Originally Posted by
Mabuk dan gila
Yes, a note. Whenever I am trying to navigate something complicated and unfamiliar in China, I always get someone to write me a note in Chinese in advance, explaining what the heck I am trying to acomplish so when I get hopelesly confused I can pick a helpeful looking stranger, who will most likely point me in the right direction. I assume the converse would apply to a Chinese speaking person trying to navigate an English speking world.
Note that in an airport your boarding pass works pretty well at this, also.
The only time I've had trouble finding out where to go was because we were asking for the impossible.
We had been told the flight left later than it really did. (This was before the internet--we went on what we were told in person.) Due to major problems on the way to the airport we got there just after check-in closed, although given our erroneous flight time we thought we were tight but still ok.
Not only was the flight closed but they didn't have counter people out anymore as they had no more flights that day. (The flight we were after was a once-a-week.) We were running around all over the place, nobody could help. We finally found someone who spoke English and knew about the flight--we learned that our plane was pushing back as we spoke.
Since we had been given an errant flight time they rebooked us on a different route, different airline. (This was back in the days of regulation, no games with discount tickets or the like.)
The only time I've seen anyone else having trouble despite this was in China. The guy was a Russian, very limited English and apparently no Chinese. His problem was filling out the departure card--in English & Chinese, no Russian. He understood most of it but one blank had him stumped. He picked me as the one white face amongst a sea of yellow, figuring that I would likely understand English. He couldn't understand "Flight number" but fortunately did understand "ticket" and I was able to point out the flight number and point at the blank--he looked *VERY* relieved at that point.