Finally in Fuzhou

Today started rather abruptly when we all woke up around 6:40 AM…although we had planned to be out the door by 6:45. Oops. We still made it out in good time – Susan and Walter stopped by the bakery while Dad and I hailed a taxi, and we made it to the border gate by 7:10 AM. Dad joked about using the senior (65+ years) line, but hey, it got us through more quickly than Walter and Susan, who couldn’t pass as “companions.”

More trouble came when we hauled our suitcases over to the Gongbei coach station that I’ve used before to get to Guangzhou airport, only to find that the bus was leaving from ANOTHER station across the street and down the block. Dad and I rushed over there, making it with about 10 minutes to spare, but we were worried about Walter and Susan, who hadn’t shown up by 7:55, but the bus didn’t leave either. Around 8:00, a van pulled up next to us and they hopped out, so it was ok. It turns out that if we had waited at the first station, we too could have gotten the shuttle, but the station staff didn’t say anything about it.

The bus ride was fairly uneventful, minus a few people throwing up in the rows ahead of us, but there must have been something wrong with them because the ride wasn’t that rough. We arrived by 11:00, got slightly lost looking for the check-in counter, but then found the electronic check-in machines and printed out boarding passes. Susan and Walter went to gate 104 for their flight to Beijing, while Dad and I headed to gate 111 and just hung out there for a couple hours.

Around 1:00, however, things started going downhill again. We were wondering why things were so quiet – boarding was supposed to start at 12:50 PM for the 1:30 flight to Fuzhou. There was a plane outside the window, but mysteriously, it wasn’t connected to the boarding extension, it wasn’t being refueled, or anything. Suddenly, the gate sign flashed that the Fuzhou flight had been moved to Gate 103, so we rushed over only to find ourselves waiting for another half hour. Around 2:00, we finally boarded a bus that took us to the plane, got on, listened to the security features video, etc. After that, however, the plane just stayed put…and I dozed off =P

I woke up around 3:00 to find that the attendants were passing out food – noodles with chicken or pork, plus a small piece of cake, some dried fruit, and a choice of water or “liang cha” (cooling tea, with chrysanthemum, lotus, and a few other things). Apparently the delay was not because of problems in Guangzhou, although it was cloudy, but because of heavy rain in Fuzhou, so air traffic control wasn’t letting the plane take off. Everyone ate quickly and the flight attendants even had time to clean up before we finally started moving around 3:30, and we got to Fuzhou around 5:00.

Another 90 minutes later, we thankfully made it to the hotel via bus/taxi, which is where we are now. Dinner was just in the hotel restaurant downstairs for convenience, but the food was ok: tofu cubes stir-fried with young chives, another squash dish, and mushroom soup. They even gave us a bonus of two small zhong zi at the end, in honor of Duan Wu Jie (still kind of sad that I missed the dragon boat races in Macau, but oh well). As I’m writing this, Dad is watching something on TV about how to pick the best turtles for cooking, but he’s dozed off and I think I’m going to sleep early too. Good night!