Back to Shanghai, again.

Dateline Shanghai



Hi Constant Readers...
Well... we made it. It wasn't pretty, though, and as I said in the previous post, Northwest Airlines is on my shit list.
The trip to Detroit was passable. I even got an upgrade, but oddly enough, for a 8AM flight there was no breakfast.
Ken and I fixed that... We hit the Fox Skybox at DTW and had a bite... About 45 minutes before the Detroit-Narita flight, we heard the overhead page go off for a last call for our flight... we hit the ground running and got to the gate in time...

Northwest's seat map is somewhat misleading... my seat was a bulkhead with absolutely no legroom... they stuck a bathroom in the space between the seat and the exit door, so no leg room. Bastards. They don't show a restroom on the seat map...

Add to that, an unwashed old Chinese woman who was an absolute pain, and I was starting to dread the next 13 hours...
Fortunately, Saint Joseph of Cupertino, (patron Saint of flyers) interceded on my behalf, or so I thought...

The captain (not, alas, Captain Morgan) came on the overhead...
They were having difficulties with the landing gear door... The captain said they were going to "try a maintenance maneuver" to fix the problem...
They gave the plane a mighty shake and then a few minutes later he came back on and said they had fixed one problem but in doing so, they had caused a new problem with the other set of landing gear... They gave the plane another shake, then came back on... they couldn't get it fixed so we were heading back to Detroit...
Uh oh...
Well, I wasn't too concerned about making my connection... Flight 11 *was* the connection flight from Narita to Shanghai, so I figured as long as we were on this flight, we wouldn't miss our connection.
(so very, very wrong)
So, after we dumped a huge amount of jetfuel into Lake Michigan we made our way back to DTW...a 3 and a half hour false start...

As we were heading back, they were prepping another plane for us... I guess they had a spare 747-400 laying around...
We got back on the ground then 'Neck and I made our way to the new gate. That's when they told us there was no way we'd be in Shanghai any time soon. We'd all have to spend the night in Tokyo and they'd re-book us on a new flight to Shanghai the next the morning.

So we stood in line to confirm our seats on the flight...
(I changed mine to get away from the old lady with B.O.... I got an aisle seat about 8 rows back.)
Ken decided he wanted to change his seat too, and wound up getting my old seat. Poor bastard, had I know I would have warned him... He regretted his decision about 30 minutes into the next flight. Heh.
My new seat wasn't so bad... As we got seated, I suggested to the guy in front of me that if he leaned his seat back on my knees I would visit bodily harm upon him, and oddly enough, he never adjusted his seat through the whole flight...smart dude.

The guys next to me were some Japanese college students- about 6 guys traveling together heading home from Harvard. They were inoffensive at best... No problems really.
At one point early in the flight I saw Ken had exited his seat near The Smelly One... He was camped out near the emergency exit reading a Clive Cussler novel...I went up and chatted with him for a few minutes. Appearently it was self-preservation, she was bugging him so much, having him pronounce words in Engrish for her... He was ready to take her for a swim in the blue water in the airplane bathroom.
With a silent chuckle, I headed back to my seat and settled down for the long haul.

We got into Tokyo without too much more in the way of issues... No other specific death threats, no violence.

Nice Engrish there, Skippy.

You will notice the "no camera" sign in this photo...

Upon arrival we got more bad news. We were informed that we would not be able to get our bags... I was of two minds about it... I didn't relish the thought of schlepping the cases & bags through Narita and to the hotel, nor the thought of having to clear Japan customs and get the Carnet stamped, and then having to get them re-stamped the next morning... The down side was they we'd have to wear the same clothes and have no access to our other stuff... Oh well... Convenience vs. comfort...

So we stood in line in the Narita terminal to get our new flight info- a JAL flight at
9:30 in the morning, and our hotel vouchers. After that we got to stand in line to go through the immigration and passport check...Then we stood in line again to get our transportation voucher to get to the hotel, then we stood in line to check into the Raddison in Narita.


K-Flan in line at the Raddison

We stood in line to get breakfast, and we stood in line to get on the bus to go back to the airport, and we stood in line to get checked back in on the new flight...
A slight hitch occured at the JAL check-in.. Of course I'm going to ask for a bulkhead or an emergency row. There was a look of fear in the ticket clerk's eyes as The Redneck and I stood at the counter waiting for our seat assignments...
There were no bulkheads, no emergency rows... and no windows or aisles either. Nothing but center seats...I think they were expecting a more, um, violent reaction, but at that time we so tired from the run around and standing in line and we just wanted to get our tickets and go stand in line some more to get on the JAL flight.

Bad enough that we both had middle seats on the JAL flight...
It was adding insult to injury that the seats on the JAL 747 were more sized to fit the average Japanese ass, whereas I am possessing of a more-then-ample American-sized ass...
And of course the seat spacing was more adapted to a Japanese leg-length; as a consequence the 3 hour flight from Narita to PuDong was *the* most uncomfortable I have been on an airplne in, oh...say... *ever*.


Tight fit.

My size 13 ass in a size 10 seat, no where to put my knees, and the top of the headrest on the back of the seat caught me right between the shoulderblades...

You will NOT have to remind me never to ride coach on JAL ever again.

We got into Pudong around 2:30... I was a bit worried that our bags would be delayed or lost; That worry was back-burnered quickly when we saw there were about 800 people in line to clear customs... It was the longest line we'd had to stand in so far, and it was a doozy.
It ended up taking over 90 minutes just to clear C&I in Shanghai. As a matter of fact, we actually bailed on the "Foreigners" line and stood behind some Indian nationals in the "Chinese Only" line...

All our bags made it... Miracles of miracles...
The only other comment I have on the situation is that at at least I have a finally encountered a situation where the elapsed time from getting off the plane to the time of getting our bags was longer than the average time to get baggage in Jacksonville...
(not because of a delay in getting bags, but because it took two hours to get from the plane to the baggage claim. But a record is a record... The folks at JAX will be pleased that there is a new title holder in that category.)

We cleared the ATA Carnet customs inspection and after one last bout of standing in line to get a taxi, we finally made it to the hotel...


'Neck in the taxi...

Now the real strangeness begins...

TBG out-