Most of my steps today have been in airports.
First in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, now in Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. My flight from Bangkok was aboard (my spellcheck wanted to autocorrect that to aborted) Shanghai Airlines which wouldn’t let me check-in online or print my boarding passes for my Bangkok to Shanghai to Los Angeles to Minneapolis flights. If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.
But it’s probably just as well that I couldn’t print my boarding passes in advance. Of the six flights to and from SteemFest, the Bangkok-Shanghai flight was the only one where I had a plain economy seat. For all the others, I’d paid extra to get a few extra inches of leg room (really important if you’re tall) or lucked out and gotten an exit row seat, which have even more leg room.
But when I walked up to the counter to show my passport and ask for boarding passes, the first thing the agent asked was if I wanted an exit row. Sure.
Lots of going through security and passport controls today. When I entered Thailand, they had me leave my glasses on for a photo; when I left, they insisted I take them off. I was fingerprinted both coming and going from Thailand but not for transiting through Shanghai.
Weird quirk about Shanghai’s airport: no drinking fountains to be found. I’ve seen several stations where you can get either hot or warm water, but not cold. So I bought a bottle of water. With a Japanese label that had a Chinese label stuck on top of it.
In addition to security and passport checks at the Shanghai airport, there was a “quarantine control” station that used (infrared?) sensors to check for people running a fever.
Next up, a 12-hour flight to Los Angeles. I’ve never been able to sleep on a plane but I’ll give it another try.
