Guangzhou to Dhaka

I spent the ENTIRE day in an airport. It’s 9:07 Guangzhou time, which I think means 8:07pm Korea time. 8 hours was an awful long time to spend in the airport, but once I found the international lounge with the comfortable chairs and the plugin for the laptop it was much better. I forget when I travel that on international transfers (stopovers) it’s pretty much impossible to get out money at the airport… this left me cashless at the airport, but I did have my visa so it was fine. The only thing was that I hadn’t taken time to figure out how many Chinese RMY were equivalent to a thousand KRW, so I have no idea how much things cost me - GAH!

At the airport I watched Burlesque for the 13th time, and tried tried tried to get online but Skype for a few minutes was all I could manage - and it cost me many bux with some strange Skype Boingo option. Too bad China won’t let me connect to any social networking sites (I didn’t realize I did so much of that “networking” crap!! I couldn’t actually even get into a currency exchange website, so goodness knows what the actual restrictions were.

Other than watching the movie I walked the airport from one end to the other repeatedly (good exercise I guess), had a bite to eat (satay beef and a coke) at one of the restaurants, watched planes come and go out some of the many windows, and people watched in different spots until I tired of it and went back to the comfy chairs of the lounge. Most of the time the place was empty, and then about 2 hours before it was time to go a guy came in a played his guitar quietly while I read, it was very nice!

When it was finally time to get on the plane (I flew China Southern) I noticed that there were just about NO women on my flight - it was overwhelmingly filled with men… no families that I saw, very few women at all (I was nearly last onto the plane and I only counted 3 on the way to my seat), it was pretty much all groups of men. The second thing I noticed was that there was only me and one other white dude of the few hundred collected passengers.
Through the flight people were randomly staring at me with some kind of strange fascination, but a little differently from the way the Koreans in Daejeon used to look at me… this is more out of curiosity than horror, lol, I hate to say that it used to feel like people in Korea were scared of me (kids in particular), but when the little ones cry and adults avert their eyes to the ground after you simply smile at them or say hello (and the Bangladeshi people smile), what else are you gonna think, right?

I remember reading online about people’s comments to ignore the staring, that people are just curious, but I guess I didn’t think I’d be quite so outnumbered in the men:women part - it‘s a little unnerving!! Does nobody else find that ratio to be a little crazy?

I’ve made plans to spend the first 2 nights in Dhaka with a woman from www.couchsurfing.org and I’m feeling a little glad of that now - finding a hotel room when I don’t even land until 11 at night would be an unnerving experience in itself!! The plane will land soon so I have to shut down... more soon!

Headed Home for Christmas

Beijing Airport

Originally, I had planned to spend Christmas in Thailand (yes, I have an addiction to Thailand!).  I was about to buy my tickets when a friend suggested I visit Toronto and see what the city was like.  I had been talking about whether to move to Vancouver or Toronto when my contract was up, and it made sense that I could maybe head over and check it out, see if might like to live there!



Beijing Airport

At first I thought it was a dumb idea, but when the ticket became a Christmas present I kinda stopped arguing, haha... me and my big mouth!

So, I went to Toronto.  I am always in awe of Incheon Airport (Korea's airport) when I go there - there is NO other airport in the world that runs as well, I swear!!  My flight took forever.  I flew out on Christmas Eve (boss was nice enough to give us the extra day off so nobody would be flying on Christmas day - How nice was THAT?!). 



Beijing Sunset, Christmas Eve



By mid-afternoon I was in the Beijing airport wandering around aimlessly (beautiful airport, but NO convenience stores so it was a pain in the ass to be there for 3 hours).  When it was approaching sunset I wandered over to a huge bank of windows and camped out on the floor to watch the sun sink below the horizon, it was beautiful. 

When I boarded the plane it was half empty, so the flight attendants moved the person who was to have shared the row with me and I had ALL 3 SEATS to myself!!!!  The flight attendants were great, the food was good, I had pillows and blankets enough to feel like I was in a hotel AND there were good movies - the FIRST time Air Canada scored a perfect 10 from me - wow! 

When we got over Ontario, about a half hour from landing I opened my window shade and the sun was setting.  It occurred to me that it was Christmas Eve, and I was seeing the sun set on BOTH sides of the world because of my lucky timing... for real? 2 Christmas Eve sunsets in one day??  That's magical.

This coming year, something tells me it's going to be a good one... Merry Christmas, everyone!