WENZHOU!!!!

Okay so I may have fallen asleep a bit too fast.  I woke up almost 2 hours later and we were still on the ground!!!  Remember, we have to catch another flight in Wenzhou, originally we only had about a 3 hour layover.  We finally take off, unfortunately I pass out again until mid flight when I see the estimated time of arrival at destination being about 15 minutes before our connecting flight departs.  We start considering the possibilities, we would have to collect our luggage, go through security, check back in, and then board all in 15 minutes.  Oh, and planes usually close the gates 15 minutes before the plane takes off.  So we decided that a couple of us, Greg and Austin run up ahead while we get our luggage all together and then see if we can do anything.  We get there, Greg and Austin go, we get that bags and everybody is pretty clueless, we don't have any working phones so we couldn't really find anybody.  Nick went searching until we found them at customer service attempting to communicate with the people.  Our plane had already left by the time we found Greg and Austin so now we are negotiating new flights, hotels, transportation, etc.  At first they tried to blame missing our flight on us until I showed them our flight times and then they had to have somebody verify.  It was difficult to talk to them, since they would help other people that spoke their language first.  It also didn't help other customers were incredibly rude and pushy.  I have no idea how long everything took, but we finally arranged for a bus to come get us, drive us to a hotel the airport has a deal with and food as well.  Luckily, the airport paid for everything.  We would be catching a flight the next day around 8 am.



The air was so gritty.



After a 40 minute bus ride we arrive at the hotel and the first words we say are "hello" and then all the clerks start laughing, at this point we all knew this was going to be rough.  We do get our key cards and our bags upstairs, about 5 minutes after we discover our rooms a troop of room service people come up and start yelling at us.  We eventually determined that it was time for lunch and they had it all set out for us.  The food was okay, certainly not the best thing I've ever had.  After, we went up to our rooms and slept, until about 3 hours into our slumber, yet again there was a banging at our door. Before they started talking we just walked out back down to the cafeteria and hardly ate anything.  None of it was really that great anyway.  But now we were all awake, and since we were in Wenzhou we figured why not explore?



Yeah we walked out about a block to the right and a block to the left.  Wenzhou was a dirty dirty place.  We eventually found a mall, barely lit, and checked it out real quick.  We bought a few things from a grocery store for breakfast the next day.  While I had to give up buying a really nice hiking backpack for 25 RMB. That's 5 USD by the way.  We didn't stay out long, it was somewhat terrifying and I was sure I began to develop asthma.  The air was terrible.  To get back to the hotel we had to cross a street.  Simple right? Not in Wenzhou, zero lights, zero crosswalks, and limited visibility with the smog and plus it was night out.  Best imitation of frogger I have ever seen.  Everyone made it back alive and we were so ready to get out of there.

It was Easter and instead of looking for a basket at 6 am our taxis arrived, my taxi driver was pretty sketch, he wouldn't stop rocking back and forth.  Anyway, we get to the Wenzhou airport.  The international flight terminal was about the size of one half of a basketball court. It all looked scary, but I didn't care.  Austin, Greg, Nick and I practiced some feathersacking while we waited.  We actually got pretty good at it, until we almost hit some military personnel.  We stopped after that, it was about time to go anyway.



PEACE WENZHOU!

The flight itself was great.  Our meal was a snickers bar, a bun, three cups of coffee, and some veggies.  Since there was only about 15 people on the flight I had a whole row of seats to stretch out.  I can only hope the 16 hour flight back home is nearly as good.  We got back and I never realized how much I missed Hong Kong, it was looking really good after that adventure.