Oh the places you'll go!

Hola again armchair travelers!  As usual, I’ve waited so long to update this that I have forgotten everything that has happened since we last tuned in….I’m sure you all will be glad to know that some things never change and my advancing years seem to ensure it will get worse so you lucky people at some point will probably get to start reading multiple blog entries that are carbon copies of each other since I have forgotten that I already wrote about it.  But thankfully for all of us, today is not that day J

So the cliffhanger of our last episode was multiple hours spent contemplating pit toilets at the Beijing airport.  Thankfully that episode is over…..unfortunately it was replaced by an equally uninspiring visit to the Singapore airport.  I was able to escape the confines of the boarding area and make it into the city, which was very interesting and diverse, and did enjoy a whole half hour of walking around until the sky opened up and released a downpour of rain.  Which lasted for the next eight hours.  We’re not talking about the kind of rain where you can pop the umbrella and continue your stroll—we are talking the kind of rain where if you stick your hand out the door a whole half of your body comes back wet since the howling wind is blowing the rain sideways.  After huddling in a bus shelter for a half hour or so, I hopped on the Singapore Airlines hop on hop off bus (No, I was not travelling on Singapore Airlines I was travelling on some such drivel called JetStar) and continued my tour of the city…without really seeing anything through the sheets of rain….but whatever. 

For a moment I considered boring you with a story about the grief I got from the Business Class lounge attendant at the Qantas, BA, AA lounge who did not want to let me in:

But you are on JetStar, not a Qantas flight.

Yes, I know that, but I BOOKED a Qantas flight and am feeling pretty pissed that they shoved me into the shitty “Business Class” of some ridiculous airline called JetStar instead.

Well, I cannot let you in.

Um, my itinerary says I am on a Qantas flight, I haven’t slept in two days, and although I am normally a pretty sedate person, I am going to get really snotty if you don’t let me in right now.

Well, I guess you can come in and no one will really know…

.

But decided that issue is better left dead and buried.  But if you are listening One World Alliance, if someone books a business class ticket on a particular airline it better look a whole lot like Club World on British Airways! And not like some red-headed stepchild airline that people probably don’t actually pay money to travel on.  No offense JetStar, the people working there are lovely, but you really gotta do more that give out the hot wash cloth to call it business class.  So enough of my whining about that.

Anyway, I eventually made it to Auckland, which was sunny, warm and empty. It was New Year’s Day after all, and everyone else was sleeping it off.  I spent a lovely couple of days sleeping and seeing a bit of the city with another New Yorker I met in the hotel, who was travelling around New Zealand and Australia with his mum for her 80^th birthday! They were lovely and interesting people and it is nice to do a bit of sightseeing with others.  We went out to Waiheke Island, where they have many wineries and spent some time poking around. 

A day or two later I hopped an Air new Zealand flight for Dunedin and here I am now! ANZ has really capitalized on the opening of the Hobbit and chosen to have the Hobbits and others conduct their in-flight safety talk.  You can watch it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc

When we arrived, we were greeted by the cows that apparently like to graze near the runway….really near.  Thankfully there is a small fence that keeps them from roaming onto the actual runway!  It’s a little like flying into Asheville, although they do have about 3 more gates than the 6 you can find at AVL. The plane actually has to do a u-turn at the end of the runway in order to come back to the terminal…..

That’s probably enough for now as I know the few of you that are still reading at this point are dying to watch that youtube video...so go and enjoy it.

It’s unclear what I will talk about in the update so will keep you in suspense on that—as well as making you wait for a few more pictures. J Cheers!

This girl is on fire....and the fire department is out to lunch

Welcome back armchair travelers! I know your lives have been incomplete since the last installment of this blog, so back by popular demand is the continuing saga of the trials and tribulations of your favorite former blonde traveler!

A long time ago…..OK, a few days ago:      

                                                   

So I have spent the better part of some 15 hours viewing every conceivable square inch of the Beijing airport while I searched in vain for what appeared to be a phantom flight on an airline that does not service this airport. Head-scratching…. I have a booked seat on Qantas, however they had no desk here at the airport and neither did Jet Star, the code share partner who is operating the flight.  After going to several different terminals, repeatedly, which of course means loading and unloading one’s 80 pieces of baggage on the inter-terminal shuttle, the fifth person I asked finally admitted that the airline counters were on the other side of customs and could only be accessed 3 hours before the flight.  Which is at 2:30 AM and means all the lounges with free stuff are closed! Well, OK, the lounge is open but she told me I needed a special pass to get in……business class apparently only means business class on the airplane. 

Leave it to me to spend three days getting from London to Auckland…and have to pick up and recheck my bags at every leg of this journey.  How did I get to a place that has a massive Pabst Blue Ribbon Happy New Year display in the departure lounge? Read on to find out….and for those who are disinterested in this story already and know what’s coming, feel free to skip to the expected fundraising pitch and donate your hard earned dollars to me via Paypal now J

I won’t bore anyone to tears with any descriptions of an overlong soul searching processes which eventually led to the decision to apply to (and thankfully consequently get accepted to!) a PhD program at a university in New Zealand. I’ll skip to the meat of where that takes us today and say that I will be conducting research in a subject area of tourism called Dark Tourism, which is travelling to places associated with death, disaster, and the macabre.  I am fortunate enough to have found supervisors and a university who are interested in my research proposal, which, in a nutshell, involves determining the viability, planning, and sustainability of ‘fright tourism’ development by uncovering the motivations of tourists to participate in activities that are designed specifically for scary experiences—and are to at least some extent based on true events.  I will do this by conducting my research in a location with a plethora of ‘scary’ and hopefully some ‘true to history’  tourism attractions, based on the witch trials of 1692—Salem, Massachusetts, USA.

Or something like that.

If you are interested to hear more, give a shout and I will be happy to discuss further J

So, some six months later, here I am in Beijing, awaiting my flight to Singapore.  After a battery of invasive medical tests and waiting seven weeks for the FBI to sign off on the fact that they have no idea what kind of a criminal I might be, I am starting off on this latest wander across the world, which will make a pit stop for a few years in Dunedin, New Zealand.  I began this journey right before Christmas when I set off for England to spend Christmas with Victoria (my supervisor in grad school) and her family and connecting with friends old and new.

Thoughts so far:

• ·        Even though I have to keep rechecking my bags since all my layovers are in double-digit hours, at least I didn’t turn out to be like the guy in front of me at immigration here in China who apparently didn’t speak Chinese or English.  He was being told by the immigration officer that because his connecting flight was more than 25 hours away he was being denied entry into China and had to return to London if he couldn’t find a way to get on an earlier flight—by calling his travel agent on a cell phone that did not get service.
• ·         For the first time ever, I rented a room by the hour.  No, not so I could get a little lovin, but so I could get a shower and some rest since I didn’t smell so good after a ten hour flight and hoisting 50 pound bags around for 3 hours.
• ·      The Chinese food here at the airport looked and tasted a whole lot like it does at home….if it were not for the 200 pounds of luggage I am carrying, knowledge that the airport is about 25 miles outside of a town that spans 200 miles, and fact that most of my free time would be in the middle of the night, I would have made a break for it to try and get into the city to actually see and taste a bit of China. Will have to save that for a later trip.
•             Great opportunity here to practice your pit-toilet skills. Haven’t seen one of those since I left Bolivia!

Anyhoo—I decided to stick with this Blondie in South America blog because, even though I am no longer blonde or in South America, I am fundamentally and forevermore the girl whose life was changed by those experiences good and bad on that continent a few years ago…..a trip that gave me the courage to attempt things I may not be capable of and perhaps the stupidity to not realize it.  Which is usually the only way one accomplishes anything in life.  So Blondie in South America rides again!

Stay tuned for exciting updates on what to do during multiple hours at the Singapore airport, an all-new flight safety video starring Hobbits, and questions and answers about just how close they let the cattle get to landing airplanes here in the Southland.

A coupla pix thus far:

 http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151339931722044.505953.585587043&type=1&l=84097ec4c6