Day 1 (+/-) - the hellish part.

UGh. That feeling when you have spent 12 hours in the air but are only part way there.

China Eastern (despite a few horror stories) was no worse than any other discount carrier. The plane was ok (A330-200), the food terrible, seats just that tiny bit too small, and a non-functional entertainment system. But flying was never supposed to be about glorious adventure, was it?

Up the west coast we were racing another plane, and I'm not aviation expert, but it seems strange to be cruising at 38,000' this close to another plane...

The flight tracked south of the Aleutians, not much land visible until Japan, and even that a little cloudy. However, crossing the East China Sea I knew we were approaching Shanghai when the clouds went for fair-weather cumulus to thick haze with a distinct yellow tinge.

We passed through Shanghai during one of their air quality emergencies -

The few glimpses we see of the City are newer developments (evidenced by the wide, empty roads builds to sudden dead ends), and big ships in the Harbour.

However, nothing prepared us for the bigness of the Terminal building, or

I should say one of the terminal buildings at the gargantuan Shanghai airport. A single, long, cavernous space that disappeared to a vanishing point like a backdrop canvas from an epic 50 Holywood film. movie. It seems the building was built not to contain today's needs, but to house future expansions, as much of the space is completely empty.

So we caught the spirit, emptied some beers and waited.

With all that big terminal space and empty gates, it was surprising when we went through "boarding" and got on a bus hat drove us a few miles across the Tarmac, between taxiing planes, past the parked A-340s and A-380s and 747-400s to the cheap back lot where they kept the old A-320s. Boarding a jet from a staircase car, like Kennedy did it!

The flight to Ho Chi Minh City was uneventful, dark, and at this point we realized packaged Chinese foods are full of interesting surprises. Onion flavours where you expect ice cream, vanilla where you expect onions. A quick taxi ride through mostly abandoned streets (we arrived at 2:00am local time) and found our secluded back alley guest house. Check in, settle down -hit the hay almost exactly 24 hours after we ordered our pre-flight beers at YVR. Through the magic of the international date line, we left at noon on Saturday, travelled 24 hours, and it is 3am on Monday. sleep.

 

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