Or should I say, “I shall go to Korea if I can only get through China on the way!”
An eventful day, starting with another strike in Kathmandu that left the roads deserted of cars, but not people or rubble (placed there by protesters to hamper vehicular traffic). After our Air China flight finally took off, they announced in Mandarin that we were flying right past Mount Everest! Unfortunately, everyone on the right side of the plane got up and ran across the aisle to see it, which was a bit dicey. We were all disappointed because it stayed shrouded in clouds. Oh well. We continued on our way to Lhasa, Tibet.
As we started our descent into Lhasa, they warned us about turbulence. Then the pilot suddenly announced in Mandarin that it was too dangerous to land due to a blizzard, so they’d skip it and fly straight to Chengdu. Many of the passengers began cheering, and I thought it was someone’s birthday, but then they translated it into English. Skipping a layover sounds nice, but it meant we arrived two hours early, and I was left with seven hours to kill without being allowed to go anywhere. I’m not sure how many on the plane were disadvantaged by the decision, but they stayed quiet.
Flight from Kathmandu, Nepal to Chengdu, China
Map of the route “I shall go to Korea.”: 2,004,319 m, 2,289 m of climbing and 2,991 m of descent, elevation between 572 m and 3,240 m, time 03:15:34. It starts at 27.69818, 85.35777 and ends at 30.56683, 103.94920 (latitude, longitude).
Once I arrived in Chengdu, I had to face immigration without a Chinese visa. They were actually very nice, but they confiscated my passport and told me I wasn’t allowed to leave the airport terminal. At one point, 5 Chinese officials escorted me around. I get the impression they don’t deal with too many transient visitors. Chengdu airport is huge, with many empty, unused gates. Even so, they forced our plane to park way out on the tarmac, with 90% of the gates empty, and bused us in. I managed to squeeze some Yuan out of an ATM so I could get some dinner after finally finding out how much it was worth, so I knew not to overdraw or underdraw my account.
When they confiscated my passport, I immediately asked how I would get it back (as I had never been asked to surrender it before). An official assured me that when it came time to check in for my midnight flight, the passport would be waiting at the check-in desk for me to pick up, and the flight staff would know about the whole situation.
Normally, you can’t check in in person until about 3 hours before your flight, so I wasted many an hour shuffling around the huge, empty terminal as it closed more and more shops in the evening. So I finally got my chance to check in, and I got to the check-in counter. Of course, the staff knew absolutely nothing about it. They also couldn’t check me in without a valid passport, so I was completely stuck. As it turns out, my passport was not at the check-in counter, but sitting in an immigration office about 300 meters away – behind a security zone, which required a passport and a boarding pass to get through, and next to the emigration queue that also requires the same plus a valid visa from the Chinese government.
Nobody at the check-in counter knew what to do about this conundrum until I quietly mentioned that I actually had two passports (which I never disclosed to the Chinese officials, but then again, they never asked). This got everyone excited because it offered a partial solution: I could get my boarding pass, which let me get through security and closer to the immigration office.
In the end, an airline official escorted me through security straight to the immigration office that held my other passport. They were able to get the managing Chinese official to come out, and he very nicely went to great lengths to expedite my acceleration through the final emigration line – even going so far as to actually fill in immigration forms for me so I could legally leave the country I was denied access to visiting in the first place. Now my passport has a Chinese emigration stamp even though I was never technically in the country.
I don’t know if I was their first ever transient passenger, but they obviously need to grease the wheels on their processes… But maybe it’s just the Chinese way of conducting business. Other countries usually offer a last-minute escape route for transients only there to catch connecting flights, which you usually find just before you reach the immigration desks. This keeps you in the emigration holding zone and lets you circumvent the issue, although I have heard Canadians complain about having to go through U.S. customs when trying to simply go south of the USA.
Everyone was always very nice, polite, and respectful in this episode, as you always are when dealing with government officials, and nobody ever suggested or even implied that I had ever done anything wrong, but… what a circus!
Fortunately, I made it to Seoul as scheduled and navigated the extensive train and subway network with my luggage to find my hotel.
Flight from Chengdu, China to Seoul, South Korea
Map of the route “I shall go to Korea.”: 2,488,330 m, 2,266 m of climbing and 2,254 m of descent, elevation between 445 m and 2,426 m, time 03:30:01. It starts at 30.58538, 103.95466 and ends at 37.44687, 126.44552 (latitude, longitude).
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