Golden Week Madness: The Saga Continues
Jun. 3rd, 2004 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanOkay, so I've been so busy playing with my shiny new TV set that I haven't really been using the computer recently. And so it goes.
At any rate, here's day 2 of my Golden Week Madness:
Day II (04/29/04)
I wake up in time. I wake up way in time. I have a leisurely breakfast. I reply to some of the people who'd commented on TLATA. I gather my bags,
check that I have the essentials like passport, wallet, and voucher. I turn off the gas, the hot water, and lock the windows.
I head out onto the street. I make it to the station on time, and make my way to the platform...
...only to realise that I've left my rice cooker on, with about a cup of rice in the bottom. There's two minutes to go before my train arrives, and I'm not
going to be back to turn it off for twelve days. Well, fuck.
Feeling rather ill, and hoping rather desperately that my apartment doesn't burn down in my absence, I board the train.
I'm mollified by the fact that I've got the best seat in the car - the very first row, by the aisle. I've got massive legroom and no one behind me, so back
goes the seat. And thus I spend the train ride until my norikae.
I get out at Etchu Nakagawa and head for the shinkansen track. I've ridden shinkansen before - it's nothing special. Except this time, it is - I'm in one
of the double-deckers, on the top floor. I had a window seat and the view was cool. We went through the Japanese alps, and when we came out on the
other side, the snow and rain of western Japan were replaced by sunshine, flowers, palm trees and bright red earth.
I get to Tokyo station with about forty-five minutes to spare. Now, Tokyo station is a bear but I mastered it while I was at Nagoya, so I head for
the bookstore and spend time browsing until it's time to catch my express. During that time I almost buy Carl Hiassen's new book (which is only marked up 1
/3 the American cover price, as opposed to the usual three times), the Japanese translation of a French novel about elf wars, a music magazine with an UA
interview, and another magazine about underground/goth/industrial music in Japan.
I determine that buying any of these would be a bad idea, because I'll soon be in Singapore Int'l Airport, and as English is an official language in
Singapore, the English book selection will be bigger, and the markup cheaper. (Remember this as it becomes important later).
I buy an Italian sandwhich and a yoghurt drink at a kiosk, head to the express (almost board the wrong one, but then make it to the correct platform),
grab my seat, and settle in for Narita. I get to the airport and have about three hours to dick around. I wander back and forth between the two bookstores
in Terminal One, but don't buy anything, because I'll have bigger and better prospects in Singapore. (Remember this as it becomes important later).
Instead, I settle for grabbing a cream cheese pizza for lunch, then go to board my plane.
It's delayed because someone's loaded lugged and not boarded, so we have to wait while the man's luggage is offloaded. The plane is packed, not a
seat empty. I remember reading a news story on the shinkansen news scroller talking about how Golden Week travel is hitting its peak today, and that the
numbers are up from a few years ago.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm not on the NW flight with the others. I despise NW with a fiery passion. There service is shit, their flight attendants are
some of the rudest and most unpleasant people I have ever encountered in my life, and I have never had a flight through them that has not been delayed or
suffered massive problems (such as a fuel leak over the arctic that almost blew the plane out of the sky. I am not making this up).
Anyway, the food is very good, the movies are decent, and you can play Nintendo in economy class, which is awesome. Also, UA's new album is in constant
rotation on one of the music channels, with interview snippets. I'm in heaven.
I'm also sitting next to a really sweet Indian guy, his wife and baby, from Sri Lanka. He doesn't speak much English, so we talk in Japanese. Which is just
way awesome cool. It's also amusing because he can't make certain sounds that are vital to Japanese, so both I and the flight attendants have a bit of
trouble understanding him. He invites me to visit Sri Lanka when he finds out where I'm going (why are you going to Malaysia and Singapore? Come to Sri
Lanka. It is cheaper and you can stay at my house). I tell him I'll visit sometime, but I remember reading a NG article about religious/ethnic tensions on
the island, as well as massive deforestation (outdated by about four years, however), so I'm not too keen to commit before I check out the situation. He
gives me his business card and tells me he exports used cars to South America to sell. In this, his profession is exactly the same as a Pakistani man I met
in Nagoya, who tried to sell me a car.
Anyway, I arrive in Singapore airport at 9pm, local time.
Singapore hates commerce.
The airport is amazingly small. It's also empty, and there is nowhere to buy a newspaper let alone a novel. No airport security is about.
Nobody is manning any of the information desks. It's only 9pm and I am bored stiff. And then the taxi drivers begin humping my leg.
Literally. There are clouds of them in the place, at least twenty or thirty of them, and as a single, young, foreign woman, I present an obvious target.
They're annoying me. Also, I'm hungry, and there are no places in Changi to buy food because apparently this is the only airport on the face of the earth
without a single goddamn restaurant. I know Singapore's a police state, but I hadn't realised it was this micromanaged.
Well, I figure, I'll go to the combini. I step outside of the airport, and the humidity hits me like a punch to the gut. Remember, it was raining/sleeting
when I left Japan. I'm currently in long pants, a sleeved shirt, and a sweater. Ugh. I take off my sweater, juggling my backpacker's backpack, and
am assaulted by more taxi drivers. I tell them no thanks. I'm slightly mollified by the scent of cloves. Cloves! I walk out a little to the tour bus
pickup area, where the drivers stare at me as I walk around, fruitlessly looking for somewhere to get dinner.
Anyway, not only is there no combini in sight, but there's no anything within walking distance aside from the airport. However - Singapore is gorgeous. The
airport faces a huge, palm-tree lined avenue, and there are more trees and tropical flowers wherever I look. It's heavenly, because they haven't gone the
Japanese road of paving over every stray blade of grass they can locate.
I step inside, where the taxi drivers renew their leg humping with vigor. I finally evade them by heading up to the airline offices (all closed for the
evening), and from there manage by stroke of luck to find the only open restaurant in the place. They make roti and sell bottled drinks. I get a large iced
Milo and settle in.
Luckily, there's a television, and Buffy is on. Unluckily, it's the episode where Dawn is trying to talk to Joyce and Buffy is busy fighting/therapying with
a dead high school classmate turned vampire. Oh yeah, and there's like no Spike, save forty seconds at the very end. I'm joined in the cafeteria by a
freaky old dude, an Arab and his friend who discuss me in [language other than English], and some homeless-looking dude who falls asleep on a bench. I'm
bored out of my fucking skull.
Singapore's commericals are really, really revealing. Every single commercial was either for weight loss/cosmetic surgery (for women), or hair growth (for
men). My ex from Singapore was totally obsessed with brand name fashion and appearance, and I now understand where he learned that behaviour.
I check my watch and it's about time for my friends' flight to arrive, so I head back downstairs. Finally, finally, the arrival board shows the flight as
arrived. I watch the people filing through baggage and customs with The Happiness. But Holly & Co. are not showing. The taxi men are becoming
extremely obnoxious, following me around, and I can't shake them, because hey there's no fucking airport security on duty.
Finally I evade the taxi men by going to the women's bathroom and chilling for a bit.
I return. The taxi men were waiting for me outside the bathroom. My friends don't show.
Five minutes later, they don't show.
Or ten, or twenty.
The last people leave customs. My friends haven't showed. There're two or three bags still going through the carousel. The taxi men are starting to truly
frighten me. And I don't frighten easily.
I approach the man I'd noticed holding the 'David Hello Singapore.com' sign. I haven't said anything to him yet, but it turns out that he is the driver we'd
chartered to take us to the hotel. This is heartening, as it means I haven't fucked up anywhere. So Randy Chua (for that is our driver) and I embark on a
quest to locate my missing party members.
We first ask customs officials about the flight. They tell us that everyone's disembarked, then go home. The other taxi drivers are still trying to
physically remove me from my driver. I'm not having it, and eventually, they leave.
I'm asked repeatedly whether I don't have the wrong arrival date or flight info for my friends. I repeatedly answer no, as we'd planned this vacation
together. Finally, I ask if there isn't any way I can check the flight manifests to see if my friends boarded the plane at all. I'm having horrible visions
of them sleeping through their train, missing their flight, and damning me to a solitary twelve day vacation with no idea of what to do.
We head back up to the airplane offices, which have been closed since about eight. Luckily, the fact that we illegally used a freight elevator attracts
attention, and a security guard is called in to the airport to investigate us. We convince him to call in some people from NW, who eventually show up,
unlock the NW office, and check the manifest for us. Neither Triston, nor Holly, nor Dave's name is on the manifest.
I'm pretty darn worried at this point.
Then it occurs to someone to check the other terminal; if they did miss their flight, they might have gotten on a later plane out of Narita.
As we're investigating this possibility, a freelance taxi driver (and friend of my driver) comes up with phone in hand and informs us that my friends were
indeed on a different flight, and have been looking for me in terminal two. Randy Chua and I head over.
...Only to discover that my friends are gone. They got into a taxi and left the airport without me, which they'd sworn not to do. Ever the man of action,
Randy sprints to his van, loads my stuff up, and we tear off down the highway.
Halfway to our hotel, he turns around and says, "Look over there. Are those your friends?"
Sure enough, there's the gang in another taxi.
We follow them to the hotel where everything gets ironed out. This being Golden Week, they were bumped off their flight and onto Singapore Airlines (those
lucky, lucky bastards). Holly hadn't charged her phone, so there was no way she could call or text to tell me about the change.
We'd actually overlapped our time in the airport by at least an hour, but I'd been to terminal two and back before they cleared customs, and it never
occurred to them to look for me in the terminal where I'd arrived.
Also, a taxi driver, hearing that they were trying to find their chauffeur, lied and said, "Oh, he's already left," and then loaded them into his taxi like
the pied piper charming rats. If my driver hadn't been on the ball, I most likely would have spent the entire night at the airport. (Wasting seven hours there was bad enough. Ugh.)
Anyway, Mr Chua only charged me for one person (though we'd hired him for four). I gave him a tip, which isn't supposed to happen, but I would have been
lost without his help. Holly's taxi driver severely overcharged them and took off before they could iron it out.
And then we stumbled into the hotel, up to our room, tried not to wake the other guests, grabbed beds and fell asleep.
That will be all.
At any rate, here's day 2 of my Golden Week Madness:
Day II (04/29/04)
I wake up in time. I wake up way in time. I have a leisurely breakfast. I reply to some of the people who'd commented on TLATA. I gather my bags,
check that I have the essentials like passport, wallet, and voucher. I turn off the gas, the hot water, and lock the windows.
I head out onto the street. I make it to the station on time, and make my way to the platform...
...only to realise that I've left my rice cooker on, with about a cup of rice in the bottom. There's two minutes to go before my train arrives, and I'm not
going to be back to turn it off for twelve days. Well, fuck.
Feeling rather ill, and hoping rather desperately that my apartment doesn't burn down in my absence, I board the train.
I'm mollified by the fact that I've got the best seat in the car - the very first row, by the aisle. I've got massive legroom and no one behind me, so back
goes the seat. And thus I spend the train ride until my norikae.
I get out at Etchu Nakagawa and head for the shinkansen track. I've ridden shinkansen before - it's nothing special. Except this time, it is - I'm in one
of the double-deckers, on the top floor. I had a window seat and the view was cool. We went through the Japanese alps, and when we came out on the
other side, the snow and rain of western Japan were replaced by sunshine, flowers, palm trees and bright red earth.
I get to Tokyo station with about forty-five minutes to spare. Now, Tokyo station is a bear but I mastered it while I was at Nagoya, so I head for
the bookstore and spend time browsing until it's time to catch my express. During that time I almost buy Carl Hiassen's new book (which is only marked up 1
/3 the American cover price, as opposed to the usual three times), the Japanese translation of a French novel about elf wars, a music magazine with an UA
interview, and another magazine about underground/goth/industrial music in Japan.
I determine that buying any of these would be a bad idea, because I'll soon be in Singapore Int'l Airport, and as English is an official language in
Singapore, the English book selection will be bigger, and the markup cheaper. (Remember this as it becomes important later).
I buy an Italian sandwhich and a yoghurt drink at a kiosk, head to the express (almost board the wrong one, but then make it to the correct platform),
grab my seat, and settle in for Narita. I get to the airport and have about three hours to dick around. I wander back and forth between the two bookstores
in Terminal One, but don't buy anything, because I'll have bigger and better prospects in Singapore. (Remember this as it becomes important later).
Instead, I settle for grabbing a cream cheese pizza for lunch, then go to board my plane.
It's delayed because someone's loaded lugged and not boarded, so we have to wait while the man's luggage is offloaded. The plane is packed, not a
seat empty. I remember reading a news story on the shinkansen news scroller talking about how Golden Week travel is hitting its peak today, and that the
numbers are up from a few years ago.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm not on the NW flight with the others. I despise NW with a fiery passion. There service is shit, their flight attendants are
some of the rudest and most unpleasant people I have ever encountered in my life, and I have never had a flight through them that has not been delayed or
suffered massive problems (such as a fuel leak over the arctic that almost blew the plane out of the sky. I am not making this up).
Anyway, the food is very good, the movies are decent, and you can play Nintendo in economy class, which is awesome. Also, UA's new album is in constant
rotation on one of the music channels, with interview snippets. I'm in heaven.
I'm also sitting next to a really sweet Indian guy, his wife and baby, from Sri Lanka. He doesn't speak much English, so we talk in Japanese. Which is just
way awesome cool. It's also amusing because he can't make certain sounds that are vital to Japanese, so both I and the flight attendants have a bit of
trouble understanding him. He invites me to visit Sri Lanka when he finds out where I'm going (why are you going to Malaysia and Singapore? Come to Sri
Lanka. It is cheaper and you can stay at my house). I tell him I'll visit sometime, but I remember reading a NG article about religious/ethnic tensions on
the island, as well as massive deforestation (outdated by about four years, however), so I'm not too keen to commit before I check out the situation. He
gives me his business card and tells me he exports used cars to South America to sell. In this, his profession is exactly the same as a Pakistani man I met
in Nagoya, who tried to sell me a car.
Anyway, I arrive in Singapore airport at 9pm, local time.
Singapore hates commerce.
The airport is amazingly small. It's also empty, and there is nowhere to buy a newspaper let alone a novel. No airport security is about.
Nobody is manning any of the information desks. It's only 9pm and I am bored stiff. And then the taxi drivers begin humping my leg.
Literally. There are clouds of them in the place, at least twenty or thirty of them, and as a single, young, foreign woman, I present an obvious target.
They're annoying me. Also, I'm hungry, and there are no places in Changi to buy food because apparently this is the only airport on the face of the earth
without a single goddamn restaurant. I know Singapore's a police state, but I hadn't realised it was this micromanaged.
Well, I figure, I'll go to the combini. I step outside of the airport, and the humidity hits me like a punch to the gut. Remember, it was raining/sleeting
when I left Japan. I'm currently in long pants, a sleeved shirt, and a sweater. Ugh. I take off my sweater, juggling my backpacker's backpack, and
am assaulted by more taxi drivers. I tell them no thanks. I'm slightly mollified by the scent of cloves. Cloves! I walk out a little to the tour bus
pickup area, where the drivers stare at me as I walk around, fruitlessly looking for somewhere to get dinner.
Anyway, not only is there no combini in sight, but there's no anything within walking distance aside from the airport. However - Singapore is gorgeous. The
airport faces a huge, palm-tree lined avenue, and there are more trees and tropical flowers wherever I look. It's heavenly, because they haven't gone the
Japanese road of paving over every stray blade of grass they can locate.
I step inside, where the taxi drivers renew their leg humping with vigor. I finally evade them by heading up to the airline offices (all closed for the
evening), and from there manage by stroke of luck to find the only open restaurant in the place. They make roti and sell bottled drinks. I get a large iced
Milo and settle in.
Luckily, there's a television, and Buffy is on. Unluckily, it's the episode where Dawn is trying to talk to Joyce and Buffy is busy fighting/therapying with
a dead high school classmate turned vampire. Oh yeah, and there's like no Spike, save forty seconds at the very end. I'm joined in the cafeteria by a
freaky old dude, an Arab and his friend who discuss me in [language other than English], and some homeless-looking dude who falls asleep on a bench. I'm
bored out of my fucking skull.
Singapore's commericals are really, really revealing. Every single commercial was either for weight loss/cosmetic surgery (for women), or hair growth (for
men). My ex from Singapore was totally obsessed with brand name fashion and appearance, and I now understand where he learned that behaviour.
I check my watch and it's about time for my friends' flight to arrive, so I head back downstairs. Finally, finally, the arrival board shows the flight as
arrived. I watch the people filing through baggage and customs with The Happiness. But Holly & Co. are not showing. The taxi men are becoming
extremely obnoxious, following me around, and I can't shake them, because hey there's no fucking airport security on duty.
Finally I evade the taxi men by going to the women's bathroom and chilling for a bit.
I return. The taxi men were waiting for me outside the bathroom. My friends don't show.
Five minutes later, they don't show.
Or ten, or twenty.
The last people leave customs. My friends haven't showed. There're two or three bags still going through the carousel. The taxi men are starting to truly
frighten me. And I don't frighten easily.
I approach the man I'd noticed holding the 'David Hello Singapore.com' sign. I haven't said anything to him yet, but it turns out that he is the driver we'd
chartered to take us to the hotel. This is heartening, as it means I haven't fucked up anywhere. So Randy Chua (for that is our driver) and I embark on a
quest to locate my missing party members.
We first ask customs officials about the flight. They tell us that everyone's disembarked, then go home. The other taxi drivers are still trying to
physically remove me from my driver. I'm not having it, and eventually, they leave.
I'm asked repeatedly whether I don't have the wrong arrival date or flight info for my friends. I repeatedly answer no, as we'd planned this vacation
together. Finally, I ask if there isn't any way I can check the flight manifests to see if my friends boarded the plane at all. I'm having horrible visions
of them sleeping through their train, missing their flight, and damning me to a solitary twelve day vacation with no idea of what to do.
We head back up to the airplane offices, which have been closed since about eight. Luckily, the fact that we illegally used a freight elevator attracts
attention, and a security guard is called in to the airport to investigate us. We convince him to call in some people from NW, who eventually show up,
unlock the NW office, and check the manifest for us. Neither Triston, nor Holly, nor Dave's name is on the manifest.
I'm pretty darn worried at this point.
Then it occurs to someone to check the other terminal; if they did miss their flight, they might have gotten on a later plane out of Narita.
As we're investigating this possibility, a freelance taxi driver (and friend of my driver) comes up with phone in hand and informs us that my friends were
indeed on a different flight, and have been looking for me in terminal two. Randy Chua and I head over.
...Only to discover that my friends are gone. They got into a taxi and left the airport without me, which they'd sworn not to do. Ever the man of action,
Randy sprints to his van, loads my stuff up, and we tear off down the highway.
Halfway to our hotel, he turns around and says, "Look over there. Are those your friends?"
Sure enough, there's the gang in another taxi.
We follow them to the hotel where everything gets ironed out. This being Golden Week, they were bumped off their flight and onto Singapore Airlines (those
lucky, lucky bastards). Holly hadn't charged her phone, so there was no way she could call or text to tell me about the change.
We'd actually overlapped our time in the airport by at least an hour, but I'd been to terminal two and back before they cleared customs, and it never
occurred to them to look for me in the terminal where I'd arrived.
Also, a taxi driver, hearing that they were trying to find their chauffeur, lied and said, "Oh, he's already left," and then loaded them into his taxi like
the pied piper charming rats. If my driver hadn't been on the ball, I most likely would have spent the entire night at the airport. (Wasting seven hours there was bad enough. Ugh.)
Anyway, Mr Chua only charged me for one person (though we'd hired him for four). I gave him a tip, which isn't supposed to happen, but I would have been
lost without his help. Holly's taxi driver severely overcharged them and took off before they could iron it out.
And then we stumbled into the hotel, up to our room, tried not to wake the other guests, grabbed beds and fell asleep.
That will be all.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2004-06-03 08:12 pm (UTC)