When you arrive at the airport in Sanya, China, and get off the plane, don’t rush ahead through the security frames. To the left of the entrance there are machines you need to go to, have your fingerprints taken, get a slip of paper, and only then move on. I was lucky: I knew this and was almost one of the first to go through the procedure, while behind me a huge queue formed of those who had rushed ahead and been turned back. After that you go through passport control, collect your luggage, find your tour operator and head to the bus. All in all, apart from the fingerprints, everything is as usual, just like in other countries. You’ll be taken to your hotel, someone will go up to reception with you (reception staff speak only Chinese), you pay a deposit, get your key and off you go to relax.
At the end of your holiday things are no longer as straightforward as on arrival.
You hand in the key, get your deposit back, and you’re driven to the airport (with attempts along the way to flog you something — in my case they tried to sell me medicinal patches). Once you arrive at the airport, the fun begins.
The airport is very stuffy and has no air conditioning. People are let into the airport one at a time, after being scanned with some kind of wand and getting a positive answer from a second employee. Then you stand in a queue (there is almost nowhere to sit) to get into the hall where you get your ticket and check in your luggage. They let people through one at a time, checking passports. You put your luggage through the scanner, go to the check-in desk, hand over your passport, check in your bag and wait. If you don’t smoke and there are no matches, lighters or anything like them in your luggage, you’re very lucky: you’re given your ticket and your passport. If there are matches, a lighter or anything similar in your luggage, an airport official, pointing at you and your bag, proudly says “zazigaka” (their version of the Russian word for “lighter”). After rummaging through my suitcase, I said there was no lighter in it; they checked it again and sent it on, after which I got my ticket and passport.
Moving on to the security frames and hand luggage check, the guy in front of me ran into trouble. He had a small backpack with lots of pockets, and since he was obviously a smoker, he got stuck. On top of that, his backpack was stuffed with gadgets and clothes, which made it hard to search. Before the frame he threw away 3 lighters he’d found himself and went through. Naturally, once his backpack went through the scanner, it heard the word I already knew — “zazigaka” — and that’s where he got stuck for about 20 minutes: they shook out his whole backpack, took all the lighters, all the matches, the wet wipes (probably because of the alcohol in them), ran his backpack through the scanner again and again, and started getting nervous, looking at his passport and writing something down in a notebook, after which he got nervous too… Fortunately, it all worked out and they let him through.
Back in our own country, after all the standard procedures, all the smokers went looking for someone with a lighter — and since ours was the only plane that had arrived at that time, it was hard for them to find anyone with one 🙂
Oh, and yes — there are no business lounges or anything like that there…
Happy travels to everyone.
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