Fri 6 Jan Up at 5am to be back at the airport by 6:30. We arrived and joined the queue, but there were no counter staff in sight. When they did arrive, they spent ages talking and on the phone. Then we were told to line up a t a different check in counter, which meant that the poor people who had lined up the longest were no longer first. Eventually at 7 am the China Southern Airlines manager arrived – to unimpressed applause. Once again it took about 20 min to process each person. A large group of backpackers decided to argue that they wanted boarding passes for the second leg of their trip from China to Australia before getting on the plane. This just held things up – they had been pretty vocal the night before too.
We eventually got our boarding passes after 8am and boarded the plane, which was now on the very edge of the airport, 15 min by bus! Michael, Chris and I had 4 seats between us and Matthew was the only one in his row of 4 in another section. I decided to go and sit with Matthew and hopefully stop anyone moving if those seats weren’t allocated. Unfortunately a Chinese man joined us. After takeoff, Michael came to sit with Matthew and I went to sit with Chris so I could lie down. The Chinese man moved, so all of us had 2 seats each.