Planning a vacation in China can be tricky. It typically involves long distance bus rides, train rides, plane rides and cab rides just to get to one city. To make sure you don’t miss a leg of your journey, timing is crucial. Knowing exactly which bus, train or plane station you will be departing from is vital. Never assume there is only one train or bus station. And if you have a flight departing from Shanghai, remember there are two airports. More importantly, remember to check your flight itinerary. As soon as you step into the cab and start heading to the airport, check it again. I learned first-hand what happens when you ignore this cardinal rule of travel. My sister and her friend, Jake, were awesome enough to brave a trip to China to visit me last spring. Since I was the most familiar with traveling in China I was the de-facto travel planner. Fine by me. They would both be arriving in Shanghai on April 28th and I scheduled our flight to Guilin for the next morning. After meeting them both at the Pudong Airport, we hailed a cab and sped off to our hostel. Ange and Jake seemed concerned that our cabbie was going roughly 130 km/h in an 80 zone and was weaving wildly from lane to lane. I was thrilled. After being in China for about 8 months I had come to expect certain things from cab drivers. They will speed. They will cross the median and play chicken with oncoming cars as often as they see fit. They will lay on the horn. They will smoke, spit and speak on their cell phones simultaneously. A ‘real deal’ Chinese cabbie will do all the above at the same time. If I don’t walk away from the cab ride wondering how the hell we got outta that trip in one piece I feel like I’ve been cheated.
Needless to say, when we got in a cab the next morning on our way to the airport and started cruising comfortably at exactly the speed limit, I was not pleased. I don’t like being late, so we had left with plenty of time, but I was still very obvious about checking my watch and sighing loudly with exasperation every time I saw another cab zooming by us. I sighed a lot that ride.
Finally, with an hour and a half before our flight, Pudong airport was within sight and the cabbie asked which terminal. I got out my travel document and looked. There was no terminal number listed. I looked closer. And that’s when I noticed something funny. Our flight wasn’t leaving from Pudong. It was leaving from Hongqiao. The other airport. All the way on the other side of the most populous city in China. Fuck. Fuckity-Fuck Fuck Fuck!!!!
I told our cab driver to step on it and at least see if we could make it to Hongqiao before the flight left. Our meter was already up to 100RMB. But at least the ride now felt a little more normal; rather than constantly getting passed we were actually speeding by a few cars every now and then. Ange and Jake took everything like champs. Less than 24 hours in China and they were getting a real taste of the chaos and crazy that has come to define this great land to me.
After hanging up I was breathing a little easier and informed Ange and Jake of our updated travel plans. We sat wallowing in our peace of mind for a bit before I realized that the cab driver had no idea what had just happened and was still zooming towards the other airport. He wasn’t up to snuff on his Chinglish, so it took considerably longer to convey to him that we didn’t want to go to Hongqiao anymore. We wanted to go back to the city. I pointed to a place on a map in the Lonely Planet guidebook that Ange had wisely brought along. He finally understood what I was saying and jerked the wheel to veer off at the exit that we were currently passing. He didn’t look first. Why should he? If he had he would’ve seen the massive semi-truck that was already there. Thankfully the truck had a really loud horn and a decent set of brakes. But Mr. Semi driver was NOT happy that we had squeezed in front of him and I was sure he was going to run us off the road just to prove that he could. Thankfully, he didn’t.
We proceeded down some back alleys and after another half hour or so of driving, we passed the road that our hostel was on. We went a few more blocks and got out at some historic old-town district. We thanked our cab driver profusely for being so patient with us. He had a funny grin smacked on his face. He must have thought we were the biggest idiots in the world. He probably took the rest of the day off. He damn well should have. After that ride he didn’t need to work for the rest of the day. We are the reason so many Chinese people think all Americans are rich. We had just spent close to 400RMB to get dropped off a few short blocks from where we were originally picked up.
Summary: Double check your damn flight itinerary. One would have thought this lesson would have been pounded in our heads. Believe it or not, we almost missed our flight from Guilin back to Shanghai simply by not checking our handy-dandy printout. But that’s another story . . .
