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Published: August 9th 2008
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This is my first blog from my year long excursion to China. As a forewarning, my grammar is likely to suck…I am a math major after all. I rarely write anything anymore. Hopefully this new habit of blog writing and teaching English/Language Arts at school will lead to my own grammar improvement.
I am currently sitting in the Hong Kong airport, which has free internet. It is 6am and my connecting flight to Chongqing is not until 2pm. The airport is very nice. There are all the amenities of America here-from English speakers to Starbucks and Popeyes. The outside walls are all windows and I can see gorgeous mountains and a big body of water surrounded by mountains nearby. I also see a huge factory. The air is heavy with fog…at least I think it is fog and not heavy air pollution. So far, I have not noticed anything wrong with the air…we’ll have to see if my opinion changes when I get to Chongqing. On the other side of the airport is the city where I can see many tall skyscrapers. There are also a lot of shops here, mainly selling American products. I bought some face wash for
55 Hong Kong dollars, which is about seven US dollars. So prices at the Hong Kong airport are similar to prices in the US. Another thing I noticed in the store is that a lot of their lotion is advertised to make your skin "whiter." I guess Chinese women want to have as light as skin as possible...isn't that funny that American women want the exact opposite. The Chinese restaurants they have here serve a lot of sea food but in big bowls with broth and ramen noodles.
The 15 hour flight from LA to Hong Kong was surprisingly quick. I flew on one of the main Chinese Airlines, Cathay Pacifica. The last International flight I took was to Puerto Rico and it was no where near as awesome as this airline. On Cathay Pacifica, every seat had a built in pillow and a personal TV. On the TV, I could choose from a variety of movies from new releases to classics to foreign films. Besides movies, I could select TV series to watch…which made me think of Geoff-they had all your favorites (Criminal Minds, Monk, House). In addition to this, they also had music and video games. There was
a phone looking thing that actually was a remote control on one side and a video game controller on the other. Somehow, I accidentally rebooted my entire system during the first video game I tried to play. Besides taking fifteen minutes to restart the system, this whole ordeal gave me a small heart attack that I had managed to destroy their system on my first try.
I slept for probably eight hours of the flight and the rest of the time I worked on figuring out the electronic system and watching movies. I strongly recommend “21” if you haven’t seen it. Oh also for breakfast, one of the options was seafood oatmeal! You can bet I opted for the non-seafood option, even though I had no clue what it was (I couldn’t understand the stewardess). It turned out to be keish with potatoes and bacon. Speaking of stewardesses (this is for Chuckie to further encourage him to come visit), they are all very attractive young Chinese women. I think there were near to twenty on the flight (which was huge!) and only two or three of the stewardesses were men.
So the flight was good. Getting onto the
plane in Tucson is another story. I had called Cathay Pacifica for baggage info when it turns out I should have called United because I took United from Tucson to LA. Cathay Pacifica charges more for extra pieces of baggage whereas United charges more for overweight baggage. I had packed two heavy bags (70lbs) and one lighter bag (50lbs). Fortunately, I had packed a suitcase inside a suitcase (in order to have a small suitcase for weekend trips) so I was easily able to shift things around to save some money by having four bags under 50 lbs. The problem started when I went to pay the baggage fees. The airport attendant was told to take my debit card away from me! So I’m getting ready to leave for China and my Visa is rejected! Why does this happen to me! I had just been to the bank that morning and also to a foreign money exchange business to have Chinese money on my trip. I did not have any problems. Then I began to wonder if possibly I had gone over my daily allowance for the day as I had also transferred some funds. The lady was able to
get clearance on my card, but said I need to make sure to call my bank…Bank of America, which I am slowly growing to hate. So I call and they say they have no idea what the problem could be because my account looks fine.
During this whole ordeal, I realize I should also notify Bank of America of my travel plans. Three phone numbers later I get the person I need to speak with to do this. He asks me a series of questions and then says that he is blocking my Visa card until I go to a Bank of America location with two forms of ids. So in trying to eliminate a problem, I have caused one. Turns out I answered a question wrong and thus he totally blocked my account. Well we call a Tucson B of A and tell them the situation and that we are unable to go to a B of A before I leave. She says we can fax two forms of ID to them. So we dash to a nearby hotel to have this fax sent along with a message describing the situation and my parents’ phone number. My phone
obviously won’t work in China. Well my dad finally gets a hold of someone and they say they need to speak with me (1st off my dad is on my account with me and 2nd off, how are they going to know it’s me?). Well I call the number my dad gives me and they tell me that the first lady gave us the wrong fax number and to refax it to a new number with my phone number and he’ll call when he gets the fax. So I call my dad to re-fax my IDs, which are photo copied. Of course the guy never calls. With desperate hope, I decide to try to use my debit card at the LAX airport, hoping they got the fax and unblocked my account. Declined. So I find a pay phone and call B of A from LAX. I get a hold of the same guy I got the fax number from. I remind him of my situation and he says “yeah some faxes came in earlier, but I didn’t really look at them.” So apparently blocking my main form of money in a foreign country is just no big deal. He gets
the papers and says that the toner is really dark and he can’t read them very well and it sounds like he wants them resent. At this point I start getting panicked on the phone, which apparently helped because he decides to accept the fax. He asks a couple of security questions and ten minutes later says he has unblocked my account! Whew! So have no fear, I have money once again. Looking on the bright side, the B of A situation was so stressful, I didn’t have the energy to get super sad about leaving…although I did have to hold back tears a few times. Miss you all already!
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^______^ This blog is a great idea! I'm glad you write so well. I hope you have the grandest of adventures!