Day 12 - Aug 20, 2007 Monday

 Lhasa 拉薩 - ??

(click the hyperlink for the respective photo album)

It was quite a disastrous day. 

Our original flight to Guangzhou was leaving at 1:10pm.  We had plenty of time and thus we went to Jokhang Temple 大昭寺 again at around 9am to watch the actions. 

We checked out and left the hotel at 10:30am.  Arriving at the airport at noon, perfect time.

After we sat down in the waiting area, we heard an annoucement about the delay of our flight.  Our flight had a stop in Zhongdian (i.e. Shangri-La) and at that time, the flight had still not alighted from Zhongdian to Lhasa for some technical problem.  At around 2pm, we learnt that the flight was cancelled and airline could arrange us to stay in the hotel next to the airport.  Not knowing whether we could leave the next day (i.e. there would not be an extra flight and we would have to compete for availability with the original passengers the next day, if the flight would be okay the next day) so we decided to leave anyway that day.

After some frantic checking, there were availability in a flight leaving 4pm for Chengdu and then we could take another flight from Chengdu back to Shenzhen, ETA at around 8pm, perfect time again. 

The airport did not accept credit cards and we did not have enough money left for a new ticket (the old one could be refunded only through our travel agent) from Lhasa to Shenzhen which costed around RMB3200.  We then decided to buy just Lhasa to Chengdu which we had had enough cash and then we called our agent in Foshan and asked her to issued the rest sector for us.

So everything was set and we finally boarded the flight from Lhasa to Chengdu at 3:30pm.  Arriving in Chengdu at around 6:20pm (flight to Shenzhen departed at 7:20pm) and we only had limited time to grab our bags and checked in again with the tickets issued by our agent.  We were 'relieved' to find the flight from Chengdu to Shenzhen was delayed to 8:10pm so everything went well and perfect again, we thought!

The clock said that it was 8:30pm, still no sight of our plane and by 10:30pm, people were getting upset and a couple of men were shouting at the airline's ground staff.  At around 11pm, the boarding light eventually went on!  and around 20 people refused to board until a manager came out apologise. 

We didn't see that action but figured that the group was paid or compensated.  They finally got on at around 11:30pm and we finally took off!!!!!

We arrived in Shenzhen airport at 1:30am and there were no cars, buses etc... Ronald bargained and got us a private car (maybe part-time) to get the 5 of us plus 4 luggages and a few more backpacks into 1 sedan!!  Amazing. 

We were taken back to the border (24 hours) and we took our respective route of overnight bus back home.  We took the Tsuen Wan bus to my mom's place for the night.

Thus our 12-day Tibet trip basically had become a 13-day trip and ended here!

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