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And the family expands!
Sometimes it is great to go somewhere you have been before. You know what to expect, how to get around and what you can and can't really do. Getting back to Hong Kong was one of those places because we had things to do! But first we had to negotiate Kathmandu's international airport.
It was a good thing that we left plenty of time to get through onto our overnight flight, because the blokes doing the checking-in and security(these important status orientated jobs can not be left to mere females you understand) were incredibly slow, perfunctory and just plain slobs! It was the last mountainous obstacle we had to climb in Nepal!
I had only just finished a book called Air Babylon that pulls all those airline, aircraft and airport check-in stories you may have heard, somewhere, into a story format. In this book, it points out that check-in should only really take about 3 minutes if everything is organised. But the reason that they take a lot longer, and spends ages typing away, pretending that they are doing something important, is that the check-in staff are actually chatting to each other on the internal messaging system about someone standing before them. SO next time it seems to be taking a long time, see who might be arousing the ire of the check-in staff. Moral of this story is that it is worth being nice to the check-in staff.
I shouldn't have worried about that at Kathmundu though. These blokes were just slow(I did check the screen as we were being checked in!)! If the blokes downstairs at check-in were slow, then the blokes at immigration were trying hard to beat them downstairs. I can understand why the Nepalese citizen line was taking so long to get through immigration, but why were we taking so long? I think that the 80minutes that we spent shuffling 20m to get to the mighty official immigration deity was impressive, by anybody's standards. What I didn't expect was that he took all of 2minutes to get us both through! What the bloody hell had he been doing the whole time?!
Nepal earns a lot of money from its workers in the Gulf States, but those heading over there must have all the right paperwork. If somebody is refused entry at arriving country because they had the wrong visa, then the airline has to pick up the tab to fly them back AND pay the fine; hence, now why airlines are quite happy to not let you board an aircraft if there is no visa in sight.
Just security to go, and we had left Nepal. Good. Everything through the x-ray and searched by one of five police then into the departure gate. More waiting, but by this time we have been bludgeoned into accepting our fate. Through the windows we could see the plane not more than 100m away. More security x-rays(did the other blokes not do a good job? Ah, there machine was not working? But yours is? That explains it!) and onto a bus? The plane is just there, though? But the best is for last, somewhere between getting x-rayed and patted down again and getting onto the bus to take us 100m, somewhere somebody decided that this was a security risk area because we stepped off the bus and where patted down again. In the course of getting through check-in, we had our boarding cards checked 4 times and we hadn't even got on the plane yet!
Either they are incredibly paranoid, or it is all above jobsworth and sheltered employment, or they just like touching everybody!
And after avoiding all meat and fish throughout India and Nepal, airline food never tasted so good! Hong Kong here we come!
To leave Nepal and come to Hong Kong was like leaving one planet and arriving at another! Hong Kong's airport, who somebody told was actually just a massive shopping centre where people just happened to arrive by plane, is about half the size of Nepal and costs just as much to run!
We actually did have some things to do while we were here for two days and one of them was seeing JPC and new Jack. The last time we were here in August, our friends John and Carole were about to pop with Jack and now we were getting to see the new addition! Poppy was as sweet as ever and she clearly adored her little brother! Life was good for the Li's in Hong Kong, So much so, that if we resisted any longer, John and Carole may well have bought us THAT place nearby and ensured that we enjoyed the good life that they had! They did insist on taking us to The Club and after months in India and Nepal, we could not resist! Bliss, bliss and more bliss! Thank you John and Carole!
The other item on the to-do list was sorting out the computer. When we bought it, with Vista, I thought that it came with ready loaded software for the operating system(Vista) AND the Office Suite(the laptop I bought in London years ago had both preloaded). So between when we bought it and now, I had been using the trial versions and it was about to expire! Hong Kong has a reputation of offering dodgy merchandise, but I was confident that the spot where I had bought the machine was reputable! Little did they know we were coming back to Hong Kong!
I started to work myself up into a lather of barely consumed rage to ensure that these dodgy dealers couldn't get one up on me and they were going to srt these out and I was not leaving until they did and they best better get it right! Right NOW! Move it!
After eventually explaining the problem to the manager, more than once, he proceeded to explain to me in bloken(the Chinese cannot pronounce an r and so it sounds like a l; so room service becomes loom selvice, brace becomes blace and fried rice becomes flied lice! - it can be very funny to listen too!) English that I needed to buy that Miclosoft package ON TOP of what I had oliginally paid. It was new standald plocedure.
"Maybe years ago, but no now!" Hmmm. Didn't I feel like the proverbial hind one?
He did suggest that I speak to the lady in the hat outside and she might be able to help me get a much better deal. The whole complete Microsoft uber package for as little as HK$100! And pretty much anything else you might fancy!
With what little dignity I had and could muster......sorry about the outburst, but...... I was directed by the lady-in-a-hat, who was handing out fliers for this COMPUTER SOFTWARE SERVICE(mind out the gutter please) to a room in a nearby shopping mall. OOOOkay then....
Room found and hello very young Chinese Triad geeks. The walls were plastered in the software that they could copy and sell on to you. You name it, they had it. All you needed to do was whisper the reference number(?) of the software you wanted to one bloke, he gave you a piece of paper and told you to pay that other bloke, who gave you another piece of paper to give to the third bloke, who told you, "Come back 2pm shalp!" And this was happening in plain daylight in a slightly scruffy shopping mall!
Hmmmmmm.....let me think about this one. It was either spending about £20(I was not just going to buy the Microsoft stuff. There was Adobe Photoshop and a whole host of things I have always wanted!) and never ensure a guarantee or spend £200 and become a member of the Microsoft cult. What to do. What to do? After all Microsoft and the Chinese Triads are practically the same anyway?
It was the fact that there was an unusual amount of police on the streets leading to the area where I needed to rectify this problem that swung me towards going the legal route. I had visions of me being busted and enjoying a far longer stay in Hong Kong that what I had always anticipated! Plus, I would have missed out on all the Starbucks Red Cups that had come out for Christmas since we were here last and we couldn't have that?!
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