Deportation

Wow. Being deported really does blow chunks.

The story? Apparently, you can transfer through China without a Visa as long as you are only stopping ONCE in China. If you happen to have two layovers in China...you need that little square paper. This was unknown to us.

We step off the airport after our plane departed thirty minutes late and rush to immigration so we can hurry through in hopes of making our connecting flight (that is taking off in half an hour). Area gets to the desk and they ask the one question we all dread, "Visa?". After explaining we are just passing through, Chinese officials move us to the corner of the large room. There we wait for someone to come talk to us. A woman finally comes and chats with us for a moment before scurrying off. Our situation is unclear at this point. All we know is that there are a lot of guards suddenly showing up around us.

A gentleman in a clean blue suit, holding a walkie-talkie saunters over - our knight in shining armor. He speaks English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. He is our only translator. He explains that we have to have a visa because we have two stops in China. We explain we don't have one. We discuss options. Our Canadian friend, D, can go on ahead but she'll have to wait for the next flight because we just missed our connecting flight. Since we have two stops, two connecting flights, this would just put her in another part of China with no further flight. Thus our only real option is to purchase tickets back to Korea and see if we can get a flight straight to Shanghai to catch our connecting flight from Shanghai to Phuket.

This seems practical considering we have no other choice. Four guards show up and escort us to the ticket counter. Wait? What was that? No cash? Credit only? Damn. Another bump in the road. Thankfully, our lovely Canadian friend had enough money on her card to help us out - if she had gone ahead, we would have been stuck.

We board our flight, the same cabin workers that waved goodbye are now sadly welcoming us back.
Is it over yet? Nope. We get back to Korea and go to Korean Air to discuss compensation for any of the flights we have scheduled to get to Phuket and/or get back - nothing.

Waiting for CheapOAir to decide if they are going to give us a refund as they canceled all our flights. Apparently, if you have three flights scheduled in one day and you miss one, you cannot catch the last flight. So even though we could have possibly gotten to Shanghai by that night, CheapOAir canceled our flight from Shanghai to Phuket. Our return flight was canceled as well. We only just bought new tickets on Friday to get home Sunday. A very expensive trip to Thailand...we've bought two tickets each to get here and two each to get back. Hopefully CheapOAir will be refunding our unused tickets. Fingers crossed.