Levin: Shanghai: Day 1

I was very appreciative that Inez was here to send me off but she left at 10.30pm or so, which meant that for a greater period of the time (till about 1am), I was pretty much alone. With no cigarettes and nothing to do, I rested on one of those comfortable "beds" and waited as my plane arrives.

My expectations had been somewhat unfairly lifted when Darren told me I'd be on a refurbished aircraft which was clearly not the case when I walked in.

Despite that, I bore witness to a typical Cathay Pacific commercial. When Brenda saw my fellow passenger, a middle aged lady trying to make herself comfortable with her handbag - using it as support, her heart melted (she had the "xin tong [heart break]" and "awwww...." expressions) despite the woman's insistence that the arrangement was fine. She returned with 3 blankets for her, taking them out and folding them to give them volume (the aircraft had run out of pillows).

I had the beef stew for supper - surprisingly good!

The flight was uneventful - painful even, mostly because these old-style seats were uncomfortable. In addition, I couldn't sleep... I'm a very light sleeper, and take a very long time to go under, and when I finally managed to fall asleep, it was time to land.

On retrospect, I HATE to transit in Hong Kong. The customs agents at the transfer area were horrible, it's almost as if we were either terrorists or I felt like I had done something wrong by choosing to transit via Hong Kong. They didn't even try to make ANYBODY's customs checks remotely hospitable or tolerable.

FUCK THEM! FUCK HKIA!!

Not only that, it was pretty ridiculous that there was virtually NOTHING opened when we landed at 5 in the morning except for ONE Starbucks and ONE McDonald's, and with so many people transiting through Hong Kong, guess where everybody was?

My flight was bound for Shanghai Hongqiao. Right beside my plane is the flight for Shanghai Pudong which leaves 5 minutes before us - we'd follow them for most of our journey to Shanghai.

Dragonair once had grand plans to be Hong Kong's second airline but in the early 2000s, they've been reduced to a regional subsidiary for Cathay Pacific, servicing mostly China, and secondary destinations in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and India.

Even though Dragonair and Cathay Pacific are of the same parent now, Dragonair feels less international. The crew are a little more relaxed but smile less than Cathay Pacific's crew, and I get the feeling that the crew are either very fluent in Mainland Chinese or are actually from Mainland China (they spoke Mandarin even to the students of a Hong Kong school on a sports-related excursion).

Arriving via Hongqiao didn't yield the benefits that I had expected from it, which was surprising considering that it was closer to the city than Pudong. However, at least for Terminal 1, the international terminal, the transport options are vastly lacking. The Metro station was quite a walk away, most signs not bilingual, so I had no choice but to take a taxi to the hostel.

After checking in and leaving my luggage, it was time to head out.

I came to China for this... and this.