shanghai transit

around the world and back again.

a major inconvenience on this trip was losing my american passport. i checked into a hotel in florida using my passport, but by the time i checked out a few days later it was gone.

although my room and belongings can seem messy, there's a method to the madness. i always keep my passport in the same place in my bag so it not being where i expected it to be was a bad sign. a thorough check of my belongings turned up nothing, as did multiple calls to the hotel and its lost and found department.

aside from usual paperwork nightmare, the final outcome of the loss was my having to bypass a planned couple of days in shanghai and go straight to bangkok.

flights to bangkok were quite full so i was left with a couple of not very direct routes- flying back to chicago (from portland) and then over to bangkok via narita or flying to shanghai via san francisco and transiting to bangkok. i chose the latter as it was a much more direct route.

in a previous blog i wrote about a lot of things in shanghai being new and untested. well, i've found that international transit is one of them.

upon landing in shanghai there wasn't the expected sign directing transit passengers. instead, there was just international arrivals. near the health inspection counter (left over from the sars days) there was a transit desk with no one there. so, with nowhere else to go, i quickly filled out an immigration form (location in china: bangkok) and queued up with more than a little bit of apprehension.

as i reached the counter i handed over my passport, boarding pass for the bangkok flight, and immigration card and told the woman at the desk that i was in fact a transit passenger. no answer.

she flipped through my blank passport, looked at me, flipped through the passport again, then called over a guard. uh-oh!!!

in such situations i've learned that the best strategy (at least in thailand) is to remain smiling and happy and try to make friends with the guard. i gave him an enthusiastic smiling hello which he returned as he asked me to follow him.

we walked to a small room in a nearby corridor where he motioned for me to sit as a very official-looking person took my documents. without saying a word he looked at my ticket to bangkok and stamped my passport with an enormous temporary one-day permit.

he told me 'ok' and gestured in the direction of the door. i asked him which way i should go- was there a special corridor for transit passengers? nope- he told me to go out and downstairs like everyone else.

my cases were checked in all the way through to bangkok but considering the trouble i had so far i thought it'd be a good idea to check to see if they were on the baggage claim belt. sure enough, both bags were there circulating on the belt instead of having been put directly onto my connecting flight.

so i exited through the arrivals area pulling my bags into the mob of waiting people, hotel greeters, and taxi touts. 'taxi sir?' 'where you go?' 'hey, you, taxi?'



went upstairs, lined up, checked myself and my bags in, walked to the departure area, filled out a departure card (location in china: none), went through security again, arrived at the gates, and breathed a sigh of relief- made it!!!