Hong Kong – Last Full Day and the Flight to Sydney – November 3, 4 & 5

The last day was full of more meetings and then at night time I just took it easy. There wasn’t too much that went on today other than work stuff. I didn’t really venture out anywhere so this will be day ends being a short entry so I’m going to combine it with my trip the following day.

I did have a wonderfully delicious Pizza Hut pizza though and damn it was good although it had these spicy chilies on it and it was a bit spicy for me – I ended up picking some of them off.

My travel plans took a little bit of a change during the day – there was going to be a short stop in Seoul, Korea now. I tried to get everything booked and hit a small snag. For some reason my corporate card was denied – I ended up staying up a bit later waiting for the HR girl in my office to fix it. Eventually though I end up just booking the flight on my personal card and go to sleep since I had to wake up at 4:30am to get on the flight.

The alarm went off way too early and damn it sucked. I slowly got ready and was heading to check out at about 5:05am. I got checked out and made my way to the taxi – I had to wake him up to drive me to the airport. We made great time and I was there by 5:40am and typically it takes about an hour. I headed in to check in and as luck would have it my Air India flight to South Korea was delayed over 3 hours. I was only flying there for one meeting on Thursday – there was a Korean holiday on Friday so the meeting had to happen that day. I talked to the boss man and he told me to scrap the flight and maybe we’ll catch them at a later date. I rebooked a flight to Sydney, Australia on Asiana Air….going through South Korea. I was headed there anyways it seemed. The flight wasn’t until 1:30pm so I had some time to kill – especially since the check-in counter didn’t open up until 10:50am. I went and found some chairs without armrests and tried to go to sleep. It was a very unsuccessful attempt – there was too much light and too much noise. Eventually I put a towel over my eyes and it was a little better, but still incredibly uncomfortable. I ended up having a conference call from 10-11am and then afterwards headed to the check-in counter. This is where it almost took a turn for the worst. They told me that I needed a Visa to get into Australia. I panicked for a minute but the guy handed me a website URL and I immediately called the boss man – he said he thought it could be filled out online. I called Lora and asked her to get out of bed to help me out. She gets Firefox opened up and in no time I’m telling her my passport number and 5 minutes later – I have a Visa. I have no idea wtf people used to do before the Internet but thankfully Australia is up to speed with the 21^st century.

I go back to the check-in counter and sure enough they print out the boarding pass. For some reason they could only print out my flight to Seoul though and not to Australia and didn’t really offer a reason why. I walked around and found somewhere to eat lunch at and then headed to the gate. I was just about the only white guy on the flight so I assume I stood out, because the guy that checked me in came up to me and gave me my boarding pass from Seoul to Sydney – if I were anyone else I’d guess he wouldn’t have any idea who I was. I even had a window seat for both legs and for being booked only a few hours prior I was happy. The first flight even had a power port.

The 3 hour flight to Seoul was uneventful and went by quickly. We landed and then I headed to the transfer area where they had another security check that was pretty thorough for being a simple transfer area – I was leaving the country immediately and they still were checking more carefully than TSA I’d argue. I had about a 2.5hr layover so I went to find a small bite to eat and wound up at Kraze Burger – had an interesting burger menu and I picked one out as well as some fries and a Mountain Dew. The burger was great and the fries were especially good and the ketchup was finally one with a flavor I recognized. I made my way to the gate area and found a plug to get a quick bit of juice while sending some emails.

I heard the plane was boarding and then made my way over to the gate and go on the flight – not before they stole my bottle of water that I had just bought though. Ridiculous rule but rules are rules. I had a long flight ahead of me – 10hrs. It went by pretty quickly for the most part though. I watched a little TV at night and then went to sleep for a bit since I was landing at 8am in Sydney. It was going to be a long day after waking up early on Thursday morning and arriving Friday morning.