Chris and I had only been married for less than two weeks when we purchased tickets, along with his two sisters and parents, to travel to the Philippines for Christmas and New Years. Quite an exciting adventure to be sure and I was happy to have the opportunity to see where Chris was born and his history all began. I just really wasn't happy about the ridiculously long flights we were going to have to take to get there.
Time sped by and our trip only became more complicated by the terrible timing of being in escrow for a condo that was in bankruptcy. Along with the bankruptcy came a not so clean cut transaction and as I type this, we still have yet to close. At the same time we needed to ready ourselves for the Philippines meant we had to also get our current condo mostly moved out and ready to show for potential buyers. Needless to say, it was a busy last few weeks, which left little time to plan for the trip or worry about the flight. Luckily for us, Chris' dad took the lead on all the planning especially since we were visiting family members much of our time here.
Our flight out on Thursday evening at 10:30 started a little rushed since we were told to be there three hours early and we were running late. My Christmas time flight to Costa Rica about five years ago I almost missed due to massive lines of people. Only by the airline taking cutting me in front of the whole security line did I make it on my flight. As we were arriving late to LAX this time, I was having visions of a repeat...just hoping that this would be better since it was a Thursday night instead of Saturday night. To our great relief, lines were not bad, and we made it through everything with enough time to spare for a quick order at Panda Express before boarding our 15 hour flight to Guangzhou China. We were too late to be able to all sit together, and while Chris and I, as well as his parents, were able to sit in pairs, his two sisters were separated. I felt terrible...a flight that long next to a stranger is not my idea of a good flight (although, I am not sure I ever consider a flight a good thing). They were able to trade though, and sit together in the end, which was good.
I hate flying altogether because I hate heights and the idea of plummeting out of the sky toward the earth in a fiery explosion (my imagination is not good in this situation). I hate even more the idea of over water because IF I survived the crash landing I would then have to bob along in frigid water afraid of sharks and exposure to the elements...I'd rather die the in fiery explosion...What I hate most about flying though is the potential to be afraid and trapped - no way to escape the thing causing your anxiety. The longer the flight, the longer you are feeling that anxiety and trapped with it. Sleep is my friend, but as I've gotten older, sleep is harder to get in uncomfortable seats with anxiety coursing through your veins.
Since we left at 10:30 and I had little sleep between packing the condo and still working and tending to Christmas festivities, luckily I was exhausted and actually fell asleep before we even took off. I woke up long enough for our inflight dinner. I had a very good (for being on a flight) sleep for almost ten hours. Ten down...five more to go. China Southern had a good amount of movies to choose from, so I spent much of the rest of that time watching movies that would hopefully keep my mind off of the flight. We landed in Guangzhou safely, albeit an hour or so later than our original time. That left us we about a 6 hour layover.
MJ and I knew we could get out and see the city on a transit visa, but were so relieved and happy when we discovered Chris and Christine could join us. While going through immigration, the girl next to me asked if she could join us, she was in a similar situation but with a much longer layover than us. It's always a small world, this girl was raised in Lake Forest and was a teacher in Anaheim. We also hooked up some how with a young Australian man who was returning from his long stay in Venezuela and Colombia. He also had a much longer layover, but joined our little group to walk about the city.
We had some difficulty with the metro ticket machine not accepting our credit cards, then after we withdrew money, our bills were too big. Finally after some scrambling around, we managed to get tickets and went to a stop recommended by a help desk in the airport. Our first impression of the metro was how clean it was. This was around 8:30 in the morning, so more and more people joined us as we journeyed into the city and it was interesting seeing the fashion of the city people. It really didn't feel or look too different than at home, except the high concentration of Chinese. When we came to our stop and walked out, in front of us were several people cooking street food. Vendors had carts set up or there were some little shack-like places. Tom, our Australian friend, bought some stir-fry type of food immediately. We walked past some tall apartment buildings that were not so nice, but not so bad (depending on the standards with which you compare), and out into a much more newer urban feeling city. We all commented on how it really felt very similar to LA or any big city at home for that matter. We even saw some of the same stores...and many Starbucks.
We stopped at a little bakery and bought a few buns and then over to a Starbucks. I'm not a huge fan of going to the same places we have at home when out of the country, but I was interested to see what they had different. A green tea latte was different, but the prices were very steep, so we passed on it and went a few blocks down to another coffee place. Not thinking that the coffee would be so expensive, or that it would be a problem to use our credit cards, we purchased three drinks, but then with no way to pay. Chris and I walked to the ATM next door...but they didn't service international cards. We went into the bank...they tried to help us, but couldn't. They recommend Bank of China and tried to explain where to find it, but we could find it. We went back to the coffee shop and asked the young man there (he knew the most English) and he was able to point us in the right direction...which was very nearby. We pulled out plenty of money and payed our debt and enjoyed our drinks and buns finally.
We walked further and found an large open space where people were selling and flying kites. It looked so fun and I was tempted to buy one and fly it, but the sake of time won out and we moved on without doing so. We spent some time walking through a nice little underground mall that wound it's way around with tiny little shops of all kinds of assorted material goods and food. The group wanted to go back and buy street food, so we made our way back to the metro stop. On the way there was a man dressed up in traditional Chinese clothing with music playing asking for tips - like the type of street performers you might sight in LA or other large cities.
We found the street food and I enjoyed a bun with some sort of chicken in it (I had been hoping to get dim sum because I had heard that it originated from the area, and this was a bun like I had in the US). I was not adventurous with the meats, but Chris and his sisters had some duck, and Tom ate quite a bit from another vendor who was selling some type of meat balls. We found a guy who attached to his bike he had a whole stir-fry type of set up and right in front of us made a noodle and egg dish. He was very impressive. Chris has most, but I ate some. It was good, I was just concerned about the amount of oil since I don't seem to be digesting fats as well these days.
We said goodbye to our layover friends Amy and Tom, and rode the subway back to the airport. We made it back through Chinese customs and immigration fairly smoothly (including a very thorough pat down by a guard) in plenty of time for our much shorter flight to Manila. We had time for a small meal in the restaurant and bought some snacks for the plane.
This plane right was much shorter at two hours. I read most of the time on the plane until we made it to Manila. We collected the big boxes of gifts we had brought and the luggage we had checked and then found our way through customs, quite easily, to a waiting area to be driven to terminal two. The heat and humidity assaulted us as we left the building, like the cold air had in China. After missing one bus, we got on the second and drove what seemed like a long ways to the next terminal. We could see the Christmas lights and decorations strung along the roadways, making it very festive.
We waited quite a while in the next terminal, first for Chris' parents to join us (they had taken an earlier connection from China and had spent their few hours in Manila), then they had overbooked the flight, so we were all given a free round trip within the Philippines if we delayed to the next flight. We did, but it seemed to take the office forever to process it. Finally we walked to the boarding area, bought some little snacks, and waited just a little longer for flight number three from Manila to Davao.
We all six were able to sit together in a long row across the plane, but we mostly spent the time sleeping. Before long we were touching down in Davao.
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