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Airport security: "Please come to the back room with us"

Alive in Hong Kong!


What an eventful past 19 hours of pure travelling these have been. 

Chronological sequence of interesting events: I wake up in the airplane after 3 hours of sleep with the sun blazing into my eyes: 5am. Seems like the sky is the place to be for aspiring earlybirds yet chronic sleep-in'ers like me.

After this 1st 8 hour flight I caught a connecting flight in Dubai to Hong Kong (with no time to dilly dally). I quickly hopped onto another plane for 7 hours long. 
After a while I started realising these things:
  1. Just as your starting to digest your previous meal, here they come with another. (I'm ok with it)
  2. They have no idea what rooibos tea is :(
  3. Watching an entire season of 30 Rock on the plane is totally worth missing the sleep for
  4. Chinese babies are most definitely the cutest beings alive, where does one buy those again?
I was fortunate enough to (on both flights) have the seats next to me vacant. The 2nd flight I scored 2 seats when a lady moved because SHE wanted 3 open seats and I was stubbornly keeping that dream away from her.
I did not really want the 3 seater couch that was given to me, yet I felt obligated to lie down sideways every now and then just to get my money's worth.


A first:
  • fastest I've ever been: 667mph (mach 0.88 I believe)
Heart-rate 140BPM:
At passport control I, with my South African casual stroll, walk up nicely to the immigration counter, handed over my passport.
This was greeted with a smile, a skim through my passport...then a frown. The frown turned anxious and then she told me: "We have a problem"
10 minutes later I was ushered into the back of the back, the most secret of the secret and the most abyss of abysmal rooms I have ever been. Initially I thought I was only being deported, now I felt like I was going to be locked up with some other ghoulish looking people.
Thankfully another nerve pulverising 10 minutes later, they told me there was a problem with the linking of my visa but they fixed it and that I can be on my merry way. Which I was! (Mind you I prayed extremely hard for that 30 minutes, I believe that was another case of Grace)

Next thing: I get myself a Hong Kong sim card, a bottle of water and hurry off to the bus station where I climb onto the A41 bus to its terminal, Blaine's valiant uncle picks me up there after a quick local phone call and leads me to where I am typing you this message. Sweaty, stinky, humid and extatic is how I feel now. I am booked into my room, to which Blaine will be joining me in the morning.

Alas, let me be off. I shall now be taking photos and start posting them along with this blog. Now for a good shower, sleeping only in my boxers on my bed, but not after a good session overlooking the scene from my room (8th floor).

Sleep well, self and possibly audience.
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