Chan Legacy

On 11 Nov 10pm, after I had put the kids to bed, Daddy sent me to the airport.  I was to go to China for 6 days.

My flight was a red-eye flight, departing slightly over midnight on 12 Nov, and arriving Shanghai at 6.30am.

[View with PicLens]

From Shanghai, I was to catch another flight to Dalian.  But the flight I was booked on was cancelled, so I had to wait for a later one. 

By the time I reached Dalian to meet up with my Dad, it was already later afternoon.  We rested in the hotel, getting ready to start the next day.

13 Nov,  woke up to a cold Dalian.  Seems vastly different from my last visit 15 years ago.

[View with PicLens]

From Dalian, we caught a flight out to Changchun.  Since we had some time, we went out of the terminal to capture some nice pix of the snow.  My dad said that I looked like “王昭君“in one of the pix!

[View with PicLens]

Our flight to Yanji, originally at 1400hrs, got delayed again and again, and we guessed it was due to heavy snow at destination.  When it got furthered delayed till 1800hrs, without confirmation whether it is a go-ahead or not, we were stranded.

We were nearly resigned to camping overnight at the airport, when we heard a local tour group nearby saying that they are going to refund the tix and go by train.

We thought, that is good enough for us, and I used my blackberry (thank goodness I subscribed for unlimited data roaming) to check the train schedule from Changchun to Tumen (which was nearer to our destination of Hunchun, compared to Yanji).

It was a frenzy, many were trying to get to the train station.  At the train station, the queue was sooo long.  And we kept looking at the board, and it showed that there were only 2 soft sleepers left!  I was praying soooo hard that we would be able to get those….

AND we did!!

While waiting for our train, we took a walk at the shopping centre nearby and I bought a nice pair of boots at RMB300, already discounted.  It kept me warmer and safer (cos not as slippery) than my Bally ones that I bought in Windsor 9 years ago.  It was the BEST investment, in retrospect.

Here are some pix of the crowded train station and our sleeper cabin.

[View with PicLens]

It was not as crowded as the hard sleeper and hard seats waiting area cos soft sleeper is more “Exclusive”.

Soft sleeper is 4 to a room, and the door could be locked, which was great.  Hard sleeper is 6 to a section, and open concept, and the 3 bed levels are much closer together, small and uncomfortable. (so we discovered during our Harbin trip in Dec 09, so always do yourself a favour, book very very early, online if possible, and get the soft sleeper.  If you have kids, even though they are free, book 1 individual bed for them, cos the bed is only shoulder width, imagine a big man like Matthew sharing with 1 kid??!!??  I shared with Donald and it was a terrible miserable 12 hours overnight train to Harbin in the freezing cold!! LOL!)