China Trip: Saturday, 15 July 2006

Estimated flight time was 8 hours and 15 minutes. We had a seafood roll for supper and then curry chicken with fried rice for breakfast. Many have said the meals weren’t that great on Malaysia Airlines, but hey it’s better than it was 8 years ago! Anyway, food is food, and I’m not fussed, unless I got food poisoning from it! I watched Madagascar and Eight Below.

6:30am
Landed at KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) in Malaysia. We waited at Burger King for the connecting flight. Tiong Kam, we discovered has an amazing metabolic rate. He eats a lot, and packs a lot of food in his backpack! At KLIA, we met up with more of our team members, who have been in Malaysia for a holiday: Chan Soon Neoh (the secretary of the summer school, and the guy we turned to if we wanted some computer stuff done for our classes), Ivy Tie and her 15 month old son, Samuel (great name!) I did think I recognised her, and I shortly found out she is Sheila’s older sister. Sheila studied electrical engineering at Melbourne University.

At the KLIA Burger King

Ivy and little “Sam-Sam”

9:30am
Our connecting flight taking us to Guangzhou, Guangdong, China (flight MH0376) left 45 minutes late due to one missing passenger. Whoever he was, the delay was due to airport personnel having to retrieve his already checked-in luggage! Also, there was only 1 runway available, so there was quite a queue on the taxiway.

2:00pm
Landed at Baiyunport, the airport in Guangzhou city. We met up with Pastor Huang (he’s the younger of the two church pastors) and the younger of his two daughters, Canaan, 14.

On the bus – Chan Soon, Canaan, Pastor Huang and Frank

We took a 3hour bus ride to Heyuan city, where the church was located. It rained all the way. It was a monsoon season at this time, and Guangdong was on the fringe of the typhoon. Some roads were flooded, but praise God we avoided the badly hit areas.

On the bus I was sitting next to Janet, one of the teaching assistants, or TAs. We met up with Jenny and Megan, who came via Hong Kong, as well as Liny (Frank’s wife) and Fong Peng, who came on a separate plane from Malaysia. And there’s our team of 13 (including young Sam-Sam).
“God I want to be a part of Your team in this – don’t let me miss out on opportunities that You put in my path. I want to be radically changed – shaped/moulded by You through this trip. Make it so I will refuse to go back to what I was: I don’t want to settle for second best!”

6:00pm
We had dinner in a nearby restaurant, and yes, we ate a lot!

9:30pm
We had lychees for supper – yum! They’re much better than from the can!
Then off to bed: we slept on hard mattresses, but blessed to have them nonetheless. Lying on bamboo sheets was actually quite cooling!