The following isn't really newsworthy, but I am posting just to underscore the point that walk-ups are doable.

I was hanging out with two of my colleagues in Xidan today, while one was seriously contemplating forking over y900,000 for a special telephone number (we can start a new thread about that, if you like) when I got a call to get to SH asap for a 9p meeting.

I asked Mr. Hu (who we had already hired for the day) to take me to the airport, but he took me to the Xidan airport bus stop instead because he had a more imporant engagement at 6.

Anyway, I boared a 5:10 bus and made it to the airport at 5:46, in spite of ugly traffic on the second ring.

I called ctrip when I was on the bus, but they offered no love. However, they did point me towards Shanghai Airlines, which had a 6:30 flight.

I then bought a qi-zhe ticket (30% discount) for a whopping y940, checked in, and got on the plane. Amazingly, it was on time on all fronts, in spite of the double bus gate scenario.

The taxi line at Hongqiao was fierce so I did the McDonlad's trick and made it out of there in a matter of minutes. What's more, I got to the restaurant before everyone else (8:50).

The moral to this tale is that there's no point obsessing about booking weeks in advance because you can stilll get there. While it's true that I probably paid too much for my ticket, all was well in the end. I spent an extra $40 to take a flight that was actually on time (I asked before handing over my money). To me, that was money well spent since the alternative would have been sitting around the airport for 3 hours to fly to PVG.