No frontiers

---

Living in the EU we have become a bit blaise about travel. On a whim you can go on the internet, purchase a plane ticket and fly immediately, sometimes without even having to change money.

In China that is certainly not the case. To purchase tickets for internal flights we had to ptoduce our passports at the ticket office. To book an international flight we had to go to a special ticket office.

At this point I must express my thanks to the staff in the Spring Travel Agency, Guilin. In our naiveity we went in and said that we wanted to purchase tickets to Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. When the poor girl at the counter realized we wanted international tickets she got a bit flustered and seemed unsure as to what to do. Luckily she spotted a man who had just come in and spoke to him in Chinese. He then told us that we had to go to a special airline booking office, brought us outside, hailed a cab, gave the cab the address and told us how much the fare should be. Given this, if we ever go to China again we will be using Spring travel.

However, once you have your ticket the bureaucracy is not over. When we checked in we had to produce our passport and ticket. Before security we had to produce ticket and passport. At security we had to produce our passport and ticket. Just before getting on plane we had to show our passport. On the flight from beijing to Shanghai there was a uniformed officer at steps of place. Everyone had to show him their boarding card which he marked with a pen. Why, I have no idea. When we landed and collected our bags we had to show ticket and bag tags before we could leave arrival area.

So, if you are flying within or from China make sure to keep your passport accessible at all times.

---