#168 Staying overnight at an airport in China

Transcript

Yo, I'm just walking around Taipei, Taiwan. We've only been here a couple of days, but it is awesome. I'm having an extremely good time here. But I had a bit of a tough time getting here, transferring through China through the airport in Shanghai. And I thought I'd do an episode about that. Maybe I normally wouldn't do a whole episode because it's like, yeah, okay, some airports, some countries are tougher than others, you know. Extra bureaucracy at the airport. At the end of the world, you know, it's not necessarily that big a deal. I might not do a whole podcast about it, except that it brought back so many memories. Being in the Shanghai Airport overnight brought back so many memories of when I was in the Moscow Airport overnight, in 2019. So I think between the two, I think that's interesting. So I'm going to talk about China first, and then we'll do Russia second. Russia is a bit of an odd situation because 2019 was before they invaded the Ukraine, you know, I went through there just because it was a cheap flight.

Obviously that is over, you know. I cannot support Russia anymore, cheap flight or no. So that was an experience that's not going to happen again.

But it is one that I had and remarkably similar in a lot of ways to passing through China. So just at the scene, I'm Canadian and I'm like medium traveled, you know, I've been some places but not really a ton. And I'm just generally ignorant about a lot of stuff. So I've been back and forth between America and Canada a whole bunch of times.

That's probably where I've had the most friction crossing the border actually just because of the number of times I've done it. But also I've had some really easy times. One time when I was living in Toronto, I had a trip set up to go visit people I knew in New York. And then there was a big apartment fire, the apartment I was living in. Basically, everybody had to move out. It was a really bad fire. So I thought I wouldn't be able to go on this trip because my passport was in the building. But then these firemen, they found my passport because it was in the drawer of a dresser and they managed to throw the dresser out. They made a big hole in the wall, mid-fire. And they were throwing stuff out of the apartment so there'd be less stuff to burn.

So they threw the dresser with my passport in it out of the fire. But it still got singed around the corners. Like the edges of my passport were burned. And I had to keep my passport in a plastic bag because it smelled like fire. But I was like, man, this is a weird situation. I mean, all my stuff is already booked for America. I don't even have a place to live in Canada. I thought, let me just try it. Let me just try to go to New York, hang out there for a week. And then when I come back, I'll worry about finding a new place to live in Toronto. And as weird as that was, telling the border guards this story, pulling out my passport in this little plastic baggy, taking it out, you know, they're looking at it like, what the fuck is this? But they ran it through the scanner and it worked. And they let me in. You know, I don't think I would have let me in. I don't know if you should let the guy with the singed, burned passport through the country. So even though America and Canada is where I've had the most friction, still it's generally really not a problem. And they'll let me in in those circumstances. It's not an issue, you know.

And then I went to the Netherlands. And that was really easy. I was surprised I was easy. That was the first country besides Canada and America I'd gone to. Japan was a little slower, but also very easy. South Korea was super easy because it turns out Canadians are on very good terms with South Korea. You can get a six month visa, not just a 90 day one. And then here in Taipei, I think Taiwan has been the easiest time ever crossed into a country. It was unbelievable. It was nearly effortless. I had to fill out a little arrival card that I just did through my phone, took about 10 minutes, and then that was it. It's like there you go, go on in. So that's the situation I'm coming from. The Canadian visa is one of these many countries, most countries as far as I know. It's relatively easy to go from one to the other. You just kind of roll in, you talk to somebody for a bit, you fill out a couple of things, and they give you a visitor visa.

So I was pretty surprised when I had a delayed flight that got me caught in Russia overnight in 2019. And just to put up me and the other people who had missed our flight in a hotel connected to the airport was bureaucracy, capital B, capital everything. 5:00 Just it was insane how long it took. Like I said, I'll get into that more after. But one of the guys who became my my overnight friend that day was a Dutch guy named Valentine.

And you know, we were talking about how just having to do everything and triplicate and how just inefficient everything was and how slow everything was and how paranoid everything was. And he brought up more than once. He's like, if you think this is bad, wait till you go to China. In fact, it was one of the last things he said to me because we hung out all night in the airport hotel. And then the next day we were on the same shuttle to go to our flights. And it was one of the last things he said to me was he reiterated about China. He said, China, it's three times worse than this. I know that's hard to believe, but it is.

So I guess deep in my memory banks, I had a warning about China, but that was five years ago. It wasn't exactly front of mind. And I don't really know anything about China. I don't know much about anything. You know, I'm just kind of learning about the world as I travel around. I guess all I know about China is, you know, through my nerd lens of like video games and stuff. It's like, oh, you know, this video game had to make changes for China. XY and Z websites are not available in China. Like I can't think of any, you know, just whenever you hear news about China, it's never like, good news. China did this nice thing. Never. It's always China. Here's what China is doing.

But it's also outside of my experience that, yeah, just none of this stuff really occurred to me until it's in front of me. So along those lines, I booked a flight, leaving South Korea, going to Taiwan, through Jeju. So there weren't a ton of options. There's a lot less options from Jeju than they're our from Incheon or Busan or whatever. But unfortunately, just bad luck, just an act of God. There was a typhoon that was possibly going to hit Taiwan literally the day I was supposed to show up here.

So what was supposed to be just a half day flight from Jeju to Shanghai to Taipei? It's got canceled, but again, typhoon, act of God, nothing you can do about it.

But I had booked through Expedia, and I was on the phone with Expedia and we were rerouting stuff. And I think it was a combination of, we just both didn't know what we were doing. My Expedia agent didn't really know the ins and outs of China and the various laws for travel, and I didn't at all.

So we were kind of leading each other down the wrong path where I was like, I was also on the last day of my South Korean visa. So I was like, oh, I just need to get out of here. So whatever, I'll take whatever flight, I don't mind, layovers, I don't mind, I don't mind if it takes days. Whatever, I just need to get going. And the Expedia people, you know, they're not necessarily travel agents. They're really just there to try to help you and kind of do as you direct. So the Expedia lady got me this new flight, which instead of one afternoon was going to take two days. But it was going to be from Jeju to Shanghai to Kindao. I think the city was called another city in China, overnight each time, and then to Taipei. And for other reasons, that flight also got canceled the next day.

Different logistical reasons that don't matter. But even without that, the guy from the airline counter explained to me that this wasn't going to work. I just assumed, you know, I'm just going to an airport, just going to this airport, going to that airport. I'm never going to leave the airport. I'm just transferring through the airport. And that just wouldn't be an issue again in all these other countries where, you know, I'm a Canadian, I can just roll in. And go, hey guys, I'm here. And it's just not a big deal. Where he said, yeah, that is a big deal in China. You can't do that. You can go to Shanghai. You can stay for up to 144 hours to transfer. None of this, like you just live in the airport, now type of stuff. And if you go to a second airport within China, that's traveling within China. That's a big no-no, because that's what you need a proper visa for. And you can't just show up and get the visa at the airport. You got to do that ahead of time. Who knows how long ahead of time? A couple of weeks at least. But apparently it's a pretty difficult batch of paperwork to do. 10:00 So probably you want to set this up way in advance. You can't just buy tickets wily nilly and go flying around China. So that was my first realization of like, oh yeah, right. Right. China's not like the other countries around these parts. They don't care that I'm from Canada. Being a nice Canadian, it's not relevant in this situation. And yeah, this kind of whatever, taking whatever random flights are available, transfer here, transfer there, Carman San Diego, around the world in 80 days, just all this crap that you can do in other countries. You can't do that in China. So that's just good to know. That's good to know. Don't fool around with all these transfers through China. I would recommend don't transfer through China at all. But if you do, you got one. You got one shot and then you got to get out of there. So I had to book another flight last second. Spend way too much money. But again, this all originated from a typhoon. So you know, it is what it is.

So it was really weird actually because there were very few flights left, especially because I had to leave post-haste. I actually did end up overstaying my South Korea visa by one day. And in those cases, if you're overstaying a visa, go track down an immigration officer in the airport right away before the visa expires. Because I didn't find an open immigration office. I dotled too much and I didn't get to one until the next day. And then they couldn't help me. They could have given me an extension if I had seen someone the day before. But instead, all they could do was give me a warning. So I unfortunately got a warning.

It doesn't matter if it's a typhoon. It doesn't matter if you bought the first possible flight to leave. It doesn't matter if you did everything. You still got to get your paperwork fixed up before it expired. But that's fair enough. Again, you know, it's all learning.

Eden secret.

Is this a sex doll store? Wow. Love doll. Yeah, look at that.

That's how you can tell I'm in Taipei and not China.

So yeah, this flight I ended up booking very weird. It was really the only option. And all of the cheap seats, you know, were filled up long ago. There were none of them available. Then I was business class and they're offering me all this stuff. And the fancy meals and the giant leg room and all this stuff. And it's like, who would ever book this? How does this make any sense that I'm living it up during the flight? And then I have an 18 hour layover in Shanghai where I have to sleep on the floor. Who would ever do that? It makes no sense. But yet it was all just circumstances. Bad luck. But yeah, in Busan, because I'd already missed my exit date for my visa anyway. So it's like, well, okay, there's no point in staying in the airport and being miserable all night. I'll just go get a hotel for the night. So I did that. And then the next day off to Shanghai.

So, I guess one thing is, while in Japan, I guess there had been occasional air pollution issues, but they'd never been bad enough for me to really clock it to really notice. Only in hindsight did I realize that, oh yes, some of those panoramas I saw in Fukuoka were things were a little hazy. Oh, maybe that was a bit of air pollution. But it's just again something that's outside of the spear of my experience, because in Canada, if there is ever air quality problems, it's because there's like a forest fire. You know, it's a very direct cause and effect. Something bad happened. A bunch of trees burned down. The air's bad for a while, then it clears up. It's not a consistent situation. So I was pretty shocked when I got to South Korea, sold in the winter time. I can't recommend that, because yeah, all of a sudden the air quality was terrible, like that I noticed it, that my lungs felt bad. It's like my throat burned, and I had to start researching. Like, what is going on here? And even just the view of the city, there's a lot of really good mountains around Seoul, but you go up, and then you look out at the city, and it looks like the goddamn apocalypse, and it's like, what the fuck is happening? So that's when I learned about the air pollution problems in South Korea. And I learned about the air quality index, and got an app to check the AQI, and that became part of my life, you know, just getting masks, wearers, wearing masks, staying indoors, not going for hikes when things were really bad. And I could never get a full grasp on what was the cause of this situation. There's a lot of different stuff when you research things. I mean, it's probably just all of these. It's probably a combination of all these things. Oh, yellow dust from the deserts, domestic pollution from Korea, the wintertime weather, 15:00 which kind of like pushes the air down and keeps it trapped in the city. And China. And then, you know, some places would just fully blame China, but I don't think so. I feel like it's probably all that stuff. But there's no question China is part of it, because once I started looking at this app and just just scrolling around and seeing like what the air quality is like in different countries, China is always just constant pollution all the time. It's like terrifying, just to look at it on a map. And as I was flying towards Shanghai, I got to see that in real time. I was looking out the window and looking at these beautiful little islands and looking at how cool Korea looks from the sky. And everything was just gorgeous. And I looked out the window and I thought we were flying over a desert. And I was like, what the heck is going on with that? Like, I know I am generally kind of ignorant and I don't really know much about anything. But I wasn't aware that there would be a desert between South Korea and China. That's not where any of the desert should be. But I was looking down and it looked exactly like sand. It looked like sand dunes. And then I saw a boat in the sand dunes, a big shipping boat. And I was like, oh, fuck, that's water. What the fuck? It's like, what is happening? And the whole way into Shanghai.

All the water was that way. Everything leading up to the coast. And then once we got into the city, all of the rivers, everything was brown. And I couldn't look this up until later because I was never able to get on the internet in China. And I'll get to that. So I had to look it up later. But what I found about that is that because of silt and sediment, some of it from deforestation around Tibet, apparently the water is just always that brown color. And brown is actually good in this case. Brown is not that there's a problem. When there's a problem, it turns red. And when it turns red, you know, it's hard to determine why exactly. But sometimes it is industrial accidents, provable industrial accidents, big spills that happen. And other times, it's like maybe there was an industrial accident or a spill that just nobody could confirm.

So right away, it's like being in a crazy nightmare world. I'll apologize right now at the top for all future, you know, any future lack of tact, all future insults that come out of my mouth. I'm sure this will all sound defensive the way I'm speaking about China. But yeah, if you're looking for good news, it's not coming. It's all bad news.

If you're from China, I apologize. I don't know what to tell you. That's how this particular talk is going to be. So yeah, brown water, so brown that I, again, I thought it was sand. It didn't look like water.

And I knew, you know, China's the land of pollution, like I, even without being able to look it up, I just presumed it was something along those lines. But it still feels like you're in a storybook, you know, like you're reading a science fiction novel or a fantasy novel. Like, you know, like in Lord of the Rings, when they go into a more door, you know, it's like you're passing into the evil territory, you know? Like, it's like, what the fuck is going on here? The water is the wrong fucking color. It's fucking crazy, man. It's crazy.

And then we did, another thing that happened was very unusual when we did land is we had to taxi for an extremely long time, really long way longer than I've ever experienced in an airport ever.

So much so that I never really saw the airport. And I don't know for sure, but I wonder if that isn't just because it's a big airport and isn't just because the only available landing area was far away. I wonder if it was like a security thing. It would really fall into line with the whole vibe of how everything was while I was there. Maybe they don't want people to take pictures of the airport. Because Korea mentioned that actually. And Korea, they did mention in the Busan airport, for military reasons, don't take pictures of the airport, but they just trusted us not to do it. Maybe China just has people land very, very far away, so you can't take a picture of the airport, but that's just conjecture. I have no idea. It was like really long time to taxi to the airport.

And then when I got in, I guess the first guy I met, again, I guess none of this stuff is terrible. It is just hoops, it is just bureaucracy. But the first guy I met made me kind of hopeful that it wouldn't be that way, because there were these banks, big long banks of machines to take people's fingerprints. And there were some tourists, probably from Korea, because they were having a bit of a hard time communicating with this guy, but asking what they needed to do, because they were there to visit China.

So he was like, yes, you got to come over and do the fingerprint thing. I told them I was just transferring and asked if I needed to do it. And he said, no, no, you go ahead.

So I guess this is one area where I guess I'm not sure, now that I think back upon it. I was kind of wondering, how would my original flight, even if the typhoon had never happened, I only had a 90 minute window to transfer flights in Shanghai. How would that even have been possible, because it was minimum two hours, probably more than that, just to get anywhere. How would I have made the transfer? But I suppose maybe, now that I think about it, when I said I was just there to transfer, I wasn't transferring directly, I did have to stay in the airport overnight. So I guess that stands to reason that if I was directly transferring right there within the next 90 minutes, probably I wouldn't have had to do these extra steps with the fingerprints and stuff. But I can't say that for sure, I don't know.

But maybe, maybe just a pure transfer through Shanghai wouldn't be that bad. So maybe you could give that a shot. I still say if you have options, if it's the same general flight package and one of them is through China and one of them is not, definitely don't go through China. But maybe if you are just directly transferring, it's a smoother process. Because I got to the next fork in the road. And yeah, that's where there was transfers from 24 to 144 hours.

So as I got right, that's me. Oh yeah, it filled out a card, an arrival card on the plane. But it was of no use. The next guy was like, now you don't need this one, you need this one. Go do this one. I filled that out and then did all the fingerprint stuff. So it's all four fingers on the left hand, all four fingers on the right hand, both thumbs, pictures. Then I had to go stand in a very long, slow line. But once I get to the end of that line, they scanned my fingers again. Which was, I guess that's the first, I mean, the fingerprint scans combined with a second immediate fingerprint scan. That's when it was very obvious that at this point, now that I was in the, you're here to stay at the airport overnight line.

Now all fun is over. Now it is like, because what could have even happened? Why do you need to scan the fingerprints again? What could have happened to me in the time that I crossed that room? It was essentially all the same big room. All I did was stand in a queue.

I would have to be an X-Men shape shifter for anything to conceivably happen in that time. I was like, what the hell? And then also very long, very slow process. Everyone's super unfriendly, not transparent at all. And I thought maybe they had noticed that I was a day late leaving Korea, because they did have the little warning. And when the immigration lady did give me some forms, and I filled that stuff for Korean immigration to sort of that out. There was a space for like reason, but it was written in Korean, so I don't know what reason she gave. But hopefully she said like, yeah, I mean, there was a typhoon. There was a typhoon and this guy didn't sort out his paperwork in time. I feel like, I feel like, you know, I did have a pretty good excuse. But I'm actually not sure if that's what China was even noticing, because they sent me to another guy. I was the only one this happened to, so I was getting increasingly uncomfortable. And the only word they said that I understood was Taipei. So I don't know. I don't know if it was because I had a little blotch on my exit from Korea. I don't know if it had something to do with going to Taipei.

But anyway, they took me over, did some stuff which I don't know what it was, but it was a whole extra page on my passport. I've got a new passport since COVID, so it only had two pages. It had 90 days in Japan, that 180 days in Korea. 25:00 And then a whole page for 24 hours in the Shanghai airport. But the guy gave me back the thing, and then I was finally able to go on ahead. And then after that, there was some kind of customs thing, which I really never understand what that is all about. I'm just like, I have my one book bag, everything I own fits in the one book bag. I never buy anything when I travel besides food or just, you know, basic stuff like toothbrushes. So I don't really know what the whole, all the duty free shops and declaring stuff. To be honest, I really don't understand what it is or how it works. I'm always just a declare nothing guy, which like for instance in Taipei, I literally just walked through a gate. I don't even know if there was a person man in it. You know, again, just that difference of they just trust in Taipei that, yeah, whatever. If you've got to pay, you'll probably go in the other line and pay. And if you don't, I don't know. Like they're just, it's not paranoid. It's not like a fucking police state.

Where in China, even just this stuff, even just this, you know, trying to determine if you have taxable items or whatever, that was a whole lineup of like having to go through honest to God's security and putting your luggage in a scanner. They did let me go through because I just had the book bag. It was people with bigger luggage they may go through. But between the fingerprints, the big long line, the secondary fingerprints, the visa stuff.

And the customs. That was at least two hours. It might have been more than two hours. Again, like I said, this isn't the worst stuff in the world. It's not like I'm talking about human rights violations or something. It's just a slow process at the airport. But it's just that it feels so incredibly different to all these other countries. And not only is it a lot of hoops to jump through, and not only are people unfriendly. The whole vibe is very threatening. All of the paperwork. And just the whole tone when you're talking to people. But I guess specifically the paperwork is always referring to not just fines for this and that. And like always word it as you will do this. You will declare this. You will not do this. Always threats of jail. You know, lots of threats of jail. Just ever present threats of jail all over the place. But then I was in the main concourse, Terminal 1. And I did see a license. So I guess that was a nice little thing. I had no idea what kind of stores to expect in China. So it was nice to see a license. And then later I saw Tim Hortons, which being Canadian. That was like, oh crap, I really didn't expect that. I did see a couple in Seoul. But yeah, that was like, oh, need a license and a Tim Hortons. Once I was in the terminal proper, that's when the security and just the overall level of guarding and police was more apparent. I guess maybe it was a little less necessary in the first bits of the airport. But once I was in the open area, way more of a vibe of police presence and security everywhere. And I was walking around trying to figure out, you know, I knew I didn't have to catch this flight again for a whole day till the next morning. But I couldn't find any info about the flight company I had and I was wandering around. And there was just even the vibe of the airport in general was really not friendly like a normal airport. Not helpful like a normal airport. So I tried to log on to the internet. Silly me. And this is where I guess I really started thinking of Russia because Russia was the only other place I can think of.

In the post Wi-Fi world where I just absolutely could not get on the internet. So probably the average person would have a bit of an easier time because I don't have like a phone with a phone number. I have smartphones but I just use Wi-Fi. I don't have an actual phone number. And that's why I couldn't get on to the internet in Russia because I needed a phone number, they send a code to your phone number, you put it in, they confirm who you are.

So I just had to have no internet. China had that option as well, but of course I don't have a phone number. So the other option was to take a picture of your passport which seems so severe but of course you know then it's coming back to me like oh yeah, Chinese internet. Oh right, all that stuff that I vaguely knew in the back of my mind that I haven't had any reason to think about.

So yeah, unlike the rest of the world where you just get Wi-Fi at a convenience store or at a coffee shop or you know there's parts of Japan where if you're just standing next to a drink machine and you bought a grape juice, 30:00 you can get Wi-Fi from the machine. So that was Korea was amazing for Wi-Fi. If you just pull out your phone and random parts of, you know, you could be walking around the perimeter of Jeju Island and you might get internet. If you're in a proper city, you almost certainly will. Now I needed to take a picture of my passport just to log on to the internet. And that wouldn't have been necessarily the worst thing. I'm happy to do it. It's like whatever. I'm here. I'll do it. I'll jump through the hoop so I'll do whatever you want. You already have my fingerprints. Let's go. But it didn't work and I have two different phones and a laptop and I tried them all. And this thing just didn't fucking work. It would give warnings and like okay, this thing didn't work automatically. You can go try it through a browser, try that again. That didn't work. You could only do the passport thing through phones through the laptop. It was only the phone number. And then I eventually did manage to get it to go to the point where I take a picture with my really bad throwaway phone. I have one that is just like a real garbage phone that I just listened to like podcasts on and stuff. Just as a crappy backup. So it has a terrible camera. So I was trying to take a picture of my fancy reflective passport in low lighting. It was a terrible blurry picture. I don't know that it would have even suffice. But I managed to get that far and then it just hung. It just hung on a loading screen and that was the end of that. And I just eventually got tired of trying and like well, whatever man, what the fuck ever. Again, I just want to check out basic stuff, basic airport information. That's all I want. And I can't have it, so fuck it. I just stop trying it.

Eventually I did find an information desk. There was only one that I could find. And instead of, you know, helpable, friendly, this was the opposite. This lady never made eye contact with me once and she looked so uncomfortable. She looked like the last thing in the world she wanted to do was to stand there and try to have this conversation with me. And it was just in this eerie way, this creepy way that again started reminding me of Russia. Because in Russia, it's like, yeah, you can just feel it. You can feel it in the air that everyone here is not just living under an oppressive environment, but it has like formed them to be.

You know, if you just want to take the broad strokes version of the two philosophies, you know, I obviously grew up next to America in America as the land of entrepreneurship, the land of Brigadotia, the land of if you got a big idea, say it out loud and maybe you'll get rich.

You know, it's a bit of a, a brash culture in its own way, but obviously I'm North American. That's the side I'm on. I'm all the way on that side. Where in places like Russia and in China it was now realizing, like people don't have that attitude. You know, there's those sayings in Asian countries, stuff like, you know, the nail that sticks up will be hammered down and just the idea that it's a collectivist culture rather than an individualist culture like North America. And that stuff's obviously true, but I still feel like there's so many branches between, you know, me being a Canadian and the people I met in Japan and the people I met. In South Korea, obviously the cultures are different, but there's a lot that feels the same. Maybe because I'm Canadian too, that might help a bit, that we are kind of the more timid, you know, the more timid of the North America. We are more, keep the peace, try not to make people upset, try to be polite, try to be nice. You know, take a few lumps if it'll mean keeping the general peace. You know, we're a little more on that wavelength, I think, than, you know, America. Sorry America, I'm going to defend every country. Why not?

But the people in China and the people in Russia, even though I was only in these countries, one day, you just feel it so immediately that they are, they are not equipped to be bold and to be brash and to be braggadocious and to be entrepreneurial. They're not even trained to look somebody in the eye. They're not even raised to be able to, they're just not raised to be autonomous, you know, I mean, it all feels like I'm oversimplifying all this and obviously I am. I only know what I know, which is not a lot, but it's so undeniable, it's so clear. And it's the kind of thing I'd always heard about in my life, but I'd never experienced it until Russia and then I experienced it again in China and it's like, oh yeah, there is no question, this is different. 35:00 Something is going on here that is very, very different from every other country I've been to.

And that's the main point of this episode of this podcast, why I want to do China and Russia back to back is about that. It's not really about, hey, it's a little bit like here's what to expect at the airport, but it's really about that. It's about these larger cultural trends that I was shocked how indelible it was. I was shocked how clear it was with just a little visit. You know, like I try to pick up what I can walking around Japan, walking around South Korea now, I'm walking around Taiwan, trying to soak it in. I can't speak these languages, I can't read these languages. I only very occasionally meet people, but I'd always do eventually meet somebody, and I learn what I can't.

But in the case of China, in the case of Russia, I legitimately feel like one day not even in the country proper, just one day in the airport of these countries. I know more about them than I do about, you know, after six months in South Korea. After about the same amount of time total in Japan, because it's just a much sadder, much simpler situation. But yeah, this information lady with her very alien demeanor, you know, just not behaving like a person has ever behaved to me in my life.

Did tell me that I was in the wrong terminal. My flight is terminal two, I was in terminal one. So she said, go downstairs, follow some arrows, you'll get to terminal two. So I went downstairs and I went all the way to floor one, but it turned out I had to go to floor two and walk down a corridor. Because I went down to floor one and I was like, do I go outside? Am I allowed to go outside? As I'll get into with Russia, Russia, you were not allowed to leave the airport. The airport was surrounded by fences and barbed wire.

So I just kind of assumed at this point that China was clearly running off a similar playbook, maybe it was similar in China, maybe I could not leave the airport. But I think maybe I could have, because I did go downstairs and a bunch of the doors were sealed, I was not able to go out them. But people did keep asking me if I needed caps. You know, you need a cab where you going? Nobody ever asked me that in Russia because I couldn't leave the airport. So perhaps that helps explain this level of fingerprints and scrutiny just to stay overnight at the airport, is maybe I could have left the airport so they had no direct way to ensure I was staying in the airport. I mean, I'm sure there was cameras everywhere. I'm sure they would have noticed if I left. But maybe that's why, like maybe this just staying overnight was such a to-do because they had to give me a more or less proper visa, the kind that you normally have to book, you know, a month in advance, just to stay overnight in case I left. Maybe if people do have a longer layover, they do go into Shanghai. During that time, I don't know. It seems like they wouldn't let you do that or they wouldn't want you to do that, if it's so hard to get a visitor visa. Why would they give you one just when you roll in there that lets you leave the airport? But I'm not sure. Because I was looking at these doors and they were, this door was blocked, the one next to it was blocked. And I guess somebody who works for the airport saw me looking at all these doors. And he came up and I thought he was a taxi guy at first, but he's like, hey, I worked for the airport. What are you trying to do? Where are you trying to go? I'm trying to get to terminal two. And he said, okay, go up these stairs, go down that overpass hallway. And I said, okay, perfect, thank you. And that's where I'm just not sure. At first, I was like, maybe that guy, you know, maybe they just have people posted around near all the locked, unopenedable doors. And if they see somebody, I in the doors, go up and say, hey, what do you think you're doing? That was very much the vibe that I got. Why am I actually not sure? Because maybe I, I don't know, I just cannot imagine. I can't imagine based on the vibe of everything else that I could have just left the airport. I just can't imagine it. But maybe, and maybe it was just coincidence that that guy happened to notice me. And maybe he was being helpful. But nobody's been helpful yet. It seemed very coincidental that as soon as I was looking at a locked door and made my way to the next locked door, suddenly somebody was coming up to ask me what the fuck I needed.

But then I walked down this hallway to Terminal 2, long-ass walk. That was another little moment that was nice after the losses, is that just the smell of Chinese food. As I got there we go, that's nice. There's little restaurants and stuff dotted around. There's a pretty long walk. And then I saw a head of me, more security. Big time security, all the security people that got to go put your luggage through a thing, got to go through the metal detector. And in the moment, I remember feeling like, 40:00 Jesus, are you fucking kidding me? More security? Like, for fuck's sake, would you get out of here with this? Like, this is like becoming a bad joke. What is going on here? But then as I did think that through more. Technically, once I got to Terminal 2, like I did go through this security, I guess ultimately again, not that big a deal, whatever. But technically, even though I'd gone through security, I was still on Landside, you know? Like Landside is the quote-unquote public park. It's part of the airport. Because I couldn't check into my flight until the next morning to go through full security to get to the actual departure gates. Because I stayed overnight in the airport in Calgary, and had a really good time. Calgary airports are really nice airport. There's lots of places that you can easily sleep. It's very much set up to just be able to stay there overnight and have a relatively comfortable time. But I did feel a little more comfortable sleeping in the airport knowing I was behind security. You know, I...

arrived on a flight and just didn't go back outside of security. I stayed in the security zone. That wasn't the case in Shanghai. I couldn't go to the next step because I couldn't get my ticket until the next morning. So I guess ultimately, since I had to sleep in that part of Terminal 2, I mean, I'm not mad that there was security. I guess I liked that there was security. You know, if there's going to be random people wandering around, I guess I liked that they went through security. So my initial thought was, Jesus, I can't believe there's more security. But I could do have to admit, when I thought that one through a little more, I was glad it was there. If we're going to be in security land, let's at least be secure, right? Why not? What's one more security thing? But there was a lot as the point. Security just at a much higher degree of way higher rate than anywhere else. Even Russia. Because again, I guess it's different in Russia. Because in Russia, you cannot get in and out of the airport. So maybe they didn't need security as much.

And then once I got to Terminal 2, I mean, it was mainly just a waiting game. That's where I saw the Tim Hortons. There was a family mart in there also. And I actually did, I guess this is another nice thing. I found some items in the Chinese family mart that I had never seen in the Japanese family mart. And I haven't seen yet in the Taiwanese family mart. Just basic stuff, but like a specifically, it was stuff that was not especially sweet. I got an iced coffee that still had cream, but not sugar. That's really hard to find in Japan. It was a nice dark roast, very tasty coffee. And they had a matcha chocolate cake thing, where it was like a swirl of matcha cream inside a chocolate cake. But it wasn't sugary matcha. It was matcha that had a bite, that had a green tea bite, that was a bit bitter. And it was fucking delicious. Because I really don't like the oversweetness of stuff. And that's a big thing in Japan. Everything is very sweet. And Korea, actually. So I was pretty impressed with Chinese family mart. I got to say, I really liked it. And then mainly hanging out in the terminal. I guess it was more or less normal, except that was the most security ever. Constant, just big lines of like 30, I believe there were like trainees, if not full police, maybe just airport security. But it very much was that vibe of like we want to have these people stomp around and walk through the concourse and make sure that the feeling is there. Make sure that you are aware not to dick around. And again, all of the vibes of everything, all the language on anything was threatening. That's the best word I can think of. It's just a very threatening country. They're always threatening you. Hey, if you do this or you do that or you break this law or you make this mistake, threaten.