Airport Hell… I mean Airport Hotel. Ok, Maybe Both

Sometime between Saturday, September 10th and Sunday September 11th

I’m not quite sure where Saturday night ended and Sunday morning started… The lines are a little blurred, as are my eyes from lack of sleep.  Listen to this fiasco…

We were in the airport waiting for our flight to Beijing and our 8:45 boarding time came and went.  Our 9:25 departure time came and went.  At 10:30, it was announced that our flight was delayed with a new departure time of 1am.  We are so exhausted, our phones are almost dead and our adapters are in our checked luggage so we have no way to charge them.  At 12:30am, we were moved to a new gate and everyone seemed to think that meant we were boarding, but shortly after the gate change, they announced our flight was delayed again until 2:55am.

With that announcement, the crowds grew restless.  People were yelling and screaming at the airline attendant, reaching across the counter and at one point, they pushed through onto the jetway.  We were starting to get worried a riot would break out.  Security and Police came over to quiet the rebel rousers and at this point, the passengers on our flight were the only people left in the dark, empty airport.

This is a nightmare… I know this stuff happens, but I’ve never experienced this magnitude of a delay in the states and the worst part about this is we can’t communicate to find out what is going on or what our options are.  Luckily there was a couple from the states and the woman is Chinese and fluent in the language, so her husband continued to keep us updated in English.  There’s also another couple from the states who we’ve been commiserating with and I’m thankful we’re not the only English speaking people on this flight left to fend for ourselves.

At 3am, they announced our flight had been cancelled and that we were going to be put up in a hotel.  They are going to try to reschedule our flight for tomorrow morning, but there’s no guarantee it will happen.  We heard several reasons for the delay and eventual cancellation, from weather to air traffic congestion.  We were all herded downstairs to claim our baggage and then filed back upstairs and onto several different buses.  We had no idea where we were going or when we needed to be back at the airport, so we tried to stay close to our new friends to have access to a translator.

Once on the bus, the drive seemed to take forever and for a second, I wondered if they were driving us to Beijing.  Finally, twenty minutes plus later, we arrived at a dark, dilapidated, smoky hotel.  It was an absolute free-for-all at the counter trying to get a room.  I was able to push my way past everyone at the desk… I’m learning what needs to be done here in Asia to get what you need and if you aren’t aggressive, you’ll be left behind.  The girls behind the desk didn’t speak English, so I was handed a room key but wasn’t able to ask any details.  Another fellow passenger spoke English and told us they would be calling our rooms when it was time to go back to the airport and that could be at 7am or 10am… No one had any additional details yet.  It’s now 5am but at least we can take a shower, charge our phones and catch an hour power nap.  Although I’m not sure I want to put my head on this pillow, but I’m that tired… so it’s happening.  Oh and our room has a gambling table under a silk cover with seats for four… Did we score a suite?  Maybe this was the luck brought by rubbing Happy Buddha’s belly because he sure hasn’t brought us any other good fortune today with this situation.  Thank you, I guess???

At just before 7am, the phone rang but the message was in Chinese and the caller didn’t speak English.  So we had no idea if we needed to be downstairs in five minutes or thirty minutes.  But we weren’t taking any chances on getting stuck here and missing our flight, so we hurried to get ready and headed down.  And to be honest, I think both of us just wanted to get out of that gross room anyway, but the lobby isn’t much better.

We found our English speaking friends sitting in the dining room carefully eating some of the options on the free breakfast buffet.  We didn’t have it in us to give it a try and decided to hold out until we got back to the airport… If we’re going back.  The new rumor is that there was an earthquake outside of Beijing which is causing all the delays.  There is no new information about our flight… has been rescheduled??  Are we going to be stuck at this hotel for hours??  I don’t know what to do.  Should we just go to the train station and forget about the flight?  But it’s a six hour train ride and we have no idea if we’ll even be able to get on the train.  I don’t have wifi at this grunge pit, so I can’t do any research to determine what other options we have.

Our new translator friend confirmed there was no earthquake outside of Beijing and that a few people left the hotel earlier this morning and went back to the airport on their own getting seats on the 8am flight, which already took off with no delays.  Now we’re thinking those people started the rumor about the earthquake so they could jet off and get the last available seats leaving us thinking all flights are delayed and cancelled.  Sucks for us, but genius on their part… Jerks!

We were just about to hop in a cab with one of the other English speaking couples and get ourselves back to the airport on our own to deal with this situation, when one of the fellow travelers in our group called the airline and was able to determine that our flight had been rescheduled for 11am. They started boarding our bus and we decided to go back with the group.

As we pulled up to the airport, everyone started pushing to get off first so they could be the first ones in line at the counter.  I told my mom to go and I’d grab our bags.  There was no such thing as a line though… It was more of a mob with everyone throwing elbows and pushing to get to the front.  We were able to box out a few eager travelers to get ourselves to the counter without much of a wait, but it did result in my mom getting slapped by an older Chinese man.  I do feel bad about our behavior, but everyone else was doing it and desperate times call for desperate measures.  Two boarding passes for the 11am departure confirmed.

I was relieved once we boarded the plane and took off.  And by the way, apparently it didn’t even rain in Beijing last night, which was another excuse they had given us at one point.  So who knows what actually happened, but I’m convinced it was something specific to our airline or plane because every other flight to Beijing took off last night.

I’m starting to think my mom and I shouldn’t be rubbing that Happy Buddha anymore… Clearly it’s the opposite of luck for us. The adventures of traveling.  This has been quite an experience.  Maybe not quite the one we asked for, but an interesting one nonetheless.

This blog entry was originally posted on www.DawnandKristenGoToChina.blogspot.com