So, as some of you may know. I’m in China right now. And I feel obliged to share my holiday with you if you are interested. If you aren’t interested, you may click away, and I will not be offended if you do.
Where to begin? Oh yes. The flight. It would be weird to not talk about the flight. So this post would only be about the flight.
Here we go: It was 5pm AEST (technically AEDT due to daylight savings) when I arrived at Melbourne Airport (Melbourne, Australia, not some cities named Melbourne in the US). I checked in, got my boarding pass and went through baggage check, and it took me a while so arriving this early was a good decision.
At 8pm AEDT, I officially boarded my flight. The flight was bound for Haikou (海口), Hainan.
The flight I boarded was a flight from Hainan Airlines. Apparently, Hainan Airlines was one of, if not the best airlines of China. And I would soon find out why.
For starters, I have to make it clear that I am a broke person, and only had an economy class seat. Despite this, they provided EVERY economy seat with a BLANKET AND A PILLOW.
This wasn’t the only thing they provided though, they also provided a sleeping mask, ear plugs, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and socks (I wouldn’t use any of these, as they were too uncomfortable)
As any international flight would have, the every seat had a TV to entertain ourselves. Though, halfway through my flight, my controller would cease to work and render the TV useless.
Around midnight, AEDT time, the cabin crew gave us “dinner”. Although the food looked VERY mediocre, it tasted MUCH better than it looked. There were two options, but I just chose what they gave me.
If I was to describe it, it would be “GOOD SLOP”
There’s something you should know about the Chinese people. (you can trust me on this, as I have already spent a good 3 DAYS, at the time of this post in China. I’m also ethnically Chinese, so you can trust me) They LOVE smoking. Smoking is practically ingrained into Chinese culture (mostly the elderly, but some young people smoke as well). Obviously not a good thing for the health, but it is there.
Why do I mention this? Well, the Chinese love cigarettes so much, the plane SELLS CIGARETTES TO ITS PASSENGERS. (Duty free).
One thing you should know is that I DO NOT SMOKE. I never have and I never will. I know exactly how bad they are to your health. The pictures of the cigarettes below (packets of 20 boxes in one giant box) WERE NOT PURCHASED BY ME NOR ARE THEY FOR ME. They were purchased by the passenger next for me. I just took a photo to prove they sold cigarettes.
In total these two boxes (I assume had a total of 400 cigarettes) was 300 RMB, which is around 63.55 Australian dollars or 41.81 USD.
At around 4:45 AEDT, they gave us “Breakfast”. Again, good slop. Delicious, dare I say.
The flight took Haikou took around 10 hours. And when I got there, it was early in the morning and I was tired (despite sleeping my way through most of the flight).
Haikou isn’t even the final destination and not the final flight. I will update this post when I have the time to do so. (I am way too behind on my schedule to post about my vacation in China).
Overall, my vacation is 5 weeks long:
I’ll spend 1 week in Wuhan (武汉), 1 week in Shanghai (上海), 1 week in an undecided city (Originally it was supposed to be Beijing (北京), but it was way too cold. I’m considering Macao (澳门) or Nanjing(南京). And finally 2 weeks in Shanghai again.
At the time of posting THIS POST, I’ve officially been in Wuhan for three days.
I WILL write about Wuhan after I right about the other two flights. These will be posted as a reply to this post.
Each city will have their own topic by the way. Stay tuned.
