Day 1 : Can - Csx

It was an hour's journey by flight from Guangzhou to Changsha. At the boarding gate at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, we were issued a boarding verification card ...

Roarding Verification Card

Lol. Note the wrong spelling on the card. What a joke.

After we exited the gate, we were supposed to board a shuttle bus. I was accustomed to boarding the bus on its left side, so automatically, I headed to the left .... 

"The other side! The other side!" the officer called out to me in Mandarin. Only then did I realise that I was heading the wrong way. Lol. In China, the vehicle driver sits on the left, but drives on the right side of the road. Hence, buses and vans have their doors installed on the right side of the vehicle. This was the opposite of what we practised in Malaysia - right-hand drive and passenger doors on the left. 

Anyway, when the bus did not have anymore standing space, the doors closed and it moved. It brought us to the plane which was parked some distance away from the terminal.

Queuing up to enter ... 

We were settled in almost immediately ..... the flight was not full. I had an empty seat next to me. That suited me just fine. However, the plane had to wait for clearance to take off ... and that clearance only came 45 minutes later. Sigh .... 

Refreshments were ... 

A bottle of mineral water, a packet of salted peanuts, and a wet towel.

The one-hour journey felt short, which was great. I was glad that we had arrived at our destination. We were greeted by our guide, MH. He was a young man in his early thirties, pleasant looking and friendly. As we stepped outside to head to our van, however, we were taken aback by the heat and humidity. It was near 11.00 p.m., but it felt like it was noon time.

I mean, I had watched on television the heatwave sweeping across China ... but I had not thought about how hot it would be .... till I was there myself. It WAS really hot, like being in a perpetual sauna. I sweated that few minutes while I was outside. 

The air-conditioned interiors of the van provided reprieve as we travelled 40 minutes to the city of Changsha to our hotel, Xiangyun Shanshui Hotel <翔云山水>. The lobby looked ordinary .... and there was a group of shirtless men at the cafe next to the lobby. It all gave the hotel a very dodgy impression ..... 

The room, however, was great! It was clean and modern and furnished with a large flat screen television. Very comfortable indeed. It must had been recently refurbished as it looked so different from the lobby. 

The room

I turned up the air-conditioner, showered and snuggled into bed .... it had been such a long day.