Woke up, re-packed everything just in case (lots of pants, that's all a man really needs, yeah?), accidentally dropped my keys in the recycling bin near the house. Got them back, drove to Gaf's (he has the band vehicle) and then off to pick up V, L and Bedford for G.
As like last night, excitement and nerves were kicking in all around, but there was a sense that we're all in this together. A general sense of "this could all be a con" (backed up the worrying lack of communication from our hosts by email) were surpassed by "we're going to China, this is potentially life changing!".
Being the naive, inexperienced travellers we are, we arrived at Heathrow 4 hours earlier than we should have done. They offered us an early flight to Paris - the idea was appealing all round: they get to fill 5 seats on a quieter plane (and sell our later seats, which were more in-demand) and we get to spent 4 hours in lovely Paris rather than grim Heathrow. We accepted, then were was a massive rush to get our guitars through and the whole thing got very stressful. They ended up practically delaying the flight for us, and we had to run (V without her shoes on) through the airport to make the flight...and everyone looked at us if it was *our* fault when we finally flopped onto the jet, sweaty and out of breath. The flight wasn't long, luckily, and then we had many hours to kill in France where there was bugger all to do and we all got a bit grumpy that the USB ports didn't work so we couldn't charge our phones.
At 11.20pm we started the long flight to Guangzhou; 11 hours and with my reclining chair not...well, reclining as the lady behind me had THE BIGGEST LEGS IN THE WORLD and I couldn't even get the seat back, it was painfully uncomfortable. Tried to sleep, failed, ended up watching old episodes of Dragon's Den. The guy in front of me moved his seat back, leaving me crushed for what was basically half a day. Lovely. I think I got about 3 hours sleep in eventually as my body just gave up trying to be angry.
Arrived in China, groggy and then the expected interrogation at the airport - they're a strict bunch (and rightly so, they're protecting their country), my chirpy, if tired, British mannerisms didn't cut any slack as I was frisked.
Grabbed some food and then the final flight of a physically gruelling day - over to Nanjing (via 2 busses). 2 hours and 20 minutes later we arrived at the airport and waited nervously, and were then relieved to see all of our instruments had arrived in the country safely. Even more relieved to meet Frank - one of our Chinese festival helpers, at the terminal and he got us into a van and over to our hotel. Lovely hotel, slept so incredibly well.
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