Departing Afghanistan
Today I woke at 5 am like normal, walked to shower, dressed, walked back to room to pick up backpack, and walked to work. Started the workday at 6am, finished up some last minute work; offered my room to Colin the President of Five Rivers who will be stay on Bagram Air force base for a few days while I am gone. He can use my room instead of staying in a tent on the other side of the air base. About 10 am, I walked back to my room to get suitcase and backpack for the trip. I packed the night before. The check in for commercial DFS Airlines at the DFS terminal is between 9am – 11am. I arrived at 10:30 am.
At 11:30, the passengers boarded the bus for the short trip to the airplane on the flight line. The place flew to Kandahar for a stop to pick up and drop off passengers; Then on to Dubai. In Dubai the flight arrived at Terminal 2 which is the terminal for the nontraditional and lower cost airlines. Terminal 1 is for all other airlines except Emirates airline. Terminal 3 is a new terminal built just for Emirates airline.
Leaving the Mountains of Afghanistan for the Mountains of Northern China
ARRIVING DUBAI
After I walked off the plane and rode a bus to the terminal, I have to check through immigration. For US citizens and citizens from about 33 other countries, no visa is required in Dubai. Generally persons traveling as tourists from counties where citizens have enough money to support themselves and pay their way without working or engaging in illegal activities can enter Dubai without a visa. A US passport provides US citizens with a lot of freedoms. We can fly to many countries without a visa or we can obtain a visa at the airport on arrival. Citizens of few other countries have this freedom.
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After Immigration, I have to collect my bags from baggage claim and proceed through customs. Generally the arrival is non eventful. Just follow the crowd and act like you know where you are going. Outside customs there are ATM machines, money changers, and counters for hotel and car reservations. Like other modern airports, all the signs are in English and the local language English is the language of business and the language of travel. Most sign on major streets and in shopping malls, restaurants, stores that cater to foreigners are written the local language and English. .
A taxi ride is required from one terminal to another. I heard there is bus but have not found it in all the trips to and through Dubai. The taxis at the Airport have to pay a fee to drive into the airport so they charge an extra 20 Dhrms ($3-4 USD). It is a short walk to a local Mosque on the other side of the parking lot. Normally, I catch a Taxi at the Mosque which is cheaper than from the airport. Most of the Taxi drivers in Dubai wear uniforms and they are Arabic. In contrast, few of the Taxi drivers in Kuwait are from Kuwait. Most are from the Philippines or India. I know of one Chinese Taxi driver but he only speaks Chinese and just caters to Chinese passengers.
DUBAI AIRPORT
The next flight is on a China airline at Terminal 1. I arrive at Terminal 1 about 6PM but the ticket counter does not open until 10:30pm so I cannot get a boarding pass for 4 more hours. The waiting area has limited space and facilities until after you go through customs with a boarding pass. I have to wait for 4 hours to get a boarding pass. The daily flights from Afghanistan arrive between 4 – 5 pm while the flights to the US and other countries do not depart until long after midnight; sometime not until 7 or 8 am the next morning. With long layovers, many people go to close by hotel for dinner, sleep, and shower. One time I was staying for a couple of days. The next morning one of my coworkers traveling to the US showed up at my Hotel later the next morning. He had overslept and missed his early morning flight. He had to find another hotel to stay until he could schedule another flight to Houston.
On this trip I decided to wait at the airport for my flight that was leaving at 1:00 am to Beijing. I have a Dubai SIM card for my phone so I bought more mantes to call friends and family and let them know I arrived safely in Dubai. But I could not get my phone to work even after several calls to the cell phone company’s customer service and talking to 3 different cell phone salesmen. The phone and SIM card worked previously in Dubai. I think some setting on the phone required in Afghanistan messed up the phone for use in Dubai. I will try to buy a SIM card in China and try to call from there.
I am bored waiting for the ticket counter to open so I find a remote section of the food court to practice Yoga. Most all the people are at the gates but I have arrived early and cannot go the gates until after I have boarding pass about 3 hours before the flight. There are few people in the food court where I practice 45 minutes of stretching, sun salutations, and hand stands.
When it is time, I begin standing in line for China Southern Airline waiting for the ticket agents to arrive. The first person is line is a young Arabic man and his wife. He seems to not speak English but she can so I talk to them for a little bit. I could not determine why they were traveling to China. Behind me in line are three people, 2 men and women, from Africa. They could not speak any English. The rest of the people in line were Chinese.
I was standing in line when three Chinese women came through the baggage check point. For some reason the police asked for the passports for two of them and took them off to another areas of the terminal. The third one stood with the luggage for nearly an hour. Finally the two came back, laughing it off. I was not clear why the police wanted talk to them and check their credentials. Later I saw them on the flight but did not ask them why the police detained them.
When I walked up to the ticket counter after waiting for nearly 1 hour, I found out I was at the wrong airline ticket counter. The airline I was flying was China Airline and not China South Airline. Both airlines had planes leaving at the same time. I took my bags to the China Airline for a boarding pass. I checked my roller bag and carried my back pack through customers and another baggage security check. There are two security checks – one when entering the airport and another just before immigration. Sometimes there is a full inspection of everything in the carryon luggage but this time to China no one looked inside my bag. I did not have to take off my shoes, take my computer out of the bag, or put my liquids in a separate small plastic bag.
In the gate waiting area and on the flight there were about 400 Chinese and maybe 4 westerners. I was not sure if they were from Europe or from USA.
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