We’d completely neglected earlier on in our itinerary planning check which of the two international airports we’d be departing Chengdu from. There are two airports: Shuangli, which is located near to the city center, and Tianfu, which is much further away and south-east of the city, and also where we’d be flying home from. Tianfu is a good 60km from where we’re staying at the Citadines, and even in very early morning and low traffic, would likely mean an hour to get there. And visitors have also remarked that it is advisable for us to get to Tianfu 3 hours ahead of departure. With a 9:50AM flight, that meant we’d have to head out by 6AM. Still, if nothing else, the kids this holiday have been used to waking up super early, so we pre-arranged for our airport transfer the night before, and at 5:45AM, or ride was waiting at the hotel lobby. Traffic was minimal this early in ths morning, and by 6:35AM, we’d arrived at Tianfu. Check-in took a while longer with manned counters, but was far more painless than arrival into Kunming with aggressive immigration officers and very long queues.
We were flying Air China – our first time, and the wife was initially on a little worried about air safety, and quality of onboard services and such. I assured her that the Chinese take air safety extremely serriously – particularly those on international routes – and moreover, Air China was their flag carrier. As for onboard services, well, we weren’t expecting SQ standards, so as long as the seats were reasonably comfortable and there was lunch provided, there wouldn’t be any complaints from me. As it turned out, the flight home was as smooth as it could get with practically no turbulence, the flight departed on time, landed into Singapore early 15 minutes at 2:40PM instead of 2:55PM, and there was generally sufficient legroom in economy. Inflight F&B though was indeed a little meh, no inflight entertainment system, and no option for in-plane WIFI that I could find. Thankfully, the 4.5 hours passed by quickly, and by 3:35PM, we were back at home.
So, this was our longest family trip of 21 days. Though deducting the front and end days where we were just trying to get to Kunming and then back home, there were finally 19 days of actual touring. Of these, we had 14 full days of sightseeing, 2 further overhead days where we were just getting from place to place (basically Chengdu => Jiuzhaigou, then returning), and 3 days in Chengdu where we largely just lazed around and took things super easy. I’d initially thought that 21 days is a perfect length of time to spend on vacation. But after this holiday, I’ve concluded it’s a tad too long for wintering countries! Specifically, our tropical climate bodies were starting to strain under cold conditions for this length of time, and the generous amount of ointments and lotions we’d brought along was not keeping up to the rashes/blisters/dry skin we were all facing. I reckon if we’re returning to cold weather places for our next family vacation, we really have to keep things to 18 days or less – our previous norm!
Over the next few days, I’ll be wrapping up my series of posts for this trip: starting off with an itinerary retrospection, equipment commentary, and final reflections. More to come!