A second missed flight

Days 1 and 2   Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov 12 and 13  Flights to LAX and Beijing

We returned to the Denver Airport on the 6 am shuttle, which was completely full, and fortunately, we were able to get on the 8:11 flight from the standby list! Whew! We used half of our food coupons for a McDonald's breakfast while waiting.

At LAX, we were able to get our luggage with no problems, and then took a shuttle from Terminal 7 to the Tom Bradley International Terminal. Even though it all went smoothly, we confirmed that we would not have had enough time if we'd had to wait in Denver for the 9:37 am flight. We were SO relieved that we'd made the 8:11 flight!

We checked in for the Beijing flight departing 1:20 pm, and then used the remaining food coupons to buy a Panda Express lunch. That's when I took the photo on the previous posting. We also exchanged hundreds of dollars of our cash for both Chinese and Japanese currencies. UTO's Day 1 of our tour was the first part of the flight to Beijing. Their Day 2 commenced when we crossed the international date line. Thus, Days 1 and 2 were used up just to get there.

The flight to Beijing was fine, but LONG (about 13 hours). It was not quite as nice as other international flights we'd taken, because the food was a bit below average, and they served only one half-glass of wine (as opposed to providing refills). We watched lots of movies. Funny, we learned only when we arrived that the fellow sitting next to Janet for the past 13 hours was on our same tour! Jack.

Once in Beijing, trouble began again in trying to make our connection to Shanghai. We had a two-hour layover, but that was not nearly enough time in such a massive airport where we had numerous steps to go through, and a huge distance to walk to the next flight.

First of all, the flight arrived about 25 minutes late, plus it took about 15 minutes just to depart the plane from row 57. Then, a long walk to customs, then using a finger-print machine, then filling out a customs form, then the line for passport control, then a long tram ride to the domestic terminal. Once there, we had a long walk to the security check-in, security itself, and then a super-long walk to the end of Terminal C to our gate. We finally reached our gate with just 15 minutes left before departure. We thought we'd made it.

As we got close, we saw the gate agent leaving his post and heading to the door, so I yelled out for him. He just kept going on through the door. So I ran over and knocked loudly on the glass door while he was still in sight, but he did not turn around, and then he was gone. No one ever came back to check for later passengers, so we just sat and watched our plane depart. Oh no. We wondered whether Jack had made it okay.

We asked someone and were told to go to the China Air departure desk. We finally found it, and she put us on a flight for the next morning. I called the UTO contact, and he said this happens, not to worry, and they'd have a shuttle in Shanghai to get us and take us to the tour in progress. Great, but these clothes we were still wearing for the past 2 1/2 days were now going to have to last another 24 hours! Eeeeuu, stinky!

When we found the help desk regarding a hotel for the night, we ran into not only Jack, but his two brothers (Ed and Rob) and two others from our tour (Gary and Sumi) who also had missed their connections to Shanghai. Gary was already on the phone with the same UTO guy I had spoken with earlier, and he confirmed that they would pick all seven of us up in Shanghai, but from two different airports (Jack, Janet and me at one, and the other four at the other).

Eventually, we all got onto a bus and were driven to a nearby hotel. They delivered to our room a typical-looking Chinese take-out dinner, and it was pretty good. We bought beer from the lobby. We again slept naked because the next day, we'd still have to wear the same clothes. We hand-washed some underwear, and hoped they'd dry by morning. They did, but needed the help of the hair dryer.