The alarm goes off at 4.45am. The beds were nice and wide and super comfortable, but I guess that’s also in contrast to 2.5 months sleeping on the floor at our AirBnb. Maylin managed to sleep sideways, I was laying far left in the bed, her head was next to mine, and her feet were on the right edge of the mattress!
We quickly get ready, eat our sandwiches and grab our bags. The shuttle arrives at 5.50am, and there’s a whirlwind of leaves in the driveway. It is like a scene from Frozen 2, it’s so cold and the leaves are hitting everyone in the face. What a farewell!
15 minutes later, we are at Terminal 1 of Kansai International Airport. There’s a long lineup at the China Eastern check in counters, where nobody has arrived for their shift yet. We line up patiently, and at 6.30am we finally see signs of life. Half an hour later, we’re all done and ready for security. The guards ask Joe about his allen keys, which he had forgotten were in his bag of recovery tools (you’ll know what I mean if you watch his videos).
After security there’s customs, and suddenly we’re through. We arrive into the main hall with lots of shops and restaurants, but our gate is in the South Wing, so we head there to find seats. We have to take a shuttle to get there, and find a Family Mart, a souvenir store and a café where we can spend our last remaining yen. The girls and I return to the gate with our Family Mart and gacha haul just as the line starts to form for boarding.
It’s a quick 2.5 hours from Osaka to Shanghai. Along the way, we get served a lunch? Brunch? Breakfast? There’s sweet and sour chicken with rice, tofu, potato salad, a bun and some fruit. Pretty good for an airplane meal!
We land in Shanghai, and we have 2.5 hours here. I’m thinking we’d have time to sit down and eat something fun, but there’s nothing fun about this layover. First – immigration. Second – security. The orange juice Téa spent her last yen on? Gone. All the bottles of water we received on the plane? Toss em. Our full reusable water bottles? Empty them now. Joe’s allen wrenches? We have to keep these. What’s this? A PEZ dispenser you say? Is it a weapon? What does it shoot? (The guard lady actually made a shooting gesture with her hand, with a quizzical look on her face.) Grumpy workers all around, and the contrast to the quiet, orderly and polite Japan is stark.
Also, our gate has changed, and we have to trek into the bottom basement of the airport. It’s no fun. It’s the grey and industrial underbelly of an otherwise beautiful and modern airport. It’s far away from everything, there are no shops and no cafés. Maylin and Joe stay by the gate, and Téa and I run back up to browse the shops quickly.
Our layover is both over too soon and not soon enough. Our gate, being so far away, leads us to a shuttle bus to our aircraft. It feels like we’re driving for at least 20 minutes. Did they park our plane at a different terminal? A different airport? Is it the backup plane that hasn’t been touched in 10 years?
It kind of feels that way. The configuration is 3+3, even though our seat numbers were C, J, K and L, I thought for sure we’d be separated by minimum 4 middle seats. This is a tiny plane. Old plane. No individual screens, but they do show a Chinese movie (quite moving, the girls loved it!) with English subtitles on the common screens that come down about every three seat rows or so.
The food is ok though, the girls both ask for pork with rice, and I ask for chicken with noodles. Joe asks for the rice, but gets the noodles. The noodles are spicy and delicious, the pork on rice is also good, but neither girl eats the rice. The dessert is too weird for me. Maylin eats hers, Joe eats his. Téa doesn’t touch hers. I open mine optimistically, then pass it over to Joe. What’s a husband for, if not for finishing his wife’s dessert?
It’s a long flight from Shanghai to Bangkok, especially since this plane does not have the entertainment screens. Téa naps, Maylin is on the Switch. I actually pick up and read my book (!). I brought two books, and haven’t touched either so far, but this flight gets me about 1/3 through my Norwegian language Swedish crime book. It feels good to read again!
Landing in Bangkok and this airport is even more beautiful! No pictures though, I just admired the glimpses from the plane window and rushing to get to immigration and customs and luggage, as our driver will wait up to 45 minutes after our plane lands before giving up on us.
The airport is looooooong. It’s quite a trek. It’s an amazing atmosphere though, with people from all over the world, all different languages! I could totally work at an airport. We make it through immigration, we make it through customs, we make it to our luggage and get to the carousel about the same time as our bags. We spend some time looking for the place we are supposed to connect with the driver’s company inside the terminal, and then wait for the driver to arrive outside. Outside is pure mayhem. Finally, after much chaos, we find the driver, and we’re loaded into his minibus.
The drive through Bangkok at night is long. There’s traffic on the highways, and then when we get closer to our destination, there are mopeds EVERYWHERE. There are moped taxis, and one lady is sitting on the back of one, staring at her phone, slouched back, no helmet, not holding on with anything but her legs. I guess that’s what it’s like when you’re used to riding on mopeds? They weave in and out of traffic, almost crashing into vehicles in all directions (or at least that’s what my untrained eyes see).
Our driver is nice. Very limited English, but with Google Translate, Joe asks him about some food recommendations, and he shows us videos of his recommended things to try.
At last, we arrive at the Moevenpick hotel. It’s impressive. It’s beautiful, it’s massive, it’s marble and smiling staff greeting us, and it feels so good to be here. It’s pleasantly warm outside, and the hotel makes it feel so resort-like.
Our room is a two twin room, with more space than in Japan, even if the beds are narrower. The bathroom is spa-like, with double doors and a large waterfall shower. We set our bags down and head out to find some dinner.
We walk around for 15 minutes, and both girls are exhausted. When we see a Burger King, we hop in to get them some food, with plans for street food for ourselves. 6 minutes later, as they had to fry the nuggest the girls wanted, we walk out and head home. We stop at a pork stick lady’s cart, and a fruit man’s cart. The sticks and the fruits cost next to nothing, and is the perfect light dinner after a long day.
Bangkok is 2 hours difference from Japan, so we’re slightly off our rhythm here. It’s 10pm before we get to bed, and in Japanese time, that’s midnight. We have a breakfast buffet to look forward to in the morning, so we fall asleep tired, but excited!