Once again, it has been far too long between posts. A lot has happened to me since I last blogged.
The semester ended on January 18th, and I don't need to tell you what a relief that was to me. After taking a few days off, I helped out my Chinese buddy Phenix at his English tutoring service for a few days. While I was there, he helped me book a flight to and vacation in Macau. Due to the approaching Chinese New Year, all the hotels I could find on English websites were booked, so I needed the help of a local to make reservations on a Chinese website.
Macau is, like nearby Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China. It was a Portuguese colony for 422 years until it was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999. It is guaranteed to continue to operate with a high degree of autonomy under the Portuguese-instituted civil code at least until 2049. Therefore it is not subject to the same controls and influence of Beijing. I visited Macau very briefly (only a few hours) in 2004. I fell in love with it immediately, and I had always wanted to go back and really explore the territory. Now I finally had my chance.
The day I was scheduled to leave was a bit of a nightmare. Phenix had arranged for me to be picked up in a private car to be taken to the airport in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan. I was told that the car would pick me up around 5 PM at San Zhong (my school). However, I got a text at 2:30PM saying that the car was going to pick me up at Phenix's school at 3:30PM!
I was not nearly ready to go, and so I had to rush and throw everything together and run out the door. Because of the Spring Festival, there was not a cab to be had, and all the buses were filled to bursting. So I had to walk the 40 minutes to Phenix's school. When I finally arrived, at 3:40PM, the car was not there (of course). So I figured I would have time to go to the bank to get my money for the trip. However, this was the first time using a Chinese ATM (lack of foresight on my part) and I entered the wrong code too many times and was locked out of my account for 24 hours. That meant that the only money I had was what was in my wallet at the time plus RMB 200 that Phenix and Summer gave me as a New Year Present.
I shared the car with several Chinese guys, and I know enough Chinese to know they were making fun of me the whole way to Changsha but not enough to respond, so I just tried to ignore it and read my Kindle to pass the time.
Finally I got dropped off at the airport hotel, but the only room was a deluxe suite that cost RMB 788 for one night (!). Finally, I had to take the airport shuttle bus almost 45 minutes back into downtown Changsha and had to find a room at a hotel there. The girl at the desk wanted 300 but I talked it down to 159... Lord knows how I did that though! This meant I would have JUST enough to get me to the airport in the morning!
By this time it was getting late, I hadn't eaten all day and was starving. But there were no open restaurants near the hotel and that really didn't matter because I wouldn't have had enough money to buy food, anyways. So I just went to bed. By this time it was almost midnight. I can never sleep when I know I have to get up early, so I just tossed and turned until 5 AM.
5 AM came and I was off again, after some kind of hullaballoo about giving the front desk clerks some piece of paper they gave me last night. I had to hunt through my bags for it right there in the lobby. They were pretty insistent that I give them this reciept or whatever it was. Travel tip: If they give you a piece of paper in China, keep it!
After a long and expensive (for China, especially when you have no money) taxi ride to the airport, I still only just barely made it in time before they stopped check-in for my flight! But make it, I did, and off I was to Zhuhai, gateway to Macau.
The flight was uneventful and only took a little over an hour. I was finally able to get to a currency exchange and convert some US dollars I had been keeping for an emergency (this qualified) into Renminbi. With that I was able to pay for the shuttle bus to the China-Macau border crossing. The bus doesn't drop you off AT the border though, so I had to use my intuition (which was fortunately correct) and found the border crossing.
Crossing any border is a daunting task, I have found, but this was especially crazy. There are FIFTY lines to get into, and almost all of them were open. Some were for Hong Kong and Macau residents, some were for Chinese citizens, and some were for foreigners. THOUSANDS of people were trying to cross into Macau at this particular time, and I had to wait nearly an hour and a half to get through Chinese emmigration to leave the PRC and then go through Macanese immigration to get into Macau. It seemed a little ridiculous, since China owns Macau, now... but I guess that goes with the territory (pun intended). :)
The denoument of this 24 hour spell of travel hell was a quiet taxi trip to the hotel followed by a brief nap before some sightseeing. But that's a story for my next post. Zaijian, y'all! :D
