Posted on 04/06/2006 2:25:58 AM PDT by freepatriot32
SEATAC, Wash. - As the sun dipped low in the sky last Sunday and his plane began its descent, Eugene Nelson had a sinking feeling that something was wrong.
He'd been in the air for hours, much longer than his business flight from Hong Kong to Taiwan should have taken. Then the airliner flashed a map of his flight's path on a video screen, and it hit him.
Instead of descending toward the island off China's eastern coast, the next stop on the Intel Corp. engineer's itinerary would be the remote city of Taiyuan, an industrial center deep within China.
Similar spellings and pronunciations. But a much different place, as Nelson would soon find out.
"Oh my God, it felt like someone poured a bucket of hot water on me. I realized I was literally 200 miles south of the Mongolian border," Nelson said Wednesday, after a tearful reunion with his wife and three young children at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
"That's when dread just came over me," he added. "I don't know how else to explain it."
Nelson, 39, of Littlerock, works for Intel's facility in the Pierce County town of DuPont. He was in the middle of a swing through about a half-dozen Chinese cities, checking in with business partners, when he said an apparent booking mistake left him stranded in the Chinese interior.
His first night was spent trying to find out where he was and how to get to a hotel, Nelson said during an interview Wednesday at the airport, with his wife, Michelle Chewerda, and the couple's two sons and young daughter looking on.
His first attempts at finding lodgings revealed the problems of the language barrier _ Nelson said he ended up at a brothel, and had to "damn near fight my way out."
He returned to the small airport in the city of about 1.5 million, but found it was about to close and officials would not let him sleep inside.
Nelson said he might never have found his way if not for a helpful young woman who spoke a bit of English and arranged for friends to loan the obviously distressed American money and give him a safe ride to a hotel.
"She probably saved my fricking life," he said, nearly breaking into sobs.
After using the hotel's rare international dialing capacity to make some calls, Nelson said he spent the next few days attempting to collect a wire transfer of cash and arrange a flight out of Taiyuan.
After nearly endless hours of searching, Nelson said he found a bank that would allow him to draw the cash that American Express had wired him. Then he spent hours figuring out how to get his account information translated into Mandarin so that he could access the money.
In between, Nelson said he faced danger and indignity, injuring his legs and back leaping out of the way of a reckless car and enduring the spit that some Chinese hurled his way.
Back at home, Chewerda was dumping money into her husband's debit account and working with the travel company, which she said was less than helpful at times.
"When I was talking to the guy from American Express, (he said) 'It says right here on my paper that they take American Express right out there at the airport,'" Chewerda said. But if that were the case, she noted, her husband "wouldn't have been there for four days."
"It seems odd, but they'd end every conversation with 'Have a nice day,'" Nelson said.
American Express officials contacted Wednesday by The Associated Press either declined immediate comment or did not return calls seeking comment on Nelson's journey.
After getting his hands on the money the company wired to him, Nelson said he finally had enough cash to begin arranging flights out of Taiyuan.
He met up with his acquaintances again at the airport, repaying their loans and trying to express his thanks, he said.
"Honestly, everyone who helped me, I'll never forget them," Nelson said.
He then hopped a flight, traveling through Beijing to Vancouver, British Columbia, and eventually to Sea-Tac, where he stood clutching his wife and children, mopping his own tears with the bright pink hood of his 16-month-old daughter Jodie's cartoon-character sweat shirt.
So how did it feel to be home?
"My God," Nelson said. "Better than I could possibly explain."
I wonder if they charge extra for that :-)
Just damn!
one for your just damn ping list perhaps
I can't believe that a seasoned business traveler didn't check his ticket's destination as soon as the ticket was issued. This doesn't make any sense to me at all. What kind of crap airline was he flying on? I've flown on many flights, on many different airlines, throughout Asia and they always come on before takeoff and give you info in English about the flight and destination even if it isn't an American airline.
We returned to the empty dock around 3:00 AM with no money, had to sleep on tables in the market then locate the shipping agent's office in the AM. We were given a train ticket to the next port (which was in Yugoslavia). We were supposed to get off the train and get another one after we made it from Italy up and into northern Yugoslavia. We wound up in a tiny town in the mountains, where no one spoke english. We managed to get a train to go down to our port, only to learn that she ship had come, loaded up and departed (to go back to Italy where we started).
We again found a shipping agent, got some meal money and another train ticket back to Italy. Two more days on the train and we finally caught up with the ship.
We wound up getting paid time and a half for the four days, as it wasn't our fault in the first place, but it was not fun!
I'm still thinking about this. If he flew out of Hong Kong, that's a big airport. When you go to the gate they always have the flight's destination on the board above the gate counters at international airports. Was this guy just sleep walking all the way onto the plane?
When I looked for that map on Google, the city of Taiyuan looks like a pretty cosmopolitan place. Skyscraper hotels, lots of industry, traffic and neon signs. This is hardly being dumped into some hick frontier town. This story seems a little odd to me as well.
Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Language is a barrier when you are in China because not just everyone on the streets speaks English, but he was at the airport. He could have asked people at the airline counter to help him book a room at a suitable hotel and call a cab, so that the cab driver knew before he picked him up where he was supposed to take him. I can't believe he just hopped in a cab and said take me to any hotel. I think this guy is just an idiot. I can't believe they wrote up a whole dramatic story about his idiotic adventures.
Well, probably not. In China it's just a common occurence for people, men and women, to be walking down the street and all the sudden just hawk up a loogie and send it flying. I've had to dodge spit before. It's like they don't think it's their duty to watch out for you. You watch out for yourself and if you hear the sound of someone clearing their throat you must be alert and ready to dodge a loogie.
I've also seen them press down on one nostril and give a mighty blow and shoot snot in all directions out of the other nostril. I know it's unbelievable, but they don't think any of this behavior is rude.
Oh, they ALL say THAT...:)
LOL...and WE are the uncultured barbarians...:) Go figure!
Dang!
Not only that, he lands in a town a only few hundred miles from Beijing or Shanghai, certainly within a one day train ride of a major international airport, in a city of 1.5 million people, and he's acting like they left him off over by the Afghan border. One would expect an employee of Intel to be more, well, intelligent.
No! Let me go back and face the danger!
I can't believe he was actually crying over this whole thing.
I hope his next performance review will note his apparent lack of planning and problem solving skills. It sounds to me as though Intel should stop sending him on trips around the world, since it seems to be too much for him.
Same thing happens at Berkeley. ;o)
Look, it's my duty as a knight to try and sample as much peril as I can.
Per the map he was hardly in the Chinese "interior" at all. Sounds like a Chinese version of that old comedy "The Out of Towners" were Sandy Dennis and I forget who as her hubby have a REALLY BAD DAY in NYC.
This man sounds like a big baby. Guess he wasn't a Boy Scout in his youth.
My husband told me that on his last business trip to Hong Kong that some of the men that went with him went out with clients drinking on the last night before their morning flight out. The party didn't break up till early in the morning hours. He said one of the men totally missed his flight the next morning and the other men that made the flight looked like total hell and were all miserable and passed out for the whole flight home. I'm wondering if this guy doesn't want to admit that he was just hung over and out of it and that is why he acted so stupid.
Interesting story. Maybe he will get his own TV show to compete with "Stranded with Cash Peters"
Gee, another computer nerd almost bites the dust!!!! What a dork.
"Nelson said he ended up at a brothel, and had to "damn near fight my way out."
I'll bet!
You may be right.... or maybe he planned the whole thing so he could come home, write a book, make a million dollars... etc.
Wow. What a sissy this putz is. *sob*
What a crybaby.
BS! There are more english speaking chinese people in mainland China, than there americans in CONUS.
Stranded in China without money? A bit hard to believe.
Chinese going out of their way to help? that's a joke.
IMHO, this seasoned traveller fell in "love" with a tiger girl and was cleaned out; too embarassed to state what really happened.
LMAO! What a wuss this guy is-and his story doesn't even pass the smell test-fighting his way out of a brothel, being "stranded" in a city of over a million people-I don't think so...
Good call, I'm inclined to believe that myself.
Although the next time I see one of those AmEx or rent a car commercials that portray yuppies as 'road warriors', I'll always remember this wuss.
What an idiot. Instead of having his wife work thru American Express, did it ever occur to either of them to contact the U.S. Embassy?! I don't have a lot of faith in bureacrats, but I'd think they might have had a few helpful suggestions.
"I'm wondering if this guy doesn't want to admit that he was just hung over and out of it and that is why he acted so stupid."
And that he stayed at the Brothel for four days and need the cash wired to him so the bill wouldn't show up on his card.
My boss had a big stack of business sized cards (English on one side, Chinese other) that stated things like: Take me to X hotel, airport and many types of eating establishments.
It was his second trip before he found places that served meat other than pig ears.
Didn't the story include he had to borrow money? The last brothel I heard of doesn't let you in without money...
Or at least the executives at Intel. Didn't they wonder where their employee was after he didn't show up in Taiwan ?
I wouldn't get too worked up about that. Here in the states I've heard it called the "Texas Hankie".
Nobody fles to a country ("Taiwan").
They fly to a city ("Taipei") or, better, a specific airport ("Sung Shan"). Better yet, especially when traveling overseas, one should use the international airport acronym ("TW") when booking flights.
Intel should have kept this dumb@$$ in Califoria -- where all he needs to know to commute is the ability to read a bit of Spanish...
Yeah, there must be a bit more to tell of this tale. I was wondering if perhaps he had a LOT of money BEFORE he went in the brothel.
Amembassy can/will provide emergency funds. Duty officer (Sh@#ty job)is on call after hours to assist flaming idiots such as this seasoned traveller.
Language is a barrier when you are in China because not just everyone on the streets speaks English, but he was at the airport. He could have asked people at the airline counter to help him book a room at a suitable hotel and call a cab, so that the cab driver knew before he picked him up where he was supposed to take him. I can't believe he just hopped in a cab and said take me to any hotel. I think this guy is just an idiot. I can't believe they wrote up a whole dramatic story about his idiotic adventures.
Agree with both of you.
This guy seems to have panicked and over-reacted. If he travels in China as much as the article suggests, then he should have picked up at least a little bit of the language. Hell, thanks to a college buddy, even I can order beer in Mandarin. That alone would keep me alive for at least four days! :)
This guy's a pussy. I traveled around in China by myself for six months in 1987. Trains and buses and cheap accomodations the whole way. I knew not a single word of Chinese when I got there. When I left, I could count to ten, I knew the characters for "man" and "woman"(bathrooms were so marked), and I could say "beer", "rice", "how much money" and "too expensive". I made out just fine. Ate every day and slept indoors every night. And I never had to fight my way out of a brothel once. Like I said, this guy's a pussy.
"I'm looking for a girl with green eyes."
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