travel misadventures

my first time in an airport -- probably could've gone better

so for those of you who are not completely aware of my airport misadventures -- here's the complete story....start out in pittsburgh airport where my plane is delayed for an hour. my first plane experience was pretty anti-climatic.... met some girl who was on her way to study abroad in moracco and we talked for a while. arrived in jfk with no complications. and then all the trouble started........

so after wandering to the correct terminal in jfk, i find the air china desk to pick up my boarding pass for my connecting flight to beijing. they tell me i don't have a ticket for the flight. i show the concierge the email itinerary i got showing the flight numbers, times, etc. and say that i should have an electronic ticket. however, she claims that i should already have the paper ticket and thus i will not be able to get on the plane. so naturally i start freaking out. after arguing with her for about a half hour, she gives me the number of the travel agency pitt used to buy my plane ticket. i call the guy, and he argues with me, and then the concierge about my ticket. he hangs up, calls me back, i argue with the air china lady more, and that cycle repeats a few more times for about 2.5 hours. finally, i don't know what the agency guy did, but i guess he bought me a new ticket. however, the air china lady told me all i had was a ticket to beijing and not ulaanbataar. i called the agency guy back and told him this and asked him to make sure i wouldn't have any similar problems in the beijing airport. he assured me everything would be fine. i called my parents and other people telling them my fears of being stranded in beijing and everyone told me i was being ridiculous.........

anyway, my air china flight to beijing was running 2 hours late. finally we got in the air. i was in the middle between a chinese businessman who spoke no english and a chinese woman who spoke fluent english. we had some pretty cool conversations, in particular they were intrigued as to why the hell i would ever want to go to mongolia -- they didn't even know mongolia is an independant country, which blew my mind. but anyway, we didn't get to beijing airport until 8pm, and my connecting flight to ulaanbataar left at 9:10pm. i asked them what my chances were of me catching my flight and the businessman, who i thought spoke no english at all, said one word in perfect english: "impossible." good omen, right?

so i get to beijing, and after getting in the wrong line 3 times, i end up at the international transfer desk. and guess what they told me? i didn't have a ticket to UB. surprise, i was right. so i argued with them for a while, although they knew very little english and i of course know no chinese at all, so it was pretty futile. they gave me a calling card to call the travel agency again, but no one hads a clue how to make an international call on it. so after about 45min of this, i just give up and buy a new ticket to UB. unfortunately, the flight i was supposed to take left already, and the next one wasn't until 8am the next morning. so yes, i was trapped in beijing airport.i start wandering around the airport trying to find baggage claim, which let me tell you -- if you think jfk is a huge airport... oh no, you have know idea what a big airport really is. i do find it eventually, and i go to the air china baggage office, give them my tags...... and guess what? half my luggage was lost. now keep in mind, i brought two bags with me: one was my backpack with all of my stuff, and the other was a duffle bag with my friends' tents and stuff that they all wanted me to bring. which one do we think made it to beijing? if you guessed the one that would not help me in the least bit, you would be correct.

so i started to freak out a little at this point. being stranded is one thing, but being stranded with the majority of your stuff still in a different country brought the trauma to a whole new level. now i start trying to find the air china administrative office, because the international transfer people told me that if i talked to them, they would put me up in a hotel free for the night. i asked around, but no one seemed to understand what i was trying to ask, and i couldn't understand the directions they gave me (this was when i really started to regret never taking chinese at pitt)... finally i heard some random dude saying "hotel! hotel!" so i walked up to him and said please take me to a hotel.so i get in a sketchy van and a guy drives me about two miles away from the airport to this hotel. i get there, and they tell me the special price is ~$100 for the night. i argue with them, saying that air china was supposed to pay for this, and that i'm not paying $100 for a hotel room. they talk a little bit in chinese while i stand there, and then offer me $50 for the night. i told them i just wanted to be taken back to the airport, that i wasn't even going to deal with this. they apparently thought i was trying to haggle with them, i really just wanted to go back to the airport... but the offered me $40. i just said fine, i'll take it, whatever.words cannot describe this hotel room (i took pictures and will eventually post them). but they did have a tv, and i watched chinese soap operas for an hour or so to cool down -- the great thing about soap operas is that you don't need to know what they're saying, the drama speaks for itself.

i sleep for a few hours, get my wake-up call, and head back to the airport. i catch my flight with no problems actually, get on another air china plane, and arrive in UB relatively easily.now that the ridiculousness is over, i do have to say that i was fascinated by beijing, and really felt welcome by how friendly the people i met were, despite the fact that i really wasn't able to communicate with them that well. i think that if it hadn't been for the fact that i was so sleep-deprived, angry, and without luggage, i would've enjoyed being in beijing for the night. definitely need to get back there at some point in my life.