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Gather round children and I'll tell you a tale. For I have traveled through the lands of Mordor into the promised beaches of Phuket and back again through the cursed lands to return to you all and reveal all I have seen and done. This tale begins in the before times... the long long ago.. Roughly a week and a half back. It was then that I embarked on my great journey of 15000 miles with my bestie. Beginning our quest at great gates of LAX. I had hired the great guide: Expedia, to guide us on our journey. For I had worked with him before and heard great tales of his many exploits. Little did I know that he would be playing Judas in this story mine! I first caught wind of his treachery when I spoke with the ChinaEast representative in the LAX terminal. Expedia had promised me 3 flights on my way to Phuket: A 15 hour flight to Shanghai, China, a one hour flight from Shanghai to Hangzhou, and finally a 6 hour flight from Hangzhou to Phuket, Thailand. I immediately sensed something was wrong when the ChinaEast representative only gave me one ticket, got a worried look, then ran off to speak with another person in Chinese. She then informed me that we would be getting the rest of our tickets when we arrived in Shanghai. This immediately struck me as off. As I have traveled extensively and have always been given all my tickets at once when taking multiple flights to a destination. If only I knew the horrors that would soon come... Damn you Expedia! Damn you to hell! I boarded my flight expecting it to be bad. How could it not be? 15 hours crammed in a tiny box with a hundred other people will always be a trial, but I was not expect it to be as bad as this was. My friend and I took our seats, hers being the window and mine being the middle (ech). The final seat next to the aisle was taken by a scrawny Chinese lad. My nose immediately recoiled from my bean pole neighbor as he carried with him a large bucket of KFC. The stench of his greasy fast food corpse bucket permeated through the entire section of the plane promising no escape from his chickeny hell. It was then that I truly came to terms with my situation. I was fucked. As my stinky chicken neighbor sat down next to me, supping idly from a cup of gravy, I then made a second discovery about him when he began elbowing me again and again in and attempt to claim BOTH armrests! The blackguard! The fiend! Had he no shame?!? It is very well known and common flight etiquette that the middle seat is given both arm rests as it is the worst seat to have. The window seat gets to lean against the cool plane wall and the aisle seat can lean out into the aisle and stretch out. Its simply common decency to cede the arm rests to the middle seat as courtesy to them being made to take it from both sides in the human sandwich. But this...monster! He was hellbent on claiming both armrests for himself. He ever so firmly was trying to nudge me off. Well I would be having none of that. Its a 15 hour flight. I had the time and I am not shy. Two can play this game. He wants to situate himself in my space? Then I'll take it up a notch. As he nudged into me to try and edge me off I simply leaned into him and nestled right in. As he pushed I simply leaned over into him, eventually tilting my head to side so it laid against his shoulder and settled in for nap. To his credit he lasted about an hour through this until finally recoiling away to his proper position and bothered me no more for the rest of the flight. Now if only the rest of the people on the flight didn't bother me... Never fly with ChinaEast. You will be stuck in a plane full of Chinese nationals and the flight will be feeding the entire plane several meals consisting of cabbage, bok choy, and fish balls. At first I thought the stench coming from the people around me was a series of flatulence due to the cabbage and bok choy, but NO! The rancid shit smell was actually just the people around me's hot, fetid fish breath as they breathed in and out around me. Normally in unpleasant situations I can render myself unconscious to endure the scenario, but between being pretzeled into a too small space in the middle seat, the overly high temperature that comes from cramming too many bodies in too small a space, and the overwhelming odor of rotting fish being exhaled by all the people around me I was unable to sleep the entire flight. Not even the bottle of Jack Daniels I brought on board was enough to save me. To make it worse I am certain that the flight attendant was discriminating against me and my friend for not being Asian. He would serve food and drinks to the people around me (all Chinese), my neighbor included, but ignore me and my friend. And when we would stop him to ask for something he would halt, say something in Chinese to his fellow flight attendant and then keep going, ignoring us. And I know he could speak English because he told me and my friend in perfect English that we couldn't put our seats back despite EVERYONE AROUND US having their's back. Asshole. That was one of the longest 15 hours I have ever been through.... As we landed in Shanghai, my friend and I, exhausted, wilted and sore hobbled our way from the plane. Through 3 security check points where no one manning it actually paid any attention to the luggage going through the screening conveyor belt, through the aisle labeled, "foreigners." dealing with the customs agent that demanded to view our tickets which we didn't have because we were supposed to receive it when we got there and finally shoved through into the filthy arena of Pudong airport. By then my friend needed to smoke, and I can hardly blame her. After that experience, I was about ready to pick up the habit myself. but as we went through yet another pointless security checkpoint to go outside I was immediately struck in the face by China. I can only describe the sensation as having a warm, moist, soiled diaper thrown directly into your nose and attempting to claw its way into your every pore. My eyes immediately began to tear up and start weeping more than a French soccer player. My entire face burned and by the time my friend finished her cigarette my nose had begun bleeding as well. I am very sensitive to pollution. I am like a canary in a mineshaft. When I visit polluted cities such as New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, etc I'll usually get a nose bleed after a day or two of staying there. Never before have I had such an immediate and strong reaction to pollution as I did in China. Even my friend, who smokes like a chimney, ended up getting a nose bleed by the end of the day while we were there. It was awful. Pollution in China is no joke. It was like a permanent hazy day there. What was creepier was that the entire time I was in China I didn't see a single bird. Not. A. One. I have to wonder if they all simply died from the poor air quality. Having finished with her business, my friend and I beat a hasty retreat back through another security checkpoint and into the less stinky but still fishy smelling Pudong airport. We made our way to the ChinaEast desk and the true treachery of Expedia was revealed to us. Our second, "flight" was actually a bus. despite it saying on the itinerary as being a flight and having a flight number... it was a bus. From Shanghai airport to Hangzhou airport. A 202 kilometer bus-ride. We had an 8 hour layover to figure it out and get there. So by this point, we both were like... "FUCK THIS PLACE! Let's go check out what weird shit Chinese Mcdonalds has." and made our way to the airport McDonalds as it was the only restaurant that we could find that wasn't serving bowls of fish heads, organ meat, or sea bugs. Now I normally hate the be the ugly American that doesn't want to try anything. I'm normally willing to give new foods 3 chances. but by that point i was stressed out and all I wanted was some God damned french fries and a coke to figure out my game plan over. In any other situation I would normally consider Mcdonalds to be disgusting. But that was before China decided to bend me over and rape me. Mcdonalds was meant to be a bastion to regroup in. That was until I got there and discovered that Mcdonalds in China doesn't accept Visa. A Mcdonalds... in an international airport... does not accept Visa. Visa. Which is taken most everywhere in the world. Who's slogan is "Its everywhere you want to be." I guess no one wants to be in China. Because nowhere in China takes Goddamn Visa cards! Instead all they take anywhere in China is Yuan, phone payments, and I kid you not, Nike and Penguin bank cards. Nike symbol and Penguin.... Fuck. So after discovering that we cant order at Mcdonalds because we have no way to pay we then set out to find an ATM to withdraw Yuan or a bank to exchange the USD I had on hand for Yuan. NOPE! The ATMs at the airport were out of service and the bank was closed and we had 7 hours to get from Shanghai to Hangzhou or we'd be stranded in China with no money. After being sent away from the bank by an airport employee who informed us in broken English that it was closed for service we were then approached by a Chinese lady in a business suit that asked us what we were looking for we told her a currency exchange, a bank, or an ATM. She was quick to reaffirm for us that those weren't available right now but offered to exchange my USD for Yuan herself. Now I am 100% certain she was scamming us, but by that point I just wanted to get the hell out of dodge and get going to our airport so we could LEAVE CHINA. I gave her 80 USD and she gave me back 450 Yuan. We then went through 3 more security check points that no one is paying attention to (this is all outside of airport security, China just has check points that they force you to put your bags through everywhere for some reason) We made our way outside the airport following the bus station signs... which lead down stairs... through a wet, dimly lit hallway, into a doorway of plastic sheets like you see dividing meat freezers in grocery stores, past a crowd of Chinese dudes yelling at us to "Not take the bus and to instead take a taxi with them. Just give them our credit cards and passports and they'll take us where we wanna go" and finally into a small crowded room where a line of people were purchasing bus tickets from a lady behind a glass wall. I show her my itinerary and she asks for our passports and charges 450 Yuan for our 2 bus tickets to Hangzhou. We had exactly enough money for our tickets and nothing else. But hey! At least we're on our way to where we need to go right? ...Right? We get on our bus and its supposed to just be an hour ride from Shanghai to Hangzhou. It ended up taking FOUR HOURS. We made one stop at a scary Chinese rest stop where my friend discovered that apparently Chinese restrooms have stalls that are ranked from 1 to 4 stars. And that the 4 star stalls are very very desirable. There was a long line out the door for the woman's bathroom. Not unusual. But what was was, that my friend discovered, was that apparently if you take too long using the bathroom, Chinese people will throw open the stall door and attempt to drag you out of the stall with your underwear around your ankles whether you've finished or not. Fortunately, my friend being a strong woman of fine Italian descent, straightened her back, and with a clear, firm tone, asserted herself to her assaulters stating, "GET THE HELL OFF OF ME, OR I'LL STAB YOU IN THE NECK! DO NOT FUCK WITH ME!!!" Now I don't think any of these women spoke English. From what I had experienced, little to none of the Chinese population do. However, she managed to get her point across and they left her alone to finish her business in peace. She hurried back onto the bus and off we went again. After 4 hours our bus finally arrived at its destination....which was not Hangzhou airport.... It dropped us off in the middle of downtown Hangzhou. Apparently we had to take a second bus from there to the airport. Only we have to buy another ticket to do that... FUCK! So here we are. Stranded in downtown Hangzhou with no money. We set out to try and find a bank to exchange our money or an ATM to withdraw Yuan. I attempted to ask some people for directions only to have one person spit at me, another throw garbage at me, and one give us wrong directions to nowhere that ended up having us go 3 blocks in complete opposite direction of the bank we did eventually find (which was near the damned bus station.) So we finally find a bank, we go through the door and have to pass through more of those plastic sheets (to keep pollution out maybe? I don't know) where we are stopped by the security guard. He wont let us talk to the bank tellers and instead tells us we have to use the ATMs which are in these little sealed glass phone booths. Which fine. Withdrawing money is just as good. We go into the booths and use the ATMs and discover... our cards don't work there either. They only accept Nike and Penguin. AUUUUUUUGH! My friend wonders if maybe our banks deactivated our cards? We both informed them we were traveling so it shouldn't be the case, but we pull out our phones to call them and discover.... our phones don't work either. I should have international roaming. It'll cost a fortune to make calls oversea, but I should have been able to do it. NOPE! Not in China! Great! Stranded with no money, no credit cards and no phones...in China. We go back to the security guard and ask to talk to the tellers to see if they can exchange USD for Yuan. He still doesn't let us approach them, but instead talks to them in Chinese, turns back to us and informs us that they cannot. Exchanging USD for Yuan is very hard to do and that we need to leave. So we're back to square one. Wandering the streets of Hangzhou looking for an ATM, getting further and further away from the bus stop and starting to get really sketched out, when by pure chance, we manage to find an ATM in this back alley location and praise be to God it took our cards. I manage to pull out 1500 Yuan and we head back to the bus stop feeling much better with money at hand. At the bus stop we line up to buy tickets and an aspect of Chinese culture I absolutely despise comes to the fore. They are pushy, rude, and have no sense of personal space. In line I had people pushing right up into me from behind, shoving me and trying to cut in front. When we did reach the ticket lady and were in process of giving the her our passports to buy our tickets, a man rushed up, shoved us out of the way and started purchasing his own ticket... and the ticket lady stopped helping us and sold him his ticket. AUGH. Everyone there is so rude and awful >:[ Fuck China! We finally get our tickets and get on a bus. Its a 20 minute ride to airport and at this point we're not even sure its going there or if we're to be subjected to another new fresh hell. Thankfully, this bus does take us to the airport and we have 3 hours before our flight. By now we're both exhausted and find a shop in the airport offering napping coffins for 80 yuan. I don't know how else to describe them but as coffins. They're narrow flat beds with walls that get covered up and sealed so its like being inside coffin. We rent two for 3 hours and manage to pass out until its time to go through security n get on next flight. I stop and use the restroom and notice that apparently Chinese people need to be told how to use a toilet as they had this sign in the airport bathroom. Which isn't that surprising since the restrooms I saw at the rest stop and in downtown Hangzhou were just a hole in the ground with a waste basket to throw toilet paper into. (No toilet paper was provided. You had to use your own. There was no soap, paper towels, or air driers in any of the bathrooms either.) Bathrooms aside though, we make it through security and board our flight... where I'm middle seat again and sitting next to a tiny woman with horrible halitosis. Blah. Well at least I'm getting the hell out of China. That was my mantra at that point. China is the worst country I have ever been to. I have been to several third world countries and none were nearly as bad as China was. I've been to Haiti after the earthquake and seen a severed human head on a wall and it was STILL better there than China. It was dirty and poor but at least the people were friendly. Chinese people are savage and rude. China is Mordor. Fuck China. I will never go back there if I don't have to. Finally, we arrived in Phuket Thailand. I was immediately struck by the difference between it and China. First of all, everyone there was super friendly and nice. Everywhere you went Thai people would greet you with a short bow, a smile, and a "Sawasdee." Even Ronald at their Mcdonalds got in on the" Sawasdee" action It was a refreshing 180°. Everyone was helpful and even if they didn't speak English were willing to make an attempt to communicate through gestures and pointing rather than just spitting on us. It was nice. We made it to our hotel and crashed out so as to have energy to begin our Thailand adventure! The first thing on our Thai bucket list that we got down to was visiting the Tiger Kingdom. The Tiger Kingdom was an animal park where you can pay to go inside cage with tigers and get your pictures taken with them. Their brochure assured us that the tigers were not drugged and only rarely attacked visitors. Which of course sounded totally rad and I was excited to get to do. We got there and purchased the package to have photos taken with their "giant" 4 year old tiger and with their new born 40 day old tiger cub. And well... see for yourself the results <; Tiger Cub: