I’m not a fan of flying these days, I guess I’ve done too much lately and they have all been long haul. This one is just over eight hours, however we had a delay of about an hour which was a bugger. I’m hoping that I still make my connection to Shanghai.

It’s not long before all the wonderful things I disliked about China came flooding back. The sputum, the coughing without covering the mouth and feeling the spray because you are in range. The slurping of food and drink, how do you manage to slurp bread for christ sake.

I’ve worn a mask since I left the house. The Uber driver seemed to be sweating a lot so I’m glad I had it on. Apart from having dinner on the plane I’ve kept the mask on, however we are about 90 minutes from landing and I’ve taken it off. My nose is being irritated constantly and so I just can’t put it back on because my nose is raw. As soon as I can get my bag I’ll get moisturiser. So hopefully I’ll not inhale any bugs.

So a big drama at the airport trying to get me to Shanghai, they wanted to send me to the main Pudong but my hotel is no where near there and to get to it would have been another hour and a half or more just to transfer. But after a lot of moaning and options they got me onto another flight with another airline and I finally arrived at 1 am feeling very weary. I brushed my teeth and took the fur of them and then went to bed. The hotel room had a wee surprise waiting for me which I found when I went to make a cuppa, the carpet was sodden and my lovely warm thick socks lapped it up.

Too late to complain or change rooms so I just went to bed and got up about 9 am feeling almost human. Breakfast was vast, however I settled for an omelette, Danish, and yoghurt with fruit and several cups of coffee.

I’m now on the train to Suzhou but can’t upload my post as I have no Internet and so when I meet Sissi at the station the first thing to do is go to China mobile and get connected.