Demons In The Circuitry

I looked at my itinerary for this trip and apparently I am flying around the world with a 6 day lay-over in Bangladesh.

The trip to Dhaka, the capitol city of Bangladesh, took me and my colleague through Beijing and Kunming, China and started off, from the very start in Seattle, with shenanigans. I met my colleague at the check-in counter. She had been there for an hour already, trying to figure out how to get Hainan Airlines to let us on to their flight to Beijing. We were flying Eastern China Airlines from Beijing, through Kunming and onto Dhaka, however Eastern China Airlines had not posted any departure or arrival times for their flight. Hainan did not want to send us to China only to have China send us right back because we don’t have a transit visa.

My main question is, what kind of airline does not know what their departure and arrival times are for a flight THE NEXT DAY?? Even stranger, nobody could get a hold of anyone at Eastern China Airlines. When it was finally sorted out and Hainan Airlines let us onto their plane, my colleague and I just hoped that once we arrived in Beijing, there would, in fact, be a plane to take us to Dhaka.

Our first test was immigration in Beijing. We didn’t get a transit visa because everyone said that as long as we don’t wander out of the secure area, we would be fine. But since we were changing from international to domestic, we had to go through immigration. My colleague and I exchanged glances during her extended wait at the immigration counter while the immigration officer called the immigration police over to sort it all out. In the end, we got a 24 hour stay permit and were free to go.

Our next stop was Kunming where we were told was that we would stay on the plane and wait on the tarmac for about an hour before continuing on to Dhaka. Sadly, when we landed, we were ushered off the plane with everyone else. Both of us were exhausted and had been fast asleep on the trip over and were looking forward to just sleeping through the transition -- oh well. We followed the other Dhaka passengers into the airport where we gathered around in one large confused circle. The passengers who were lucky enough to speak Chinese got directions on what to do next and walked off. The rest of us could only watch.

Eventually we were led through the small airport, through security (again), and to the gate where we sat down and waited some more. Gate 2's sign showed our flight number to Dhaka and said that it was waiting to board. My colleague and I just zoned out for a while until I noticed that everyone who had been waiting by Gate 2 had suddenly disappeared. I got up and saw people going through Gate 1, all the way on the opposite end of the building. We grabbed our stuff and hurried over there even though our tickets said Gate 2 and the screen above Gate 2 still displayed our flight number. It was lucky for us that I noticed the mass exodus because Eastern China Airlines was sneaking people out through Gate 1 for the Dhaka flight. If I hadn’t looked up right at that moment, we would be still sitting in Kunming.

Finally, we arrived in Dhaka at 1:30 in the morning. The heat and humidity punched me in the chest as I exited the plane. Considering it is 1:30am, this is a bad sign. By the time I got to the terminal, I had 3 mosquito bites. By the time I got through immigration, I had three more. All my colleague and I could think about was crawling into bed and sleeping for days.

We checked in at the hotel, went up to our rooms and, while my room seems to be ok, my colleague’s room was possessed! The lights went on and off at about 15 second intervals. Preceding each black out, a high-pitched alarm went off. The whole thing was quite disorienting for both of us considering our lack of sleep and the fact that we have been traveling for 24 hours. We helplessly punch some buttons on the weird master electrical panel before giving up and going back down to reception to ask them to cast off the demon. They somehow manage. It’s now 3am and I am finally in bed.