Day 1: Half A Day of Travelling Later..

What a beautiful day to fly off.
Meeting at the airport gave me quite a pleasant surprise because it turns out the LSCT group also chose Red for their OIP Shirt. Such a coincidence, considering how we were very undecided when choosing a design for our shirt. But I'm glad ours look nicer.

After waiting for quite some time for the Group Check-In, I had lunch with my father before I went into the departure hall. To be honest, I was actually quite hard to walk away from my father, and keep walking further and further into the airport, and further and further away from my family for 5 weeks. Certainly this is the longest I would have been apart from my family, but I'm sure the experience gained would be very worth it, and I kept walking towards our boarding gate. Once there I tried calling and saying farewell to my family again, and I went in.
To my surprise, security checks this time was so much stricter compared to my previous times. It was very uncomfortable to have to stand there while they inspect and feel every nook and cranny of your body, such as behind your belt, your shoes and socks around the ankles etc. But otherwise, it was pretty smooth. And here is the plane that will bring us to Guangzhou:
A pretty small plane, but I guess the right word to use is "cosy". After reaching Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, we had dinner at MacDonald's. If anything, the first big reminder that I'm now in China is having to read and order in Chinese. While eating, I was observing this group of children who were from the same flight with us from Singapore, and eventually to Wuhan. Having gone to China before for the Youth Expedition Programme, I was actually quite aware of the culture of independence parents like to enforce on their children in China, such as sending them off to live in school hostels at a young age. However, it was still very strange to see a group of children around primary school age travelling with just a few adults on some sort of school sports programme, as they were carrying badminton racquets and tennis racquets. Another thing I observed, together with Mr Chia, who was sitting beside me, was how loud the kids were playing among themselves, which was a really stark difference to Singaporean kids. It could be because silence is not part of their social culture, compared to countries like Japan where it is considered very rude to make too much noise in public.
After dinner, we walked a long way to the boarding gate for our connecting flight from Guangzhou to Wuhan. However, for some reason, the flight was delayed, so we were all stuck waiting outside the area. We even had to sit on the floor as there were insufficient seats, which I think must have looked really weird to passersby. Although Guangzhou is going to host the Asian Games later this year, I feel they really need to work and improve their airport system. When we landed, we had to walk down the staircase and run across the tarmac in the light rain and squeeze onto a bus that brought us to the terminal. Then the luggage took very long to start coming out. And when it did, many of the first few suitcases were wet either with condensation or rain. And many of our luggage got dirty or scratch marks from poor handling. Worst of all, was that when our domestic flight to Wuhan was delayed, there was absolutely no notice or updates, and we had to ask the information counter ourselves. In these aspects, I think they have to improve if they want to present the best sides of Guangzhou to visitors and athletes for the Asian Games.
Finally,
After more than 12 hours from when we arrived at Changi Terminal 1 at 11am, we finally reached Wuhan. By then, everyone was visibly tired and/or hungry (at least for me). After we collected our luggage, han hui was wondering that is that all there is to security checks. And I think the reason is simple because stringent checks took place at the International Airports, so Domestic Airports don't have as stringent checks.
And finally, after close to an hour's bus journey, we reached the hostel. More about the hostel in the next post. Promise.