We were up early to catch our flight to Xi’an – an
8:15 scheduled departure, so no proper breakfast again. The hotel made up boxes
with buns, boiled egg, water. We said goodbye to Pat and Ralph here. They and
two other couples from our group were flying out later in the day to join a
Yangtze River cruise they had tacked on at the end of the basic China Delight
tour. Ralph and Pat would go on to Xi’an after the cruise.
When we arrived at the airport, we learned that most
flights the day before had been cancelled due to typhoon-related weather. Some
of today’s had also been cancelled, but ours was still scheduled, and
supposedly on time. As boarding time grew near, however, and then passed, it
became clear the flight would not leave on time. Eventually, the airline
announced – or rather, Leo winkled out of them – that it had been rescheduled
to 3:40 p.m. The gate agent told him we might
be able to get on a different flight, leaving shortly, so we hustled up to another
gate, on the main concourse level. The gate agent there told Leo he had no idea
why the first agent would have misled him – this flight had long been full. (I
can hazard a guess why: to get rid of him.)
Leo was impressive under pressure. I cannot imagine
doing his job. He could always find a way to wiggle to the front of crowds
around ticket sellers and information booths and glean the tickets or intelligence
we needed. He was almost always cheerful, or at least calm. Now he was coping
with serious grumbling in the group on top of everything else. It was only a
minority of them complaining, but it must have ratcheted up the pressure in an
already difficult situation. He remained unflappable – and came up with a more
than fair solution. He arranged rooms for the day at a hotel 45 minutes away
and booked a bus to take any who wanted to go.
The grumblers departed, but several of us figured it
wasn’t worth the hour and a half on a bus, and stayed at the airport. We
settled in seats on the main concourse. Unlike the hot, dim and chaotic lower
level where the first gate had been, it was bright and cool and not very
crowded up here, with huge windows looking out on the runways. There were shops
and restaurants, and the seats were reasonably comfortable. We hadn’t
experienced a flight delay anything like this in decades, but the last time I
remember, at Heathrow in the 70s, the conditions were far worse, with seriously
inadequate seating, and exhausted travellers flaked out on the floors
everywhere. This was relatively civilized.
We read, snacked, bought fruit from a cafe and ate it,
walked up and down the concourse. Somehow the time passed. Meanwhile, it was a
gorgeous day out, sunny and mild, the first since Beijing, and we were missing
it. A half hour or so before the new scheduled boarding time, we went down to
the gate in the lower concourse. There was no sign of Leo and the others. We
soon figured out the flight had been delayed again, until 5:15 this time. Leo
must have known. He didn’t show up with the others until just as boarding began.
It had ended up being a nine-hour delay!
The flight to Xi’an took a little over two and a half
hours. When we got there, we ate a late, not very good dinner in an airport
restaurant, and met our local guide, also Leo. He was to be referred to as Big Leo,
he told us drily, because he was older than Leo Li, who would now be known as
Little Leo. I’m guessing he was in his forties. The two had obviously met
before and had a good rapport. Our Leo referred to Big Leo as The Professor
because he had once been a teacher. He was very well spoken, probably the best
of our guides in terms of both English fluency and quality of information. He
had a dry sense of humour and a laconic way of speaking. He wasn’t the sharpest
dresser in China, however. He always appeared in a clapped-out pair of grey
fleece joggers – with leather shoes. From the airport, we went directly to the
hotel, the Titan Times, for the night.
The hotel was evidently jammed. The bus couldn’t get
close to the front entrance. It dumped us 200 meters away in a side parking
lot. We had to walk in the cold drizzle – it was a lot cooler here in the
interior than it had been in Shanghai – and find our way in through a back
entrance that had no ramp for wheeled luggage. Not an auspicious start to our
two nights in Xi’an.
The Titan Times was supposed to be a luxury hotel. Our
room was a large suite with fully furnished living room and separate bedroom.
But like some of the other hotels we’d stayed in, it was poorly maintained.
Everything looked cheap and/or worn. On the plus side, the bedroom was nice and
dark – always a bonus for us. The bed, though, was the most uncomfortable,
really the only uncomfortable one,
we’d encountered: hard as rock.
There were also some small details that irked us. As
in all rooms, two bottles of water were supplied each day. But in this one, the
no-name free bottles were hidden in the bedroom. The name-brand bottled water
on the credenza – with the free tea and instant coffee – cost 2 CSY, a fact
English-speakers could easily fail to notice or understand. There were only two
half-rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom, which ran out the next morning, and
only a few tissues in a box, which didn’t last the night. They’re little
things, but speak of a poorly managed hotel.
Grouse, grouse, grouse.
No comments:
Post a Comment