All in at the airport

Here's a picture of the lovely view from our beachside bungalow on Mui Ne beach in Vietnam. It was just awesome, a 10 meter walk to the beach/pool/bar...no reason to do anything but lie about, sunning ourselves, eat, read, chat...it was a great holiday. OK enough about the ideallic holiday already, we have to get to the hilarious/infuriating holiday story - there's one on every trip I tell ya!

OK so we're on our way home and since there are no direct flights between Shanghai and Vietnam (what the..!!??) we have to go via Guangzhou (in China). So we get to Guangzhou no problems and we have about a 3 hour wait for our next flight. Only, we look at the departure board and all the flight to Shanghai are 'cancelled'....OK.....so we go to the stand-by desk to find out what's going on and there are 100 or so angry Chinese, presumably all trying to get to Shanghai too. There is an all out screaming match going on between China Eastern (airline) staff and disgruntled (I love that word) passengers. There are people BEHIND the counter sitting on the bench, having a smoke, eating instant noodles, watching the action and I couldn't tell who was staff and who wasn't. There was one decrepit looking computer and NOBODY was helping ANYBODY. Then I noticed all the airline staff walk out. I went up to he counter and waved my ticket in some guys face and got yelled at and told to GO AWAY. Then they all started laughing at me. At this point I was pretty furious, and, weighing up the situation, I figured they probably wouldn't know the meaning of the insults that were boiling up inside me, so, feeling safe behind the language barrier, I let loose with a couple of choice words. He he he...Wurly, sensing that I probably needed to calm down a tad, put me in the corner of a cafe with a cup of coffee and I chilled out for about an hour.

With still no information about anything and nothing seeming to be going on, tensions at the stand-by counter would explode and settle with half hourly cycles. Once I was sure I could speak without swearing, I went back over and by this time we'd decided that the whole thing was now just a funny story, another example of Chinese disorganisation. When I got back to the 'scene' it was not long before the crowd swelled and broke out into an all in brawl! People were jumping the counter to get into the fray (behaviour that, in an airport, would - or should - get you arrested in most other countries). It had turned a bit 'Lord of the Flies' with the crowd banging on the counter, cheering and screaming like they were at a boxing match. I was far enough away to not feel threatened, but it was pretty nasty. Security guards and police ran in from everywhere...and started taking photos and filming it!! You'd think that maybe they'd try to stop it, or at least drag a few people away in handcuffs, but no, why stop it when you can just stand there and stare?

In the end, we suddenly and inexplicably got on another flight through an affiliate, China Southern, from which Wurly got food poisoning. I think we were the beneficiaries of some reverse racism - preferential treatment due to the fact that we were foreigners. Last I saw, as we were ushered off to a waiting lounge, there were still 100 or so Chinese people still fighting it out at the stand-by counter. Who knows if they got home that day.

My moral of the story is that I'll never fly China Eastern again.