When we last left our heroes, we had just landed in Guangzhou with about 4.5 hours between our flights which were on separate tickets. The easiest move would have been to seek a transit desk and just head right back into international departures, but with that much time we wanted to head outside immigration...especially because we had seen several posts online about the challenge where people had had significant difficulties with Kenya Airways here.

For ​​​​FlyIgglesFly on an EU passport entering China without a visa was a piece of cake, but I had to figure out how to avail myself of the 72 hour transit without visa...and while this is still a great option to have, China doesn't make it clear who to approach in the immigration hall, and every airport in China handles it differently. I tried the easy route first of walking right up to the immigration agent and just asking for it. After he figured out what I was trying to do, he pointed me to another area clear across the large hall, where there was a short queue of people trying to do similar things.

It took me about 45 minutes to get to the front of the queue, including translating for a Russian family with extremely limited English, but when I got to an agent...and they finally accepted I was weird and wanted to go airside for a few hours...eventually after lots of "computer is down" and back and forth I finally had permission in the computer...and a sticker was put in my passport and I was told to just head out through an open immigration lane and into the arrivals area. No problems at all, and soon we were off to try and find the check-in area.

Up some escalators, wandered a bit, and finally found out Kenya was at the far end of the check-in counters...and we headed there via a photo op detour:



The check-in queue for economy was a hot mess express, so I dragged FlyIgglesFly with me to the business counter in hopes they would help him out there as well. Agent was happy to help, but insisted on weighing each of our bags including small backpacks/laptop bags. Told me I was ok (I did have my bag slightly lifted off the scale to remove a few kg) but FlyIgglesFly would need to lose 5kg. We assured here we would find a way in order to avoid her forcing us to check anything, and eventually she relented and let us go.

We had heard there was another scale strategically located between check-in and security manned by Kenya Airways contractors, so we had to prepare for that possibility. I've never come across a flight so strict about weight before, but this route is incredibly popular with African traders who head to China to buy stuff and bring it back, so I guess the airline wants to ensure they collect every cent of overweight bag fees they possibly can. I knew I was also over by about 5kg (even with the higher business class allowance) so step one was to put on my jacket until the pockets were overflowing with anything small/heavy I could. I even wrapped my laptop in my jacket and carried it under my arm to be strategic... FlyIgglesFly had even brought a small handheld scale, and while I got my bag within 0.5 kg of the limit, there was no way he would get close enough...even with jacket shenanigans.

We hatched a plan. First, pretend not to speak English or Chinese when they asked if we were flying Kenyan, and just keep walking. If that failed, we agreed I would go first since I was in business and more likely to get away with "come on bro, it's less than 1kg over." while he tried to sneak by behind me. In the end, however, we knew FlyIgglesFly would probably have to check his bag. We just didn't want to wait an extra hour at midnight for checked bags if we didn't have to. We weren't able to get by him, because he was demanding to see a boarding pass for everyone who walked by (not sure how that's "legal" when he's airline staff) but it is what it is. I had a rather heated (but polite) discussion with him when I came in 0.4kg over and he insisted I was going to have to check it. If only he knew how much more was in the jacket.... while this was going on for 2-3 minutes, FlyIgglesFly did manage to sneak right behind and into the security line. He eventually relented and let me go. Whew, victories!

Unfortunately, security was another disaster. There was what appeared to be a smaller town Chinese couple in front of me, and they ended up having to put their bags through more than a dozen times because the security people kept finding this or that that looked suspicious on x-ray. I swear they had their whole lives in those bags because it literally took me half an hour to get through...and this was the business class line! I've never felt TSA was more competent in my entire life.

Eventually we made it through...and I'm going to have to disagree that this airport is the "Five Star Glory of Baiyun."



We were both fading pretty hard, so of course a stop for some Starbucks near our gate was in order. Plus the area near Starbucks was nice and cool, so it made a nice place to wait for boarding. After a bit more time we got bored, so FlyIgglesFly headed over to a convenience store to see what kind of interesting localish finds he could bring back. We ended up with a couple of Chinese beers to kill the time (hope drinking them in "public" in the airport was ok?) and soon it was time to board.

The gate area was heaving with people since economy class was full tonight, and the staff seemed quite ill-prepared to handle it, but eventually it was time to get on board and at least out of the gate area chaos.

Kenya Airways flight 887
Guangzhou, PRC (CAN) to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, Thailand (BKK)
Depart 21:40, Arrive: 23:35, flight time: 2 hours 55 minutes
Boeing 787-8, Registration 5Y-KZB, Manufactured 2014, Seat 4A
Miles Flown Year-to-Date: 214,383
Lifetime Miles Flown: 3,254,280

First impression of the seat when boarding was about as expected. I expected a severely out of date 2-2-2 product that might have a bit more padding and be nice, and that's exactly what it was. ExpertFlyer was showing that the seat next to me was empty, so I was hoping that would stick.



No welcome on board from the crew, and they seemed to be pretty frantically scurrying about to get the cabin ready. We'd noticed that they'd boarded not long prior to boarding, so no doubt they were behind in their preparations.

During boarding I also got to "enjoy" the guy across the aisle who had much a much different concept than I did of what was appropriate in public spaces. Gross enough being barefoot on a plane, but putting them on the wall? UGH.



No pre-departure drinks were offered, and boarding seemed to be taking forever because despite how hard they had been patrolling the check-in allowance many people seemed to be bringing on bags and bags of possessions. No idea how that happened. Apparently they had either forgotten pre-departure drinks or something else was up in preparing for them, but just a couple minutes before the door closed, when all the passengers were boarded, they did come around with them!



But hey, at least there was a printed menu for this short flight. File that under things that do nothing to make the flight more pleasant but still cost money lol.



Once up in the air, I was getting pretty excited for my promised "African culinary experience" so you can imagine I was a tiny bit disappointed when this arrived as the only meal option:



...yup, a pre-bagged cold sandwich. They couldn't even take it out of the bag and serve it slightly classier on the plate? Or is this one of those things where bag = fresh and not tampered with? Hard to know...but I loved the embroidered napkin. (When the flight attendant came to collect trays I had set the napkin aside hoping I might be allowed to keep it as a collectable...but they spotted and asked for it...I did ask if I could "keep it a bit longer" and was told "no. they must be counted." Interesting...they also took the menus back. Quite strange. Given the fact I see people walk off United with entire Polaris bedding sets all the time maybe I should have just put it in my bag and said I never got one...but idk, it just felt wrong to me.

Oh, as an aside, the sandwich did taste reasonably good all things considered:



After the stress level of the crew during boarding went down, they were quite lovely and pretty chatty, so I did get to experience some of that African warmth that I love. It really makes a difference to me when you can tell that people enjoy their jobs, and it was nice to get to chat with them a bit about the airline and their jobs. Apparently this route is one of the most prestigious for their crews because of the shopping opportunities and quality of layover...just a bit behind the European and New York routes.

Near the end of the flight, a guy came up from coach to ask the purser if him and his friends could move up to business class to get off the plane first when we landed...because they'd booked a connection out of the other airport in Bangkok in just 90 minutes and "they would lose their million miles if they didn't make it." - seemed there was a large group of friends doing the challenge, but had booked some ridiculously tight connections. The crew denied their request...but....

Other than that, the flight was pretty uneventful and pleasant. We landed just a few minutes late into Bangkok, and as soon as the door was open they stormed up from economy practically knocking other passengers (and me) over trying to get to the door. Some people are absolute selfish idiots.

Fortunately immigration was pretty light at this hour and we were soon in a Grab to our hotel layover for the evening. We were fortunate to have two nights in Bangkok and were really looking forward to the down time. We'd built in this buffer in case any of the flights leading up to it had problems and we had to scramble to rebook things...but since everything had gone smoothly so far we got a full "day off" in Bangkok to enjoy as a reward. I'll talk about Bangkok in the next post before we head off to Vietnam....now 11 airlines down and just four more to go! Woot Woot!