To Chengdu

When my flight left from SFO I had that strange feeling of entering into the unknown. "Am I really on an airplane right now flying over the Pacific Ocean on my way to a country I've never been to before?" I thought to myself. Yes, it was true...and there was no turning back.

Arriving in Beijing, I had almost no time to meet my connecting flight to Chengdu. To make matters worse my luggage took forever to show up at baggage claim. Unfortunately your baggage cannot be checked all the way to Chengdu, you have to pick it up at the port of entry into China and go through the process again. So I waited as the conveyer belt went round and round, finally getting my large backpack and heading out to navigate through the airport and check in for my Chengdu flight. I found the airport in Beijing to be very un-"user friendly". It felt like I was in a large supermarket trying to find the peanut butter. After asking around I finally found the domestic departures area, with about 10 mintues before my flight left.

As I flew over mainland China at sunset, I looked out of my small oval window to the land below. I could see mountains, and puddles of lights collected in small valleys below. As the mountains grew dark, the lights got fewer and fewer, as we were probably flying over sparsely populated areas. Occasionally I would see a single light, shining in the middle of nowhere, and I would wonder who or what that light belonged to.

Finally, we landed in Chengdu. As I headed out of the airplane and got my first whiff of Chengdu Air, I had that familiar feeling of realizing that I was extremeley overdressed, and that soon I would have to shed my leather hiking boots, and warm jacket for something more appropriate to the hot humid weather there.

I also had the great fortune of waiting at baggage claim for a long time waiting for my backpack to emerge and plop down on the conveyer belt like candy from a vending machine...but it never did. My luggage was left in Beijing because I checked in too late for my connecting flight. I had to wait at the Chengdu airport for a couple of hours for the next flight to bring my luggage from Beijing...ah yes, let the travel experiences begin.