Brisk Xiamen
"Hurry, your transit flight is waiting!" urged an airport officer in Mandarin and Hokkien as I stepped off the plane.My flight out of Beijing was no good. It didn't have the same satisfying feel as when I arrived seven days ago.
I really enjoyed Old Beijing, going everywhere and eating everything. However I could have been placed in the middle of Baghdad and still find some way to enjoy myself. The reason is simple - I don't get out much.
Checking into Beijing International was simple. However it required a little re-adjustment of what I had expected of a world-class international airport. I had to ask which Air China counter to check in for my flight. Of course, Beijing International lumps all Air China flights together and you can line up at any one of those counters as your flight number differentiated you from the other Air China passengers.
Then I had mistakenly lined up at the Immigration counter, thinking that I needed to clear customs for my flight. But Xiamen was my stop-over and the Immigration officer educated me that I could only clear customs in Xiamen International. So my flight from Beijing to Xiamen was a domestic one.
We were delayed for forty minutes but that wasn't the surprise at all. The sight of the small Boeing 737 made me wonder if I was scheduled for the right flight. I was expecting the same Boeing 747 that brought me here.
So on to Xiamen. The forty minute delay had pushed back our schedule and my fellow transit passengers were rushed through immigration and back onto the same Boeing 737 like Peking Ducks. There was no time to look around as I had hoped.
Out from the arrival gate...
Back into the departure gate.With that went my week. There was nothing for me to do but sleep the rest of the way. It was a pity that I couldn't spend more time here, one of the bastions of the Hokkien. My stop-over was supposed to have lasted a whole hour! Brisk Xiamen indeed.
posted by Teutoburg @ 11:03 PM
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