'No cameras, no cellphones, be quiet'

Today's title is what the sign at Shanghai Immigation said.

Word of the Day: Rojak. Traditionally a Malay salad with jicama, peanuts, pineapple, sprouts, etc, but in our case what our Singaporean taxi driver called our family -- a Rojak family, a lovely blend of Canadian and Malaysian.

So, moral of the travelling story: make sure you never get a connecting flight through Shanghai. Any other Chinese city is ok. (New rule.) But if going via Shanghai, you must claim your luggage there (cannot be checked through to final destination) and go through customs, and go backwards through customs again and check in luggage. That would be the luggage that you just cleared going out. You must clear again going in. Ahh...going through customs at Shanghai with 3 dazed children, at 3am EST, not so pleasant. Lots of officers everywhere. So you're thinking, superefficient, precision-oriented, militaristic, no messing about. Think again. Super long line-ups to begin with. Fair enough, it was a full flight from TO. One of those weaving, cordoned-off line-ups. Except, just to keep you on your toes, 2 or 3 officers keep changing the way the line-up mazes. So your S-shape might suddenly become, oh, an H...or an L. They simply readjust the cord reconnecting it at some new point. The Hampton Court Palace has nothing on this maze. Then there is the 'special' line-up. Turns out it is for families, but alas, families with tiny children (not just small...nice try, Alison). But then, you could get lucky, and an officer could suddenly do the re-directed maze dance, and adjust the cords right beside you. After waiting in line for a while, this happened to us. But then, we were told we must separate, 2 + 3, not 5. Crap. We only have one printed copy of our connecting flight schedule to Singapore. We try to explain this, showing the paper to one officer. This turned out to be quite comical (in hindsight, of course) as he had obviously forgotten his glasses, so he held our flight info in one hand miles from his face, squinted his eyes, and then put on a very serious official scary-Chinese-police face and said 'is ok, is ok, is ok', loudly. I am convinced he had no idea what we were showing him, but rather it was more important that he show us he was in full control and would take no guff. With or without his glasses. So we split: Ali and Taz, and then Jordan and Hannah with me. OF COURSE we were asked for the piece of paper we only had one copy of. So we were shouting at each other (3 customs desks apart) and the officers were shouting back and forth to each other in Chinese. A lovely calm scene, really. Not stressful at all. Nosiree. Then, as they check your passports out, you look in the camera and they scrutinize your face with the one on the passport. (Several times we had to ask Hannah to look up -- she was fed up and didn't quite get it.) Of course Taz looks nothing like the little gnome-like creature in the passport photo taken a few years ago. And of course, each time they 'approve' your photo, there is a little light that flashes on the edge of the counter, with a series of buttons, where you have to then rate the service you just got: (a) highly satisfied, (b) satisfied (c) basically satisfied and (d) not satisfied...each time they clear one passport. AS IF you would press any button other than (a) if you value your life and want to get the heck out of Shanghai airport. Then we get through to the 'other side' and head straight to the Singapore Airlines counter because Air Canada (a long story) has consistently messed up everything about this trip. (So much so, we are going to write a letter when we get home. Ok, I'M going to write a letter when we get home.) Our Singapore Airlines desk agent is, of course, Chinese, and is obviously not having a good day. Everything we ask (can we sit together, can he confirm we are all on the flight and not just Taz and Hannah -- Air Canada magically dropped the rest of us when we had to rebook post their simply dropping our return flight without notifying us -- and if he could confirm our flight home via HongKong Yeah! Not via Shanghai!) results in him pretty much ignoring us and sighing a lot. He occasionally answered 'yahyahyah' without looking at us (he had no idea what we were saying) and continued to type away at the computer, producing these massive sighs every 5 seconds or so. Huge, sad, I-don't-want-to-be-here sighs. Oh dear. I felt like I should be comforting him, or at least offering him another job or a cup of tea or something. We were at the counter for close to an hour. (Because, after yet another big sigh, he said he could not book us on the plane. What he meant was, he could not do it in the normal time,  right then and there, it would take 'many minutes', to use terminology.) Good thing we had 4 hrs in the airport, which really turned out to be an hour, after all was said and done. And while we were at the counter for our hour, with Mr Bridge of Sighs, a lady came over all giggly, smiled at our frazzled friend, said ONE SENTENCE and he handed her a boarding pass, and she giggled off. His sister? His mother? His aunt? A co-worker out of uniform? Of course, to contrast Mrs Smiley, at a counter across from us, not sure what airline, was an Indian man in not such a cheery mood. He was, without any exaggeration, screaming at the ticket agent 'JUST SAY YES OR NO!! THAT IS ALL I ASK!! WHEN I ASK YOU A QUESTION, ALL I WANT IS A YES OR A NO. THIS IS NOT A COMPLICATED F***ING QUESTION, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?' Yikes. Surprisingly enough, the gestapo-esque police just stood and watched him. Nothing happened. I guess it's not like he was using google or something evil or corrupt.

Eventually we made it out of there, had a quick coffee (funny experience in and of itself), back through customs (literally back the way we came -- except this time they took the kids' art scissors and wrote Taz's name on a list in a little black book, after taking a random passport from our stack of 5. Oooooo. Velly, velly scary.).

And, joy of joys, we entered the land of Singapore Airlines. Fantastic service, food, wine, games...everything. They put Air Canada and Canadian flight attendants to shame. Not a difficult thing to do, I realize, but still.

Flight was heavenly, about 5 hrs long, and we arrived in Singapore after midnight. Got to our hotel via a very zippy and chatty taxi driver, and were all in bed by 2. Couldn't really see the hotel until this morning...and we have pics to show you it. Absolutely lovely. Not high end, 3-star I think, but absolutely lovely. Delicious complimentary brekkie by the pool which is in a central area, like a courtyard, except it's a pool. Outdoors. So of course, the kids could hardly wait to finish brekkie, before launching themselves into the pool. Swimming away. Surreal. Happy. Happy. Happy.

And so here we are...the other side of the world...our kids are agog at the flora and fauna, the weather, the pool, the smells...really soaking it all in. We are about to head out now to the botannical gardens where there are mazes for the kids, an orchid garden, and a water park of sorts for them to go mental in. We will late-lunch it at Newton Circus which, as some of you know, is one of the great Hawkers' Markets in Singapore -- a veritable shopping display of some of the best fast foods in the world. See ya later US fast food chains. Hello Singapore noodles, Fishhead curry, and fruit juices galore.

Then we head to Penny and Peter's for dinner -- old friends of Ali's -- for a swim in their pool and dinner there. They also have a daughter names Sienna, aged 4. Looking forward to meeting Penny. All Ali's old friends are thrilled we are here -- Penny, Miriam, Allison and Richard.

Ok...need to go...stay tuned for next posting.

-Alison

PS we tried to upload a video...didn't work today, but we will get it up!