Travel Hiccup

Well folks, I figured if I was traveling in China for 30 days I was bound to hit 
at least one travel glitch and I did today, but one thing I've got to give the 
Chinese airlines, when they mess up, they do a great job of recovery and 
customer service. So here goes today's travel tale... 
 
I get to the Chengdu airport in plenty of time for my 12:30 PM flight to 
Lijiang. They normally board 30 minutes early so I had a feeling when we got to 
about 12:15 or so and no announcment that something was wrong. Well all of a 
sudden, all of these Chinese people start rushing to the gate desk. And I'm 
thinking, oh shoot, they must have cancelled the flight and they're all trying 
to ask questions and get connecting flight info. Nope... they announced that the 
flight was delayed and because of that, they were giving out a free lunch! Don't 
get in the way of Chinese people when free food is in store! No sirree. LOL. But 
I thought that was cool of the airline to offer a free boxed lunch and a can of 
Pepsi for everyone. Then about a half hour later or so, another mad rush to the 
desk. This time a bunch of them are asking questions and then racing off down 
the hallway. Of course I'm dumbfounded not understanding a thing and none of the 
airline people spoke english, so I'm wondering what's up. So this nice older 
Chinese woman keeps motioning to her young daughter toward me. They were nice 
enough to come over and the young daughter spoke english, so she explained to me 
that the flight was delayed indefinitely and to follow them and the airline was 
going to bus us to a hotel to wait until the flight was ready. Really, I 
thought?? That's pretty cool. So we go to this other desk and get a shuttle to a 
nice hotel where they give us all rooms and she explains to me that they'll call 
my room when the shuttle is ready to take us back to the airport. So, I decided 
to kick back and grab a nap since I had been up late the night before and got up 
early for the flight. It's now about 5 PM and my phone rings in my room and I'm 
all excited thinking the shuttle is here. Of course on the phone all I hear is 
Chinese that I can't understand. I just say "thank you" in Chinese and grab my 
stuff (thank goodness I only have carry on, not sure what would have happened to 
any checked luggage) and head down to the lobby. Well there's no shuttle and 
when I show my boarding pass to the lady she just smiles and says no, not yet. 
Here they called us down because the airline provided dinner! It was a nice hot 
dish of rice, chicken and vegetables and a drink. How cool is that! So I eat my 
dinner go back up to my room and hang out. They actually had a TV with an 
english speaking station so I caught up on all the news. Then finaly about 8:30 
they call my room. At this point I figure the planes ready and luckily it is so 
they shuttle us back to the airport. So we all go back thru security and get to 
our gate and once again there's a mad rush to the desk (and I'm thinking, just 
learn to queue up people!) but then I realize why they're rushing... the airline 
is giving out CASH!! Yes CASH! 400 Yaun, which is the eqivalent of about $75 
which is just a little less than the cost of the flight! The man at the gate 
this time seems to speak a little english and he apologizes profusely to me for 
the flight delay and hands me the cash. Again, how cool is that! So we get on 
the flight and it takes off and it's only about a 45 minute flight and of course 
they come on the loudspeaker and say in both Chinese and english that they 
apologize for the delay and they're offering a sandwich, chips and a drink. So 
in essence, due to a flight delay where they still got us out that day they gave 
us lunch, dinner, a late night snack, a hotel for 8 hours and $75 cash!!! You 
can't beat that for customer service! LOL. 
 
So because of all of that, I didn't get any good pictures today but I took a few 
funny ones a few days ago that I thought you'd get a kick out of. I know I was 
overdoing the sheep thingy humor but along those same lines, I wanted to share a 
little 5th grade potty humor. So if you show either of these two pictures to a 
5th grader, especially a boy, they will laugh hysterically. I hope this brings 
out the 5th grader in all of you. Enjoy! 
 
Jeff 
 
PS: I made it safely to Lijiang but it was too dark to see much. Gladly it was 
not too cold and this was at 11 PM when I arrived so hopefully it won't be too 
bad. I hear it is beautiful so hopefully tomorrow you'll get to see some more 
beautiful scenery!