I caught a reasonable non-stop flight from Perth to Guangzhou on China Southern. It was the longest flight I have ever taken without changing timezones: 8 hours. Guangzhou is more or less directly on the same longitude line as Perth Australia, so it was a straight north shot. I found myself sitting next to a polite and friendly elderly man who seemed to be getting deported from Australia for some reason. He had a letter in his hands from the airline stating that he was financially responsible for his deportation. I pretended not to notice. He seemed to be British and heading to the U.S. to see his daughter who was living there.
Once we arrived on the tarmac in Guangzhou, the plane had to taxi endlessly around the perimeter of the huge new airport. It got stuck in a queue for 15 minutes while waiting for a gate and then finally pulled up to one. The only problem was that the section of the airport we pulled up to had obviously not been finished yet, so we all had to exit down stairs to catch shuttle buses to a completed part of the airport.
I was easily able to get a local SIM with a local Chinese phone number with access to data for my time in the country. I eventually found an ATM to get some Chinese currency and then found the express bus to my hotel. Unfortunately, it had to make 3-4 10 minutes stops at various parts of the airport before finally venturing down the highway express to central Guangzhou. In all, it took 3 hours from touchdown to hotel arrival where my brother and his family were waiting.
My first impression of China was that it appeared to be a very modern and well cared for country, but by the time I got checked into the hotel, I must have been photographed hundreds of times along the highway and for each purchase I made at the airport – as well as for immigration – which I also had to be fingerprinted for multiple times. I guess a welcome to China experience.
Overall, it was an exhausting trip and an endless wait for the people waiting up for me at the hotel for dinner, but we headed out to find a nice dinner and ended up at a fabulous local restaurant where we had ourselves a banquet of excellent Chinese food.
