Where could I be?
Friday I was all ready for my weekend trip to Hong Kong. My bags were packed and my plane ticket booked, but I’m sorry to say that something didn’t work out as planned. I took the bus from Taipei to Taoyuan, got to the airport, ticket in hand, and then onto the plane I went. At this point all was still going well, I was on the plane, “everything is fine” I thought to myself, it was time to get ready for my Hong Kong adventure. What could go wrong from here? Well I’ll tell you what happened… my plane didn’t go to Hong Kong at all!
It took me a until Saturday afternoon to realize the airline’s mistake. Friday night I slept in the airport and airports all look the same so you can’t blame me for not realizing at that point. On Saturday morning, all those Chinese people speaking Cantonese must have fooled me, but in the afternoon I figured it out. As I walked up from an underground crossing to see a car with a two-row licence plate, driving around a roundabout on the left side of the road with those blue road signs hanging above, it hit me. I knew at that moment that my plane must have gone the wrong way because I was not in Hong Kong I was in England!
Hong Kong is part of China, isn’t it? Yes, I just checked, the always-reliable resource, Wikipedia and it says that the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the People’s Republic of China way back in 1997 and I certainly was not in China. China is not like this, not Beijing, not Guangzhou, not Shanghai, and definitely not rural-back-end-of-nowhere-China. I should have figured it out sooner, like when I saw the abundance of curry-flavoured snacks and Lucozade in the convenience stores, but I was foolish enough to trust my airline to take me to my proper destination.
Eventually, I left the large Chinatown of whichever British city I had entered and took the metro, which made sure to tell me to “mind the gap,” down to an area known, oddly enough, as Hong Kong Island. Here my assumptions were clarified, yes, I was in England. All I had to do is look around at all those people in business suits with British accents or the multiple Marks and Spencer locations. So next time you get on a plane, make sure it is going where you think it is headed.
It took me a until Saturday afternoon to realize the airline’s mistake. Friday night I slept in the airport and airports all look the same so you can’t blame me for not realizing at that point. On Saturday morning, all those Chinese people speaking Cantonese must have fooled me, but in the afternoon I figured it out. As I walked up from an underground crossing to see a car with a two-row licence plate, driving around a roundabout on the left side of the road with those blue road signs hanging above, it hit me. I knew at that moment that my plane must have gone the wrong way because I was not in Hong Kong I was in England!
Hong Kong is part of China, isn’t it? Yes, I just checked, the always-reliable resource, Wikipedia and it says that the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the People’s Republic of China way back in 1997 and I certainly was not in China. China is not like this, not Beijing, not Guangzhou, not Shanghai, and definitely not rural-back-end-of-nowhere-China. I should have figured it out sooner, like when I saw the abundance of curry-flavoured snacks and Lucozade in the convenience stores, but I was foolish enough to trust my airline to take me to my proper destination.
Eventually, I left the large Chinatown of whichever British city I had entered and took the metro, which made sure to tell me to “mind the gap,” down to an area known, oddly enough, as Hong Kong Island. Here my assumptions were clarified, yes, I was in England. All I had to do is look around at all those people in business suits with British accents or the multiple Marks and Spencer locations. So next time you get on a plane, make sure it is going where you think it is headed.