In one of my more recent trips abroad, I finally got that chance to visit China on my own. I mean, for pleasure and not for business. I will be meeting a friend to join me in exploring China’s south west. However, he will be flying in direct to Guangzhou. While I having booked even before he indicated he wanted to join will be entering China from Macau. Since my friend does not speak Chinese, I would have to go meet him at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.
My flight from Singapore arrived in Macau around six in the evening. I haven’t been to Macau yet, but I didn’t really have time to go sightseeing. Passing through immigration took a while since the Macau airport only seems to have a limited number of counters for immigration. Which was surprising when you compare it to the huge number of counters Hong Kong has.
I passed through immigration and inquired on how I can get to the China border. Their English wasn’t really very good and I didn’t really know how to speak Cantonese. However, my basic Mandarin was understood and they quickly pointed me the way. There is a bus right outside the terminal which goes directly to the Macau border with the Chinese city of Zhuhai. I got some change for my Hong Kong dollars for the bus ride and took the bus when it got there.
Since I never really knew where to get off I was just following the people. This turned out to be a mistake because somewhere in the middle a lot of passengers got off and I followed them. When I realized my mistake I quickly got back on the bus. The bus driver asked me whether I paid or not, and was probably wondering if I was avoiding the bus fare. Anyway, I finally got to the border control of Macau and Zhuhai.
I actually had to go through two immigration counters, the first one to exit Macau, and the second one to enter China. The Macau immigration was a breeze to go through, but trouble lay ahead when I reached the Zhuhai immigration point. There was a huge hall of around 20 immigration counters and each queue had around one or two hundred people in it. It was an amazing sight seeing all of those people there. I then realized my mistake, never, never cross the Macau-Zhuhai border on a Friday. Apparently, everyone from China working in Macau is going back home. This is actually the worst time for a traveller like me to be in.
Alas there was nothing I could do but patiently wait in line. There were some people in the queue who would try to cut ahead of all the others, fortunately people were alert enough to shoo the guy away. Despite the long queue ahead of me, it did move quite fast. Probably because most of the ones in front of me are Chinese citizens and all they have to do is give them their identification card or something. This made things really fast.
Finally crossing immigration, I found myself outside the border control of Zhuhai city. Zhuhai is a city in the Chinese province of Guangdong. It is a special economic zone just like Shenzhen, but it is not as successful as the former. Outside the border control, is a huge plaza, it was already night time when I got out but I still need to find out how to get to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.
I spotted a bus terminal just to the right of the border control. I remember a friend of mine from China telling me that there is a bus to get me from Zhuhai to Guangzhou Internation Airport. I finally asked the people at the counter about the bus service. But alas, the last bus has left! So I had no choice but to take the bus to Guangzhou City itself and figure out a way to get to the airport from there.
The bus ride from Zhuhai to Guangzhou was a comfortable one. The ride will take around 2 1/2 hours. The buses were modern and the seats were comfortable and clean. I found it amusing to see a “flight attendant” roaming the aisle of the bus making sure that everyone has fastened their seat belts. They even gave away some drinks. I managed to side next to a lady from Israel who actually lives in Guangzhou. Her father has a factory in Guangzhou and she works as a free lance writer for a magazine. At least I won’t be bored during the trip to Guangzhou.
Finally we got to the city of Guangzhou, it is a huge city with excellent highways and it also seems like it is under construction. I got off the bus somewhere in the city but I didn’t know how to get to the airport, so I did the only thing I knew – hail a cab. Taxi cabs in Guangzhou have this “cage” which separates the driver from the passenger. This was probably done for protection both of the driver and of the passenger. Fortunately for me, my driver wasn’t really very talkative despite distance of the trip. Even though we took the expressay it still took us quite a while to get to the airport.
imagine my relief when I saw the wonderful terminal building of Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. It has a very futuristic feel and it somehow reminds me of the Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok International Airport. Finally, I called my friend who was waiting of all places at McDonald’s where he was surfing the internet while waiting for me. By the time I got to the airport is was already past 10 and I was starving. I didn’t really intend to eat western food in China but it seems I do not have much choice for now. A restaurant would be beyond our budget.
After finally satisfying myself with my McDonald’s Meal we set out exploring the massive airport. We are also on the lookout for any spot we can spend the night at. We tried settling down at the ground floor where there are a couple of empty seats but after a while the guards chased us away and mentioned us to go up.
At the departure hall the counters were already closed since this airport is not 24 hours. We found a couple of empty seats a corner and settled down to sleep. The air conditioning was quite cold and the seats were not very comfortable. But this is what we have to contend with if we intend to catch the early flight out of the airport.
As expected, I couldn’t really get a good night’s sleep since it was really uncomfortable. Only a few minutes of sleep every now and then. Besides, I can’t really go to sleep with our stuff just lying around. Not before long, it was already morning, we had another nice McDonald’s Breakfast, before heading out to our check in counter.
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