know, Turkish, so I had it redone so it wouldn’t look so, you know, Turkish. But it’s Turkish…

 

17. As if Turkey’s traditions aren’t being bastardized enough they are also turning their carpets into fantastically ridiculous coats. Are you kidding me? "Revenge of the Velvet Vampire Nerds"?

 

18. The Great Canadian Hotel Fitness Challenge sounds like a tournament for businessmen who hate to sweat. In truth (or in my opinion, which is the same), this article by self-effacing Andrew Braithwaite is a gasping breath of fresh air. Six pages in length, the content is actually offered in English and French, much like the rest of ENrOUTE, so getting through it is a pleasant breeze, not to mention a voyeuristic exercise in exercising while actually sitting on a plane for 13 hours drinking (one) free beer and eating mini-pretzels out of the seat pocket.

 

19. Inside our second sub-magazine, all about Mexico without a single mention of Puerto Rico, the Executive Chef at the Hyatt Zilara Cancun talks about sourcing his ingredients locally. “Guests say they travel to explore and experience things they can not do at home,” he says with food in his mouth. “By emphasizing the sounds, smells and tastes from the region, you can discover the local culture inside the resort.” Ah yes, those adventurous Hyatt-dwelling explorers.

 

20. The sub-title of the “Where to Stay in Mexico” section of this sub-mag, really just an infomercial in print, reads Caribbean or Pacific, find your perfect vacation in Mexicowith these all-inclusive resorts. Which is kind of like saying “Come to Flagstaff, Arizona and watch a video of the Grand Canyon.”

 

21. This sub-rag ends with a four-point “Need to Know” tutorial. Point #1: Spanish is the official language of Mexico. Except in your all-inclusive resort, where it is English. Point #2: Electricity flows at 110-120 Volts (same as Canada). Wait, I thought these resorts were all-inclusive, now you’re telling me it’s okay to bring my hair dryer?  Point #3: The currency is Mexican Pesos. Canadian and US dollars are also generally accepted. Yes, inside the resort as well as, for all you adventurous types, up and down the tourist strip right outside the front gates of the resort. And Point #4: Airport/resort shuttle transfers are included in your package. Because we wouldn’t want you getting sidetracked on your way to all that authenticity inside the Hyatt.

 

22. On Page 92 the EnRoUtE pEoPlE bother to offer two crosswords, one in English and one in French. Why not just have one Sudoku? Find some common ground instead of magnifying our differences (while reminding me that I suck at crosswords).

 

23. In a micro-explosion of geekiness enroute tells us “the auxiliary power unit used to start the Boeing 777’s massive engines generates enough electrical output to power 1,500 desktop computers.” Really? Let’s see, geeks, even if we’re talking those old 25-pound, 256k dinosaurs you guys used to build in your spare time this means we’ve only got power for 37,500 pounds of equipment. Call me crazy but I’m a bit surprised the plane ever got off the ground. There certainly wasn’t enough power left over to run the entertainment system.

 

24. Next page: Seems some brand development genius named the high-dollar ($695,000 to $3,000,000 per comfy shoebox) residence hotel in the Bahamas The Atlantis.

 

Question: What happened to the original Atlantis?

 



"Here's my card.
Let me know how your trip went!"

25. In a customer appreciation piece, plastic surgeon and Air Canada Altitude Super Elite 100K Frequent Flyer Member Trevor Born, MD recommends an impetuous, no worries approach to travel. “If you run into someone who says Join me!," he says, “just go.” Which, we can reasonably speculate, will land at least a few unsuspecting tourists bloodied and beaten in a gutter and, subsequently, in a plastic surgeon’s chair.

 

26. Nearing the end of our non-electronic in-flight entertainment we come upon Flight Deck – Our Pilot’s Fast Facts About Aviation. Cool, some random stuff to throw out at parties in lieu of that useless “beautiful on the outside and inside” line. Anything has got to work better than that…

 

First bit? “Airplane window (noun) – acrylic or glass porthole built to withstand the forces of pressurization.” Wow, someone get me to a party pronto.

 

27. In a baby blue box in the middle of our Flight Deck we see a big 30 – bold with writing under it like Time magazine will do each week to highlight important, relevant facts like how many people die of lightning strikes while being eaten by sharks off the coast of Fijievery year. So what does the 30 mean here? If you haven’t already guessed, it is the “percentage by which Air Canada’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger windows are larger than those of the B777.” Damn, with this sort of party artillery I think I’m going to need a few condoms too.

 

28. More Flight Deck fun: “To calculate the maximum viewing distance from an airplane window, multiply the square root of the plane’s altitude (in feet) by 1.23, which yields a value in miles.” Right. We’ll have landed first.

 

29. We end our rOUTe with a peek into the intriguing underworld of Air Canada’s Operations Business Intelligence Team, nine fearless individuals who, using computer software, advanced math, statistical methods of analysis and plenty of anti-depressants, interpret key performance indicators like arrival punctuality and greenhouse emissions as well as other raw data added daily to the airline’s massive data banks. (There won’t be a single girl at that party who will be able to resist me now.) All that intensity brings results like “by subtly adjusting block times – a measure of how long it takes airplanes to push off from one gate and reach the next – flights could arrive on time more often during their complicated itineraries.” Yes and if my parents could have subtly adjusted my curfew by a couple of hours I would have gotten home on time a lot more often.



OpsBizIntel -- Sexing Up the Numbers

30. Our Ops Biz Intel Team also offers bold numbers to make things like “number of single columns of database data available for computerized analysis” sound even sexier, but I think I’ll put my En Route back in my pretzel-crumb-lined seat pocket and stare at the square root of 36,000 x 1.23 miles of clouds outside my 30% larger airplane window (noun) and ponder the idea of that woman wearing the jewelry and nothing else buying my “beautiful on the inside” line.

 

Son, push that call button. I think I need another beer.

 

NOTE: One last look at the guy on the front cover and it hits me. His red pants, white shirt and his kid’s blue shirt form the same color scheme as the French flag, which they appear to be waving proudly in front of the only entity they have not had to consider surrendering to.

 

"Triomphe!"