#165 Day 2 at the Shanghai airport

Transcript

Well, it's a slightly unfortunate. Notice things were getting much, much louder around me, but I was just trying to ignore them. Yeah, what is that buzzing? Anyway, the loudness was growing and growing, and then it got like just a cramp in my calf, so I just had to hop to my feet, because as long as I stand up and put pressure on my legs, then my cramps go away. Bear, hop to my feet, hop, hop, hop, I'm up, and now it's definitely getting to be daylight outside, looking at my window now and seeing the fog in there.

Nice, smoggy china morning. Yeah, unfortunately it's, I was hoping to just sleep till like 8 o'clock. It's only a little after five, it's only quarter after five, but I'm afraid the vibe has just changed around here. My compatriot who is sleeping next to me, he's gone. Yeah, there's no more, no more sign of sleeping people. They're already all up at five. So you know, not the worst, because I did started this little sleep plan pretty fucking early. All things considered, I guess I got about as much sleep as I was going to be able to get, but I'd hoped for more. But yeah, all in all, man, I don't know, could be worse, could be worse. It's just going to be a long day now, where like three hours till I can check in, then three more hours till the flight, ironically, you know, being in business class, I won't really be able to sleep on the flight. They're going to be fucking hassling me with bobbles and trinkets and jewels, the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, I tend to find in situations like this, like you never really have restful sleep, you just kind of maintain whatever you are at. But yeah, it could be a lot worse, I don't know, it could be quite a bit worse. Not the best sleep I ever had, but undeniably sleep, I was for sure unconscious for decent stretches of time throughout the night. That's all, I think that's all you can ask for when you're sleeping in some weird-ass airport that is not the beautiful, luxurious, soft, inviting, Calgary Airport.

All right, I'm back to my proper recorder. Now you get the full grandeur of the, the reverbie concourse. I do kind of wonder why airports are always like this, like it's impressive, a great big huge room to walk around in. But if I had to guess, 530 in the morning, sleeping on the floor, I think nowadays it's just, this is just what's done, you know, this is just how other airports are. So now it's like, well, we can't be the airport where you have low ceilings and you walked through little corridors. We got to have a big grand airport just like everyone else has. But I'm guessing back in the day, it was probably just related to like a literal aircraft hangar. You know, you need a great big ass room to put your airplanes in. And then if you're a passenger, you're walking around, said great big fucking giant ass room. And now that the terminal is a separate building, again, this is all just, I don't know, conjecture. I don't know if the back in the day, if it was all one, and now it split up, but it would make sense, right? If you only got a plane or two, you're gonna have a much smaller structure and it's still gonna have to be for the planes. But now, you know, airports are giant fucking mini cities. So yeah, there's no planes coming in here. But I assume the design is based on back in the day when a plane maybe would have been in here. That's my guess. But yeah, now I'm just gonna, you know, before I didn't want to talk into this recorder, because I don't know, I was feeling the weight, the weight of China pushing down all around me, the surveillance and the security and the creepiness. And I've seen so many security officers and police today, walking around this thing at all hours of the night.

I just didn't want to look suspicious and weird, but now I'm like, whatever. Now I'm on the home stretch. I'm on my way out of here. What are they gonna do? Deport me? Please do. Please fucking do. But anyway, I guess it's breakfast time. I'm not really especially hungry, but maybe I'll go get a little something since I won't actually be on my airplane for some time. Quite a lot of foreigners in here have noticed. A lot of very tall people have noticed several, just this morning, several white guys taller than me and I'm 62. So it's like, oh, apparently if you're a tall white guy, you come through China. But yeah, I did go to the family mart last night. So I stopped by the Tim Hortons and it's just not evident what to order. It's just not clear. And there's a McDonald's and the same thing. That's why one reason why I never went to McDonald's in Japan, even just to try it is because without the touchscreen menu, it's surprisingly hard to order stuff. And there's like not a number for a combo. You can't just point to a number. Like I would have to go in McDonald's for example and say, big mac or sit. And hopefully someone understands what I'm talking about. Same thing at this Tim Hortons. Just because I'm a Tim Hortons master back home. That doesn't mean anything here. I'm looking at this menu and there's nothing in English on it. And I'm just like, whatever fuck off. I want to deal with this. And the McDonald's here same thing. I'm not going to go talk to a person to try to fight my way through McDonald's. Give me a number.

Just give me a number I can point to. But I did go to the little family mart and right away, it's way more reminiscent of a Japanese convenience store. I felt way more comfortable in that sense than in the Korean convenience stores. I effortlessly just found stuff like, oh, this isn't this neat.

And I don't know, I guess I'm always worried my credit card isn't going to work. But I guess now that I think about it, it's quite rare that it doesn't work. Maybe the last time it didn't work or like didn't work what I quote, you know, where I had to call up the bank and all this bullshit was peach air when I was going to Fuqua. That was some time ago. Maybe I should just, I guess, be presuming at this point that my credit card is going to work. Because I kind of wanted to just get tons of stuff. Just get a big whack of stuff if I was going to break out this credit card at this family mart. But just because I wasn't sure who would work and I didn't want it to be awkward if I had a big pile of items that couldn't pay for. So I just got like three little things.

Like a kind of fish and egg, old school, onigiri thingy. And some mix nuts and just a random white drink that I'm like, oh, maybe it's yogurt, maybe it's whatever it's just milkless. I have no idea what it cost because the money doesn't conveniently line up anymore. It was so convenient where with Canadian prices, a hundred yen is about a dollar and a thousand one is about a dollar, easy to do the conversion. Where here, I don't know. It was like just some random amount.

But my dumb little card worked. So I could go back to family mart and get some breakfast. I don't know though, I'm really not. I'm sure I'll just give it a little time. I'll give it a little time and I'll get hungry. But this lines up with where I left off in the story of the fancy pants hotel in Busan. Where yeah, I woke up at like 7.30 in the morning and from 7 to 9 was breakfast time on floor number two. I was the sweet on floor eight. So I went down to floor number two and went into the breakfast thing and there was like, you know, a smattering, six or seven people in there having breakfast. I was still feeling very rattled and agitated and anxious and uncomfortable but it's like whatever just Sally for. I mean, I'm going to feel weird in the best of times and just, you know, a room full of Korean folk ham and breakfast. So this is whatever. Just do it. And it was like a basic breakfast buffet type saying, I guess you just, you know, grab a bowl, grab a plate, grab some stuff. And it was a lot of the sort of basic stuff. I got some toast and some orange juice and some yogurt with, you know, fruit nuts and stuff in it. They did have cereal and stuff but the main thing was they did have like a chef lady. So I got scrambled eggs and then I just basically took a bit of everything except she did make like a curry thing that was probably delicious but with traveling and sweating and not having a shower for two days, I just didn't 10:00 want to eat curry. Curry gets on the breath, curry gets in the sweat, curry just makes you smell like curry. So it's like nah, let's skip on the curry. But other than that, there was like a spicy beef and noodle thing. There was a bunch of sides of course. So there was like four main items and four sides. So yeah, the big items were the curry that I skipped but then the spicy pork and noodles. Oh geez, what even was the stuff now? It's already slipping away. It was just yesterday that I had this stuff. It was like some seasonal greens it was called. They were just like some colored green type things that were all spicy and very tasty. Man, what was the other thing? I don't even remember. All this stuff that was generally, you know, all just spicy but delicious. And then for the sides, it was like kimchi of course and some like beans and just, I don't know. I mean, it's just generally I guess. It's just generally spicy vegetables with a little meat thrown in and some noodles here and there and eggs. Anyway, it was fucking really goddamn good because I, now I guess I've had good luck in Busan with food because I had like the homemade kimchi and stuff in the sharehouse. And then here, yeah, like this is the step up. This is like a full-on chef-lady making stuff. And I actually got way too much stuff. Even though I only took a bit of everything, I did take a bit of everything. So it was like pile up on my plate. And yeah, just sat there, yum yum yum. And there was like a family there. And I was thinking like my interpretation of this hotel was that it's like the business man's a fair hotel because it was, because you know, I had the sweet with the jacuzzi tub and the machine that presses your suit and dry cleans it.

But I'm sure the normal rooms are just normal rooms. And at like $90 for a room, especially if you can cram your family in there or maybe it's a slightly more expensive like double bedroom or something. But then if everybody goes down and has this breakfast in the morning, it was like a super legit restaurant level breakfast. It was so fucking good. Like it was a breakfast I would have paid 20 bucks for easy. So if you had a family in all four, yeah, are having your breakfast and you stayed at the hotel, like I bet it all adds up to actually be a pretty good deal. And it's right by the airport, like a literal 20 minute walk from the airport. Or one stop. It's one stop on the train to the airport. And they have a shuttle as well if you want to do that.

So yeah, it was cool that I got to go to the super fancy suite for a bit of a deal. But I think even if you just went there on the normal, it really is just like being by yourself does make the economics of traveling a little tougher. Once you start compounding it with a family of four, it's like, yeah, this is actually a great deal. This would be a great place to stay. Super delicious breakfast anyway. Just thinking about it is making me feel more hungry. Super good.

And then, yeah, from there. I had my nervous poops for a while. Finally got everything all set to go. And yeah, this is where the little bit of extra money that I had on my T-money card just kept coming in handy. I keep finding little reasons that I need that extra five or six bucks that was on there. Because I did not arrange for a hotel shuttle because I didn't know what time exactly I'd be going. Went down to the front desk. There was no one manning it at that moment, which has left my key card. And yeah, just went across the street to the train station. There was an Ediya coffee across the street from there too. That would have been sweet to have a final Ediya for the road, but I didn't do that.

And then yeah, it's a little weird because I don't know what's on my T-money card. But I presume there'd be enough for one one stop on the subway. And there was. So I just went the one stop to the fucking airport. And then it was finally time for my reckoning with the immigration office.

Yeah, I'm heading down the escalator toward the family mart. So perhaps I'll go get some breakfast and then we're almost ready to wrap this story up. We're almost back to the present. Oh, that's one thing. So this lady's voice on the escalator here. You can very clearly tell it's a Chinese speaker speaking the English. Pretty heavily accented. Whereas at the airport in Busan, I kept hearing this one. You know, they obviously had somebody just record voices. Oh, that's a separate thing. 15:00 But on the bus, the Jeju bus, the airport shuttle, the English voice definitely said lot hotel. And that's been a thing where I thought, you know, when I found like the ice cream in Japan and stuff, I just thought L-O-T-T-E was lot. And then I couldn't swore the guy I met at Hallisand who gave me a ride to the subway called it Lot Tower. But then I saw somewhere on YouTube or whatever that it's pronounced Lote. And everywhere I've checked does seem to confirm that pretty much in any language around these parts, whether it be Japanese or Korean or whatever, they all seem to say Lote. But I could have swore this lady's voice on the bus said lot. And it made me think like maybe they just gave this lady stuff to record and she just said it that way. And everybody was like, that's fine. She's an English speaker. She knows what she's doing. I don't know. It's weird though. It's at the bitter end. It's like how and guys named you say this fucking word. Come on.

But yeah, there's this pre-recorded voice in the airport in Busan of some lady who is like just slightly texted. Like it's one of those things that I'm sure whoever arranged all these recordings and stuff in South Korea, they just, they don't know regional accents. They just know, okay, we hired an English lady. She's speaking the English. Great. But you can really hear her text and accent come out or Southern in general. Whenever she would say Gimpo, come to gate A for Gimpo. International airport. Gimpo. I heard this fucking lady say Gimpo like eight fucking times throughout the day. And every time it just like cut through the air. Now taking passengers for Gimpo. Why bless you a little heart. You going to Gimpo? Get on down here. We're going to Gimpo.

Fuck it. Texas. Fuck. Sorry. I don't know what that means. I like that accent actually. It's just early in the morning and my brain's not working. All right. There's family. I'm going to go to family.

So yeah, I'm not too sure how interrelated mainland China and Taiwan are. But I got to assume to a pretty good degree. Like I'm quite sure Taiwan has its own money, right? But I think the numbers, I don't know. I did a little quick research about how the money works. And like I said, it just doesn't line up conveniently to the Canadian dollar. But like here, for instance, at this family mark. A little bottle of coffee was $19. And you know, I know it's not dollars. This is whatever. Whatever the Chinese money is, I don't fucking know. But to my North American brain, it looks like $19. So it's like, I mean, that's kind of funny. It's clearly not $19. But I'm sure I'll sort it out as time goes on.

But yeah, the family mark situation is just so much easier than a GS25 say. Where I just got like just a nice little bread with some cream and some grape jelly paste stuff. You know, just a nice simple little tasty breakfasty thing.

You know, everything was just generally nice and good. Not like a fun convenience store stuff. But I'm actually super impressed. Because that's also a reason why I decided to go to Taiwan. It's literally just because I just need to go somewhere. You know, it's like I can't stay in Korea. I gotta go somewhere else. I just saw somebody mention that there's, you know, 7-11s on every corner in Taipei. And I'm like, hey, good enough. It was a theoretically cheap flight. And I'll just see how the convenience stores are. And I'll start from there and then I'll inadvertently learn about the place. Because yeah, as I've said many times, 7-11 in North America versus 7-11 in Japan versus 7-11 in Korea. It is three different animals. It's very different stores. So hopefully this Chinese family mark is a harbinger of things to come in Taiwan.

Because the one thing with Japanese stuff is it's quite remarkable that everybody keeps their weight under control because everything is so sweet in Japan. Most things, just your average thing that you buy is probably going to be sweetest fuck. So I got like a matcha thing here that was like a chocolate cake with matcha cream inside, like a swirl, big swirl of matcha cream. And it's the least sweetened matcha flavoring I've ever seen on anything. 20:00 Besides back when I had a coffee shop job in Vancouver where we had raw matcha powder. You know, if you just didn't add sugar, then you get full blast matcha. This wasn't quite that much because full on matcha is very bitter. But for a confectionery that you buy from a family mark, I could not believe how bitter and coffee-ish this matcha was, which goes so well with chocolate cake. It was fucking delicious. It was better than Japan. The Japan version of this, it would have been sweet matcha inside. So I was like, holy shit, that was so good.

And I bought two coffees, maybe not the best idea, but it is very early in the morning. I just got to make sure I peed all out before my flight, but I should be able to. I got time. One of them was never coffee, which is just kind of funny. It's like of all the names in the world. Why'd you pick the one that contradicts the very item? Never coffee? I mean, it is coffee. It's always coffee. You literally couldn't have a more counterintuitive strange name. But you know, it was okay. Just average little coffee. It's the other one I got. Cisa coffee, cold brew. Oh, it's shiny meadow cross Cisa coffee. Somehow it's a coffee collaboration. But anyway, this shit. Oh, I wonder. Okay, it's 100% Cisa. I can't read the stuff. I can just see the symbols. 100% Cisa coffee bean. And then the other thing is presumably Cisa with like a drip, 100% of something else I don't fucking know. Also, I could have swore I downloaded the simplified Chinese on my Google translate, but I tried to translate something yesterday and it didn't work. Apparently, the download didn't go through or something, and now I can't connect to the internet. So anyway, I can't read what's on this bottle. The point is, this coffee is so fucking delicious. Shiny meadow cross Cisa coffee cold brew. It's the coffee of my dreams because it is coffee and milk or cream or whatever. Like it's quite a light coffee, but it's not sweetened. It's like not only bitter, it's like kind of harsh, harshly bitter, like a dark roast. And it's just fucking delicious. You know, like I was always saying that in Japan, like man in Japan, there's no option. Either you drink your coffee full black, or you drink your coffee. I like my sugar with coffee and cream, you know. I just two items back to back, where I was like this is delightfully unsweetened. I love it. I love this matcha cake, and I double love this coffee.

So fucking sums up Chinese version of Family Mart. You are knocking it out of the park. It's worth 19 dollars to buy this coffee, which again, you know, I got to assume it's like three bucks, right? Or maybe less, I don't know.

But yeah, see, things aren't all bad. In fact, everything is kind of feeling a lot better this morning. The airport's a lot less crowded. I haven't had to get all my fingerprints taken.

I'm just kind of here. I just woke up and I'm here. You know, the security is a distant memory from yesterday. Now it just sort of seems like, okay, this is just all right. I guess this is fine. And then yeah, just not only am I back to just being able to go to the convenience store and just casually poke around and find fun, cool stuff. But I just had two things. One after the other that are both noticeably distinctly better than their Japanese counterpart. It's like the flip flop. The flip flop of going to Korea where everything in the convenience store is annoying in some fucking way.

I didn't think it was really possible to top Japan in the convenience store game. And I mean, I'm not saying it will do that overall. There's just so much variety and stuff available in Japanese convenience stores. Like this is a little teeny convenience store. Very small. Maybe that's just because it's in an airport or maybe it's going to be that way because Korean convenience stores are also quite small. So the thing in Japan where you can just kind of just go to the convenience store and just have full meals there and stuff, maybe that won't happen. But as far as just little snacky items to pick away at, I'm just wildly impressed. It's like, I mean, it's the most natural thing in the world, right? To not oversweeten matcha. Why are you buying matcha? If you don't want it to taste like matcha. But Japan doesn't fucking think that. That's for God damn sure. So there we go. There's a big thumbs up. Again, I'm just the shallowest man. It's like, yeah, okay, you clearly live in a surveillance heavy police state where the internet is mega regulated. 25:00 And you can't go anywhere without offering them a fucking model of your DNA.

But the junk food at the convenience store is pretty fucking nice.

I've been just taking the opportunity while the airport is still relatively unbusy to charge up my phones. This is charging station where there's not that many people here because I got to use two charging stations, two USBs to charge my two phones. But it's all right. There's open spaces. I don't feel like a big dick for doing that. And it's not going to take that long. It's 10 minutes or so. I should be all charged up. But it's kind of neat to just stand in one place and just look around the concourse. There's that weird buzz again. I don't know if that's coming through in the recorder, but apologies if it is. There's the old Chinese flag. You know, that's one thing I did notice in South Korea is I really like the South Korean flag. There's not that many flags of the world that really stand out to me. I don't actually care for the Canadian flag that much. The big maple leaf, I feel it's a little silly. The Japanese flag is okay. America, I mean, it's a classic, you know, especially if you see a trampled, dirty, tattered American flag like in Red Dead Redemption or something. It's like, yeah, man, you know, the rugged America. It's kind of cool.

But yeah, the South Korean flag, it just looks really cool. It looks like an emblem from a video game. It looks like an Overwatch fucking skin or something. But yeah, just standing here, looking around from this one perspective, I just noticed a little thing I would have not noticed otherwise. There is a lot more bad English here, way more. You know, I've seen when I was in Japan that that, you know, that was big thing back in the 90s especially. Like, oh, look at the hilarious English translations. But there wasn't too much of that in Japan these days and a little bit in Korea, but not a ton. Just being in China for one night, I've noticed a bunch. I bet it's all over the place. Maybe it's a reticence to use English speakers, you know, maybe they're like, in-house, we'll do it here. But this one, man, it's like, at first I thought it was kind of funny, but it's actually kind of a bummer because it's such a beautiful picture. It's this big banner. I don't even know if it's real or if it's like an LCD screen. I think it might be a screen. There are some massive screens here, but this one's not changing. I don't know, but I can see the same banner down the concourse. So anyway, I don't think it's permanent. It probably is an LCD. Well, let me just walk up. Let me take a close look.

Oh no, this one is a permanent picture, a permanent banner. But it's this beautiful painting or, you know, a print of, it's like orange with a sun in the background and some mountains and some trees and mountains in the background. It's kind of, you know, just imagine a sunset in Mulan. You know, it sort of looks like, but it's this curvy, twisty dragon sailing through the sky. And it's just beautiful. It's gorgeous. But then the words at the bottom, there's the Chinese lettering and then under in English, it says, so close, so close, because you know like phonetically, especially if you're a Chinese speaker, when you hear someone say wild and free, yeah, if there's any sound you're not hearing, it's the L, right? The L and the R. So I'm sure that's just phonetically how they hear that phrase wild and free. They think it's wide and free. And that's what they wrote. Dragons journey wide and free. And it's like, oh man, you just took this beautiful, gorgeous painting of a dragon and you made it stupid. And he's not wide. He's a skinny, long, cool ancient dragon. He's not a big fat dragon, but that's what the symbol suggests, wide and free. Anyway.

It doesn't actually matter just because I'm standing here. Oh, well, there's even just behind me, attention security, no climbing, caution drop down. Because yeah, we're on the third floor, and if I climbed over this little glass railing, yeah, caution drop down is right. Three stories that break my legs for sure, maybe die. So, you know, I know what caution drop down means. It means, you know, long fall. Dangerous height. Many ways you could put this.

Caution drop down is a little inelegant, but I don't know. Just, again, that's just a security warning. Who cares? It gets the message across. It's just so weird to make this amazing, cool painting. And like, nobody? Nobody knew that wide and free is wrong? That being said, though, based on the Family Mart alone. The two employees I talked to both had excellent English. So, I was getting the sense that the English level is maybe pretty high.

In China, because obviously, at the airport, you want to aim for that more so, but I wouldn't say that as necessarily the vibe I got in Korea or Japan, wide and free. I don't know. It's just so weird, because it's so close. But there's no way if you just ran that through Google Translate, it wouldn't give you that. Like, that's what I guess is weird about it. This seems like it was a handmade mistake. You know, if you just ran it through Google Translate, which is, I guess, how a lot of these problems happened. But in this case, it would have worked better getting someone to go in by hand and type out what they hear. It failed. It didn't work. Anyway, whatever. It's not funny enough to be funny. It's not tragic enough to be tragic. It's just a little thing that I saw while I was standing here.

Man, this is the weirdest thing. So, time's coming up. I got less than 10 minutes before I can theoretically go check in for this flight. But it occurred to me about an hour ago, a little less. I'm like, oh, man, what if there is a problem, though? What if I don't just hand in my passport and everything works out? What if it's one of these cases, like with China Eastern Air, which it turns out that was because my flight functionally didn't exist? But what if there's a problem? And I need to go into Expedia, and I need to get my information. I have to try to call the one Skype. I don't have internet. And the reason that happened, by the way, is you either need a phone number to confirm, and I don't have a phone number, or you literally need to take a picture of your passport. But you have to do it through the sign-in app of the stupid fucking airport, which doesn't work. It failed on both of my phones. Then it said, you can copy this link and try it again through a browser. That did work on one of my phones, but then it forgot English. It switched over. And I tried to do a translate that didn't work, because I guess, again, I think maybe it would have worked, but for some reason, I swear I downloaded the Simplified Chinese for Google Translate. I fucking swear I did, and I don't have it.

So then I managed to take a blurry picture of my passport with my phone with a really bad camera, because it's the only one that would get that far in the process. And then I'm pressing buttons, and I think I pressed the right one, but then it just hung on a loading screen. I mean, boof. But that idea got in my head. What if something goes wrong? Now I got to try to find a phone. Maybe that helped me at the desk. Maybe I got to go to the help desk and see about internet. My mind just starts racing through all the fucking problems this will cause. If anything goes wrong, and then the stress started to set in. But it still felt like stress behind an atmosphere. You know, like I had a bit of a block protecting me.

But over the course of the last hours, just gotten worse and worse and worse. And now my body has no chill. I was, you know, two days ago, hyper nervous. Yesterday, fine. Today, fine until I had this thought. And now I'm coming up to having to go to deal with the ticket counter and then go through the final checks. And now I'm nervous as shit again, which is the right word to say because now I'm doing the nervous poops again, which I'm sure if you, if your body doesn't do this, this must sound like the weirdest thing. But yeah, I just went to three washrooms, just one washroom, take a poop, another washroom, take a poop. And it is like I'm actually pooping a bit each time. So I'm thinking maybe it's like because once the anxiety hits and I feel this twist in my gut, maybe it literally is just all my muscles are flexed in there. All my organs are flexed. You know, I know that's not literally what happens, but something's contracting in there and it's just not stopping. So it's like not only pushing the poop, but maybe making it so I can't normally poop. I'm like poop in partway. And then it seems like I'm done, but as soon as I get up and walk around, it's still contracting and pushing and I got to go poop again, it's ridiculous. But yeah, just that it's incredible. I went from like, wow, I can't believe like it's just so weird. How could I be so stressed out two days ago? And then yesterday going through objectively more stressful things showing up in China and all this fucking weird security and having to sleep overnight at the airport, but feel pretty okay.

It's like, man, how weird. It's just like it hardly makes sense. I mean, it sort of makes sense. I can kind of unravel it a bit, but a lot of it's just up to fate. How is my body going to feel? But then today, everything felt fine till an hour ago. And now I'm all torqued up again. And it's like, it's like crazy, man. Fucking blows.

Anyway, yeah, it's mere minutes to go check in now so I can just go do that. At least since I know I realize I'm business class, I don't know, maybe that'll help. I mean, probably it'll be fine. But oh, yeah, the uncertainty. I hate it so fucking much. I mean, I like traveling overall. I like going places and doing stuff, but man, when it's stressful, it's just the worst. And it's like weird because I'm old enough at this point, which speaking of I should take off my hat. Let them see the little bit of gray poking out at my temples because I haven't shaved my head lately. Maybe that helps too. It makes me seem like a more respectable gentleman. This makes a lot of sense why I didn't do an international traveling when I was a younger man. I just wouldn't have been able to. The stress would have eaten me alive. So I'm better at it now, but it's not going to get better than this. This is as good as it's going to get. And it's like, fuck, man, that's such a downer. Like surely all this stuff will be easier next time.

If I ever come through this cursed airport again, it'll be easier the second time. If I ever have a flight canceled at the last second due to inclement weather, surely it'll be easier next time. But maybe not. I can't predict what my body is going to do. What am I supposed to fucking do about this? It just happens. It's just how it is. Anyway, I decided to report because I think that's a bit interesting. I don't know. Everything was terrible that everything was fine and all of a sudden it's ratcheting up to terrible again. But if this all goes smoothly and I just go get my ticket and go through security, then maybe everything will just become fine again. Anyway, I'm staring at one of these dragon posters. Dragons, journey, wide and free. Wish me luck, dragon. Ugh, god damn. I mean, I don't know how. I don't know. Maybe this is why so many people smoke weed. My dad smoked weed every day of his life for decades. This is probably why I'm made of the same stock as him. Anxiety fucking sucks, man. Fucking sucks. Obviously, it's the whole point. To be anxious. Anyway, all right, who must start talking when you go do the thing now?

Yeah.

So, yeah, definitely. I mean, I guess it went smooth enough, but like the first guy, because it's this weird thing where I'm like, what was the name of the fucking company?

Again, I just booked whatever the one sequence of flights that was available from Jeju on mega short notice.

Uni Airways, but operated by Air China. So there was nothing for Uni Airways, but I found Air China and the guy was like, I don't know, is this us?

But he took my passport over and checked stuff, and then it was me. And the lady had minor problems, but then sorted stuff out. Turns out there's a whole page, so on my passport, there's a page for 90 days in Japan. There's a page for six months in South Korea. And there's a whole page for one overnight in this dumbass airport. And it's not even on the next page. He skipped a page. A dickhead. It's not like I'm going to fill up my whole passport, but it is a 10-year passport, I don't know. There's only so many pages. I would just skip a page. Why would you need a whole page for that for an overnight in the airport? It's just, I don't know. But anyway, this is something, too, that hasn't come to mind in years. I didn't even think about this. The lady asked if I had an exit planned from Taiwan, and I was like, no, I don't have anything booked yet. Because basically I'd heard that when I first went to Japan in 2019, that they might ask for an exit ticket. So before I even got to Japan, I had booked a pretty cheap $200 flight from Japan to Seoul, just so I'd have an exit ticket. I didn't really know what my plan was at that point, but just so I could show them that if I had to. But then nobody ever asked. And then because I had problems with my passport and my bank card on that trip, I ended up just going back to Canada. After Japan, I didn't go anywhere else. So that ticket was just lost. That's one of those cases if you're ever at the airport, and you hear them just calling someone's name three or four times, and that person never shows up. And yeah, have you ever wondered what happened? So I was that person that day, because it was a non-refundable flight and stuff. I couldn't do anything with it. I just wasn't there to be on that flight. So I'm sure they called last call for passenger Keith McNally a few times. 40:00 But yes, since nobody ever asked, that just left my mind. So this time I didn't have an exit ticket from Japan. And when I got to Korea, I didn't have an exit ticket from Korea. And I guess yeah, I'm just sliding over into the more strict side of the world where the lady was like in Taiwan, they might not give you a visitor visa if you don't have an exit ticket. So I was like, okay, good to know. Thank you. And this would be the perfect time. I've got some time to kill while I wait for my flight to board. If only I could get on the internet. This would be the perfect time. I could go on. The best thing would be if I could just use my China Eastern Air Credit. And it's weird though to even have to plan out ahead of time. I'm like, god damn it, I don't know. I don't fucking know. But I guess at this point, I'll just buy a ticket back to Japan. You know, I'm still, it's a little weird to go back to Japan in a way because like there's not, it hasn't been a year. This would be my second trip within a year. But it seems like theoretically that should be okay. I don't know. I guess I'll just buy the flight to Japan and I'll only book the first bit of a stay just to make sure everything's okay. And then once I'm in, then I'll book everything else. I guess. I don't know. Again, I'd rather not have to make the choice now, but whatever. I guess that's fine. And if I could use the China Eastern Air Credits, that would be great, but I have no idea. I don't know what the fuck that airline is or where it goes. Maybe I won't be able to use them at all, whatever. But of course, I can't get on the goddamn internet here. Their stupid system is so shit. It's so shit. It just literally doesn't work. But I didn't try it on my laptop yet, so I logged down to the laptop. It doesn't even have the, take a picture of your passport option. It only has, please input your phone number and then they send you a code. And there is also a Wi-Fi here for some kind of coffee shop, but the coffee shop has also some kind of code thing, blue bottle coffee. Let's see, what does it say? It seemed pretty hardcore. It seemed more involved than just buying a coffee and asking for the Wi-Fi password, because of course it's goddamn China. They've got to be all locked down and insane about everything. But there's also a thing here, Wi-Fi Kiosk. Yes, it won't even connect at all now, so I have no fucking idea what the coffee thing was connected earlier, but whatever. Something about, find a Wi-Fi password Kiosk, input your username, input your password, so I assume this is a thing where maybe you can buy time for Wi-Fi possibly. I mean, maybe I'll go wander around and try to figure out what that is, but I'm sure the process can buy time is probably just as crazy. But I mean, maybe it would actually be possible at least.

But also, I guess I gotta go find out what's going on with this flight, because I thought the flight wasn't leaving till like 130, but it says here the boarding time is 10.45 and it's quarter after 9 now. So that's not actually that much time.

And random buzzing and construction. Good time to stop yammering. But anyway, so yeah, I don't know. I don't know what'll happen on the Taipei side. Maybe the flight will have Wi-Fi, but the Korea one didn't, so I highly doubt that the China-based one will air China. What are the chances? Approximately zero.

I don't know what'll happen again. Maybe they just won't care.

Welcome to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. It's been a long time since I've been here. It's been a long time since I've been here. I think that this life. This is the best-case scenario. This is as good as it can get. Yikes! Make sure you've got lots of time for transfers everywhere, but I guess- with an airport in China, it's especially important. Anyway, let's just wrap this up. I'm tired of hearing myself talk. It just goes on and on. I hope this podcast gets across the feeling of the endless days of traveling through airports and stuff in the way that this meandering nonsense will never stop. Just to finish up the earlier tale. So after my stay in 45:00 the cool fancy hotel in Busan, I got to the airport. Many hours before my flight, found out where the immigration office was, and basically it went pretty well. The nuts and the bolts of it are at least from a Canadian perspective that yeah, I should have gone to see a person in the immigration office in Jeju to get a one day extension and then I would have a spotless record as it is. I got a warning. And basically she said, you know, if you get more than one warning, that's trouble blah blah blah. There's a reason for that's not written in English, but I hope she wrote Typhoon. You know, I did have a good fucking reason if people are looking in the future for, you know, because she mentioned I have an otherwise spotless record, which is a little surprising because I've actually had shenanigans at the US border several times. Story for another day I guess. But I don't know if that stuff expires or they just never put it on my record at all because it was so minor. I have no idea. But anyway, there's this warning now, but hopefully it says why. It's still a good reason for a warning and it's only one day. But yeah, apparently it's up to 10 days is just the warning. It's kind of not that big a deal the first time as long as you don't do it twice. Then again, I can't really see it happening twice because I suppose if there's another flight cancellation on the last day of my visa because of weather, but also it's so late in the day that the immigration office is already closed. That's the only way. Now that I know like every airport has an immigration office, just go find it. Deal with it before expiry. Really no biggie, but even as it is not really that big of a deal. Just had to fill out some stuff and take a form with me when I went to get my ticket and check through and everything. Then the final, final security person to release me from Korea kept that little form. Oh, I did try to do, I don't know just for the hell of it. I tried to do the self-check in, but yeah, it was like nope, no self-checking for you, my friend. You gotta go talk to a person. And I guess that's it. I guess that's it. That's what I learned about immigration stuff. Try to deal with it before it passes, but if you're from a country in good standing, you got 10 days. You could fuck around and it's not that big a deal, I guess. The first time, just a warning, no fines, no fucking bannings, none of that stuff. Obviously there's more to happen today, but it certainly doesn't seem fun or exciting in any way. It'll just be that I do not have an exit ticket from Taiwan, so I guess we'll see how that process works. Surely I can't be the only person in the world who's faced this situation. You know, optimally they just go, hey Canada, in fact that's what happened. One of the times with my America shenanigans, I was on a cruise that technically went to Mexico, but you know, just the cruise version of going to Mexico. And it was while I had a visitor visa to America that I had applied for an extension, but I hadn't gotten it yet. But I did have the paperwork saying it was in processing, but technically I left America and was coming back in due to this cruise. And I was stressed out about it, of course, because what the hell's gonna happen? And those people, I mean the Americans have been good to me as far as the border goes. They literally said, ah, you're Canadian, you're harmless. I thought that was funny, but it's fucking true. Leave Canadians alone. Let Canadians come to your country, dude, we're Canadians. Christ. But anyway, again, yeah, I don't know if I do just have to buy a ticket, because that was my plan, is for an exit ticket, like I don't know, let's tool around with these credits and try to use them. If I have to buy a ticket immediately, that is not happening. This trip is getting a little long in the tooth, man. You know, once all this is sorted out, maybe I'll just flip flop right around and everything will be joyful again. I guess we'll see. If you ever start your own country, it's to your benefit to relax. In fact, I just saw a video today. There's this YouTuber, average 32-year-old man from Korea, which by the time this episode comes out, he'll probably be 33. But he just makes little YouTube videos about Korean topics. He's how I found out that the birth rate in South Korea is even lower than in Japan, that it's in fact the lowest in the world. He just posted a video yesterday that I downloaded as a little MP3 when I had internet, so I was just listening to it as I walked around the airport. That was about how he's going to China. He's here right now. In fact, he's here this exact time that I'm here to visit his parents because he's Korean, but his parents have lived in China for a couple of years, and he's never been. And it was about why he's never been, and it's because Korea is also one of 50:00 these countries like Canada where it's all good, you know? One of the top 20 passports, and just you can go to like 190 countries with no issues, and it's just no problem. Nice strong passports of Korea. But not in China, in China, you got to apply for a visa ahead of time, and it's, I don't know if it's different for each country, but it's quite stringent if you're coming from South Korea. And he said it was easier for him because his parents have already done it, but that's the whole reason. He's like, he's been to 15 countries in his life, but never to China because why would you fucking bother? Why would you go through all these hoops, and why would you do all this? These contortions when you could just go anywhere else on the earth. You can go to so many other countries. And yeah, I certainly feel that way. I cannot imagine ever, ever coming to China to visit ever. Why the fuck would I? You know, it would have to be a similar situation if I somehow had family or something that moved here. It's the only reason. There's no, there's no need for all this. There's no reason to put up with all this red tape and bureaucracy, all this ridiculous security. Again, I'll get into it if I do an episode about Russia, but it's like, give a country. If you think of a country as a person, you know, if a country has a personality, you know, you could say that like Canada is nice, but passive-aggressive. You could say America is bold, but you know, the Brigadotia is covering up a actual lack of self-esteem. And then in the case of like Russia and China, it's like, I don't even know how to describe that person. Paranoid? Yeah, I mean, you know, just not somebody you want to fucking deal with, because it's just every little thing is a problem. Anyway, all right.