A shitty day

I was hangover and tried to calculate how much time I would need to get to the airport on time and go past the post office on the way to send the helicopter when I finally decided to get up at around 2pm. After I done my morning bathroom stuff and got back to the room the key didn't work anymore, of course it was check out overdue but I had told them I wanted to check out in the afternoon, it worked out when I got down to the front desk though.

I also found out that taxi was not an option, during the holidays it would cost me 180kuai to get from central Beijing to the airport and that is just about 180kuai too much, I did figure out that I would need about one hour before departure at the airport, that is around 6.30pm, about one hour from the train station to the airport, that is around 5.30pm, and around 30 minutes from the hostel to the train station, that is around 5pm. It was only 3pm by then so I figured I had around 1½ hours (to be on the safe side) to have breakfast and get to the post office, which fortunately was on the way to the subway station.

The next bad thing coming my way was a pizza that took one hour to make, so I suddenly only had half an hour to eat and post, the next thing was that despite telling them that I really don't want mushrooms on my pizza the pizza was basically mushrooms and cheese, so I pretty much had to remove all the topping and eat the bread, because even though they offered to make a new one I just didn't have time to wait for it. Next was the price of the pizza, I had ordered a small pizza but for some reason gotten a large, I only finished half of it and they still said I had ordered a large, they were nice though so I finally only had to pay for the small one.

Setting out on my way to the post office and the beginning of my journey to Hong Kong at 4pm I found my next problem pretty soon, of course the post office closes at 4pm and not 5pm because it was holiday, so I had to carry around the bulky helicopter for the rest of the day (and will have to keep doing that unless I can post it from Hong Kong, which I'm not totally sure I want to). The rest of the trip to the airport went quite smoothly though, I got on the subway and got myself to the train station and quickly found the airport shuttle busses and got on, and it wasn't even 5 yet.

More problems came my way once I got to the airport though, I managed to get off at the wrong terminal, not so easy for me to know because no one had ever told me which terminal I should go to and it did say domestic departures. So after some time of figuring this out, worrying like hell over not finding my flight on the screens, I had to do a 10 minute walk to the other terminal, where things again went rather smoothly, fortunately. But I was early and had an hour to kill; luckily I found a wireless connection that could be activated with an SMS so I spent the time on Facebook.

The liftoff was pretty cool; luckily I had gotten a window seat and as an early new years eve like it was there were fireworks all over the city and I could see them quite clearly for about 10-15 minutes, I did still see sparks on the ground most of the flight actually but it was the lift off that was coolest.

At Shenzhen airport I managed to find a "bus" that could take me to the China/Hong Kong border, it was actually just a mini bus but it seemed kind of legit with an official booth in the airport, and it wasn't TOO expensive. At the border I found more problem, the first and minor one was that they couldn't read my visa stamp clearly so they thought I might have overstayed my visit, they finally gave up on that though, next was the borderline, which I didn't realize was a borderline until it was too late, I was tired as hell and hadn't eaten anything the whole day except the crappy pizza bread and the crappier airplane food and I couldn't find where I should go. I finally did get on a coach to somewhere more central though and that's when I discovered that we hadn't entered Hong Kong yet.

And to enter Hong Kong presented more problems of course; the coach stopped and there was some information in Chinese or Cantonese and everybody got off, I did the same but left some of my luggage in the coach, which turned out to be a bad idea, and tried to figure out what to do. I did go through immigration without any problem but there was still the luggage problem, which I had realized would be a problem, and once I got out the coach just didn't show up. When it finally did some people came complaining at me over luggage and stuff and I had to go back to the immigration to get my luggage and when I got out again the coach had already left, of course.

There was another one though and it took me to the place I "wanted" to go, which was luckily just next to a subway station and from there I could make my way to Tin Shui Wai where Joyce lives, it was not the optimum place to be though and I basically had to backtrack six stations to get on the KCR West rail and then travel past the place I had just been only because I had no idea where in that area the train station was, only the subway, which are not connected in that area of course.

I finally did get to Joyce's place and after a shower I could almost fall asleep. Except Hong Kong is humid, cold (around 8 degrees) and there is no insulation whatsoever, the windows are actually open, but I have slept through worse, once or twice, hehe.