Sorry About That...
Jul 5, 2017, 5:24 pm
#48
Moderator, Trip Reports
Original Poster
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Denver, CO
Programs: UA GS-2MM, Marriott Ambassador
Posts: 3,715
Well, this day didn’t go as planned, that much is for sure. But that’s the thing I love about travel. No matter how much you have done it, the only thing you can be sure of is the unpredictability of it all.
I had a 730am flight from MEL to HKG on trusty old CX. I wouldn’t say that they are my favorite airline, but they’re not bad. I’d consider them to be the BA of Asia. In their hey day though, they were very, very good.
Now, its clear that some men who still live with their mothers, and wear short sleeve shirts and ties and have 8 pens in their top left pocket run the ailing British centric HKG carrier, using lots of spreadsheets and a clapped out old abacus.
Pity really. Some of my fondest memories of air travel have CX as the main actor. I still remember sitting in the jump seat on an airbus and coming into land at the old airport.
It really was spectacular. And you literally could see what people were eating for dinner as the aircraft descended through the buildings and made what you thought was going to be a certain crash landing.
If I’m honest, I think Cathay’s Business Class product is a bit tired. The whole onboard experience was just so so and if I was a real business traveler who was cranking to and from HKG on a regular basis, they wouldn’t be my first choice.
But I am looking forward to todays flight on CX F to LAX. More on that a bit later.
This trip I thought a lot more about my home town than I usually do. One is because its probably the longest I’ve been away from the place. The thing that struck me the most is that the city is literally on its knees when it comes to the infrastructure not keeping up with the population growth.
When my daughter and I landed a week ago, we went to grab a rental car. My mother did offer to come pick us up, but I turned 50 not so long ago, and the thought of having my mother still come get me at my age, didn’t bode well. The Small One agreed because she thinks Grandma “can be kinda embarrassing”
If you told my Mom that we were landing at 730am, she probably wouldn’t sleep the night before and then head to the airport at 2am because “she wanted to make sure to get a park close to the terminal”
For those non Aussies, Melbourne Airport was built back in the 70’s out in a place called Tullamarine. Which is the Aboriginal word for “East Jesus”. Go ahead, look it up. There’s a tiny 2 lane road heading to and from the airport which is as old as Methuselah and the idiots who run the state, have only now just decided that they had better hire a lot of men in orange safety vests who operate expensive road making machines to make the road wider.
The airport reminds me of Heathrow a little bit. In the sense every time I visit LHR, they seem to be working on a part of it. It never seems to be finished. Especially noticeable if you have to transit via a bus at Heathrow. I remember once there were so many switch-backs, small alleys, and one-way detours that the hapless bus driver got lost and we started driving down the M1 towards Hemel Hempstead.
Ok I made that part up. But we did get lost and we ended up following a truck the airline people fondly refer to as the “Honey Pot” – which is a nondescript looking vehicle they use to empty the sewerage from each aircraft. Imagine having that on your Tinder profile…
Anyway, back to Melbourne. The Liveable City. It is a great city. Don’t let any wayward Sydney sider tell you otherwise. If you haven’t guessed already there is a lot of rivalry between Melbourne and its northern neighbor. Some of it is tongue and cheek and some of it is more “smack you in the side of the head” sort of thing.
Here’s an example. You’d be on a conference call and you’d have the people from the Melbourne office on the phone and the people from the Sydney office on the phone. And everyone else in between. Some smart alec from Sydney would start the call as follows.
“Good morning everyone, this is Jack from Sydney, is everyone on the call?”
“Adelaide are you there?”
“Here”
“Perth?”
“Were here”
“Brisbane?”
“Here”
“Melbourne?”
“Yes Melbourne here”
“Ok people listen up. Melbourne just joined. Everyone please remember to speak more slowly so that they can understand us”
Morons.
But the thing I noticed about Melbourne this time more than ever is that the traffic is jacked, the roads are jacked, the airport sucks, and you need to be a Trust Fund Baby to be able to afford property and buy simple things like groceries.
The pay station machines at the airport are unique in the sense that they have defibrillators attached to the side because you will literally drop dead from fright when you see what they charge for 3-hrs parking.
Because I am getting older – and I have lost my travel mojo, that and the fact that my body clock for the most part is still on US time, I woke up way too early. Rather than look at the ceiling – I decided I would take my time and head to the airport.
My Mom comes out to say goodbye and hands me my laundry. I will never quite understand why but my mother isn’t happy unless she is either washing something or ironing something. Kids would make fun of me when I was young because my mother would iron my underwear. And still to this day, 50 years later, was a neat pile of laundry beside my bag, underwear ironed within an inch of its life.
“Dad, why does Grandma iron our underwear? It’s kind of spooky” says my daughter
“Yes it is”
“Why then?”
“I have no idea. I think a piano fell on her head when she was a baby”
“Really?”
“No”
“Do we have an iron at home in America?”
“Why, yes we do”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s just that your mother is from Michigan and they don’t use irons there”
“Why not?”
“I think they are illegal”
So I say my goodbyes to my mother, kiss my daughter and jump in the rental car and head back to the Aeroporto.
I arrive way too early, but thankfully check in for the CX flight just opened so the wait was minimal. The most impressive thing about Melbourne Airport is that they have streamlined the immigration process from a departure perspective. You used to have to fill in this form and tell the nosey government where you were going, how long you’d be away, who you were travelling with, who you intended to sleep with and had you had done anything semi-kinky with a farm animal in New Zealand recently. It was a real pain.
Now some enterprising young sales person from SAP or Oracle or IBM has sold them a system that actually works. All you do is insert your passport into this scanner, it reads it, beeps once, you walk forward and then another machine takes a picture of you, and Voila, you’re good to go. Bobs Your Uncle as we say Downunder.
It really is a cracker of a system. Way faster than the old way, which was more like a Spanish Inquisition. The machines probably make every third person sterile but hey what do I care. Both my testicles are in my wife’s purse because she had them removed after our daughter was born.
So the flight. As I said, just so so. Until we come to the landing part. I am convinced the pilot put the wrong co-ordinates into Google Maps because there we were, flying along calmly, making what I thought was a gentle descent into the airfield when the plane banks sharply as if it had deployed counter measures. We then make a rapid descent and seconds before we are wheels down, the pilots give it the beans, the Rolls Royce engines spool back up to deliver full thrust and we are flung into the smog filled sky again.
You have to love British pilots, of which Cathay has in abundance.
“Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. My name is Douglas Chapfield-Smythe-Weatherspoon”
“Frightfully sorry about that slight detour but there was a spot of wind on the airfield and my co-pilot and I, William Scott-Giles thought it only prudent that we have another go”
“We’re going to give it another good old fashioned kick in the bollocks and I’m sure we’ll have you sipping G&T’s at the Penninsula in no time at all. I know I’m looking forward to a jolly good Ploughmans lunch after we land”
Or something like this.
But we did land the second time in one piece – apart from the fact that the Second Officer must have got a text from his girlfriend telling him that she had left him for another woman. I’ve never felt the brakes applied harder and faster in my life and I was sure the ageing Airbus was on 2 wheels as it veered off the exit.
Hong Kong airport still amazes me in its sheer size. The joint is massive. But it seems to work well. I cleared customs in no time, my bag was waiting for me by the time I got to the carousel and then I had to compose my thoughts as I was heading to Hong Kong Island to spend the night with some very good friends, who happened to live on The Peak, in a very trendy apartment.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge planner when it comes to travel. I’ve rarely come unstuck in the 20+ years I’ve been motoring around the planet and there really aren’t too many things you cant fix with a credit card and alcohol.
But today was a test. I was in no rush to get to my friends place. One of the guys was traveling and the other was still at work. I got a text message that their housekeeper would be waiting for me.
The first sign that things were about to go pear shaped was that my iPhone was dead flat. I thought I had charged it on the plane but apparently not. I decided to ditch my suitcase and just trek into town with my wheelie and laptop bag.
After being barked at by multiple HKG airport workers in Cantonese – I finally find the bag storage place. Easy enough. I then have a good think about how to get into town. Couldn’t be bothered with the train and didn’t have the energy to book a car service. Uber to the rescue then. Except hard to do when your phone is flat.
Uber does have the same app for your laptop. So I order a car, it tells me it is but 7 mins away. But in terms of pick up point, it just sort of says “go outside”. Go outside where prey tell I ask the silly machine.
I’m running through the airport clutching my laptop, connected to some dodgy wifi connection and then I get the dreaded “driver canceled” message.
I remember the nice CX person in Melbourne gave me an arrivals lounge card when I left. And I remember passing a CX lounge not so long ago so I retrace my steps and find the lounge. Go inside and tell the nice staff that I need to catch my breath, regroup, have a calming ale and recharge my silly phone.
Except the lounge doesn’t serve alcohol. Bloomin’ outrageous.
I do carry another phone, so I fire that one up, reboot the Uber app and finally find the driver. I had ordered UberBlack given that it was hardly any different in terms of price than UberX. Some guy in a minivan convinces me that this really was the car I had ordered.
The app showed a 45 min travel time to The Peak. These 2 friends of mine are somewhat eccentric and very well paid. They have lived in HKG for 11 years and their apartment is breathtaking. But getting there requires the will of a Nepalese Sherpa because the road winding up to the Peak is nothing more than a goat track.
The Uber driver pilots his minivan to what he thinks is the address and in the obligatory Cantonese manner tells me to get out. Quickly.
But it’s not the address at all. It’s hell and gone from the actual destination. My friend at this stage is laughing at me and tells me that their car is in the shop and that the maid has dinner ready and he’s hungry. In true Aussie spirit, he tells me to go figure it out myself.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the guard-house of the apartment block I was unceremoniously dropped off at. And then a bit further down the road was a Police Van with lights blazing. Curious I think to myself. I go to the guard-house and tell the man that I was inadvertently dropped off at the wrong place.
He curses the Uber driver and then tells me;
“Ok I will help you. But I can only half help you”
“Umm, ok, what does that mean?”
He then proceeds to whip out his phone and show me on Google Maps where I was and where I needed to be.
He then runs to the police van and barks something in Cantonese to the 2 men with small guns. Everyone laughs. They point at me. And then laugh some more.
The semi helpful guard then runs back to me and says…
“Ok police will drive you”
“What?”
“Yes, Police will drive you”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
“Get in”
So after spending a day flying to HKG, cocking up the getting out of the airport bit, I finish the day by getting driven the last kilometer in a Hong Kong Police Divisional Van, with the lights flashing. All the way.
We pull into the lobby of my buddies apartment block and he greets me with a smirk on his face.
“It’s never simple with you is it” he grins
I will admit that this is not the first time I have been in the back of a police vehicle, but that is a story for another day.
More in a minute...
I had a 730am flight from MEL to HKG on trusty old CX. I wouldn’t say that they are my favorite airline, but they’re not bad. I’d consider them to be the BA of Asia. In their hey day though, they were very, very good.
Now, its clear that some men who still live with their mothers, and wear short sleeve shirts and ties and have 8 pens in their top left pocket run the ailing British centric HKG carrier, using lots of spreadsheets and a clapped out old abacus.
Pity really. Some of my fondest memories of air travel have CX as the main actor. I still remember sitting in the jump seat on an airbus and coming into land at the old airport.
It really was spectacular. And you literally could see what people were eating for dinner as the aircraft descended through the buildings and made what you thought was going to be a certain crash landing.
If I’m honest, I think Cathay’s Business Class product is a bit tired. The whole onboard experience was just so so and if I was a real business traveler who was cranking to and from HKG on a regular basis, they wouldn’t be my first choice.
But I am looking forward to todays flight on CX F to LAX. More on that a bit later.
This trip I thought a lot more about my home town than I usually do. One is because its probably the longest I’ve been away from the place. The thing that struck me the most is that the city is literally on its knees when it comes to the infrastructure not keeping up with the population growth.
When my daughter and I landed a week ago, we went to grab a rental car. My mother did offer to come pick us up, but I turned 50 not so long ago, and the thought of having my mother still come get me at my age, didn’t bode well. The Small One agreed because she thinks Grandma “can be kinda embarrassing”
If you told my Mom that we were landing at 730am, she probably wouldn’t sleep the night before and then head to the airport at 2am because “she wanted to make sure to get a park close to the terminal”
For those non Aussies, Melbourne Airport was built back in the 70’s out in a place called Tullamarine. Which is the Aboriginal word for “East Jesus”. Go ahead, look it up. There’s a tiny 2 lane road heading to and from the airport which is as old as Methuselah and the idiots who run the state, have only now just decided that they had better hire a lot of men in orange safety vests who operate expensive road making machines to make the road wider.
The airport reminds me of Heathrow a little bit. In the sense every time I visit LHR, they seem to be working on a part of it. It never seems to be finished. Especially noticeable if you have to transit via a bus at Heathrow. I remember once there were so many switch-backs, small alleys, and one-way detours that the hapless bus driver got lost and we started driving down the M1 towards Hemel Hempstead.
Ok I made that part up. But we did get lost and we ended up following a truck the airline people fondly refer to as the “Honey Pot” – which is a nondescript looking vehicle they use to empty the sewerage from each aircraft. Imagine having that on your Tinder profile…
Anyway, back to Melbourne. The Liveable City. It is a great city. Don’t let any wayward Sydney sider tell you otherwise. If you haven’t guessed already there is a lot of rivalry between Melbourne and its northern neighbor. Some of it is tongue and cheek and some of it is more “smack you in the side of the head” sort of thing.
Here’s an example. You’d be on a conference call and you’d have the people from the Melbourne office on the phone and the people from the Sydney office on the phone. And everyone else in between. Some smart alec from Sydney would start the call as follows.
“Good morning everyone, this is Jack from Sydney, is everyone on the call?”
“Adelaide are you there?”
“Here”
“Perth?”
“Were here”
“Brisbane?”
“Here”
“Melbourne?”
“Yes Melbourne here”
“Ok people listen up. Melbourne just joined. Everyone please remember to speak more slowly so that they can understand us”
Morons.
But the thing I noticed about Melbourne this time more than ever is that the traffic is jacked, the roads are jacked, the airport sucks, and you need to be a Trust Fund Baby to be able to afford property and buy simple things like groceries.
The pay station machines at the airport are unique in the sense that they have defibrillators attached to the side because you will literally drop dead from fright when you see what they charge for 3-hrs parking.
Because I am getting older – and I have lost my travel mojo, that and the fact that my body clock for the most part is still on US time, I woke up way too early. Rather than look at the ceiling – I decided I would take my time and head to the airport.
My Mom comes out to say goodbye and hands me my laundry. I will never quite understand why but my mother isn’t happy unless she is either washing something or ironing something. Kids would make fun of me when I was young because my mother would iron my underwear. And still to this day, 50 years later, was a neat pile of laundry beside my bag, underwear ironed within an inch of its life.
“Dad, why does Grandma iron our underwear? It’s kind of spooky” says my daughter
“Yes it is”
“Why then?”
“I have no idea. I think a piano fell on her head when she was a baby”
“Really?”
“No”
“Do we have an iron at home in America?”
“Why, yes we do”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s just that your mother is from Michigan and they don’t use irons there”
“Why not?”
“I think they are illegal”
So I say my goodbyes to my mother, kiss my daughter and jump in the rental car and head back to the Aeroporto.
I arrive way too early, but thankfully check in for the CX flight just opened so the wait was minimal. The most impressive thing about Melbourne Airport is that they have streamlined the immigration process from a departure perspective. You used to have to fill in this form and tell the nosey government where you were going, how long you’d be away, who you were travelling with, who you intended to sleep with and had you had done anything semi-kinky with a farm animal in New Zealand recently. It was a real pain.
Now some enterprising young sales person from SAP or Oracle or IBM has sold them a system that actually works. All you do is insert your passport into this scanner, it reads it, beeps once, you walk forward and then another machine takes a picture of you, and Voila, you’re good to go. Bobs Your Uncle as we say Downunder.
It really is a cracker of a system. Way faster than the old way, which was more like a Spanish Inquisition. The machines probably make every third person sterile but hey what do I care. Both my testicles are in my wife’s purse because she had them removed after our daughter was born.
So the flight. As I said, just so so. Until we come to the landing part. I am convinced the pilot put the wrong co-ordinates into Google Maps because there we were, flying along calmly, making what I thought was a gentle descent into the airfield when the plane banks sharply as if it had deployed counter measures. We then make a rapid descent and seconds before we are wheels down, the pilots give it the beans, the Rolls Royce engines spool back up to deliver full thrust and we are flung into the smog filled sky again.
You have to love British pilots, of which Cathay has in abundance.
“Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. My name is Douglas Chapfield-Smythe-Weatherspoon”
“Frightfully sorry about that slight detour but there was a spot of wind on the airfield and my co-pilot and I, William Scott-Giles thought it only prudent that we have another go”
“We’re going to give it another good old fashioned kick in the bollocks and I’m sure we’ll have you sipping G&T’s at the Penninsula in no time at all. I know I’m looking forward to a jolly good Ploughmans lunch after we land”
Or something like this.
But we did land the second time in one piece – apart from the fact that the Second Officer must have got a text from his girlfriend telling him that she had left him for another woman. I’ve never felt the brakes applied harder and faster in my life and I was sure the ageing Airbus was on 2 wheels as it veered off the exit.
Hong Kong airport still amazes me in its sheer size. The joint is massive. But it seems to work well. I cleared customs in no time, my bag was waiting for me by the time I got to the carousel and then I had to compose my thoughts as I was heading to Hong Kong Island to spend the night with some very good friends, who happened to live on The Peak, in a very trendy apartment.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge planner when it comes to travel. I’ve rarely come unstuck in the 20+ years I’ve been motoring around the planet and there really aren’t too many things you cant fix with a credit card and alcohol.
But today was a test. I was in no rush to get to my friends place. One of the guys was traveling and the other was still at work. I got a text message that their housekeeper would be waiting for me.
The first sign that things were about to go pear shaped was that my iPhone was dead flat. I thought I had charged it on the plane but apparently not. I decided to ditch my suitcase and just trek into town with my wheelie and laptop bag.
After being barked at by multiple HKG airport workers in Cantonese – I finally find the bag storage place. Easy enough. I then have a good think about how to get into town. Couldn’t be bothered with the train and didn’t have the energy to book a car service. Uber to the rescue then. Except hard to do when your phone is flat.
Uber does have the same app for your laptop. So I order a car, it tells me it is but 7 mins away. But in terms of pick up point, it just sort of says “go outside”. Go outside where prey tell I ask the silly machine.
I’m running through the airport clutching my laptop, connected to some dodgy wifi connection and then I get the dreaded “driver canceled” message.
I remember the nice CX person in Melbourne gave me an arrivals lounge card when I left. And I remember passing a CX lounge not so long ago so I retrace my steps and find the lounge. Go inside and tell the nice staff that I need to catch my breath, regroup, have a calming ale and recharge my silly phone.
Except the lounge doesn’t serve alcohol. Bloomin’ outrageous.
I do carry another phone, so I fire that one up, reboot the Uber app and finally find the driver. I had ordered UberBlack given that it was hardly any different in terms of price than UberX. Some guy in a minivan convinces me that this really was the car I had ordered.
The app showed a 45 min travel time to The Peak. These 2 friends of mine are somewhat eccentric and very well paid. They have lived in HKG for 11 years and their apartment is breathtaking. But getting there requires the will of a Nepalese Sherpa because the road winding up to the Peak is nothing more than a goat track.
The Uber driver pilots his minivan to what he thinks is the address and in the obligatory Cantonese manner tells me to get out. Quickly.
But it’s not the address at all. It’s hell and gone from the actual destination. My friend at this stage is laughing at me and tells me that their car is in the shop and that the maid has dinner ready and he’s hungry. In true Aussie spirit, he tells me to go figure it out myself.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the guard-house of the apartment block I was unceremoniously dropped off at. And then a bit further down the road was a Police Van with lights blazing. Curious I think to myself. I go to the guard-house and tell the man that I was inadvertently dropped off at the wrong place.
He curses the Uber driver and then tells me;
“Ok I will help you. But I can only half help you”
“Umm, ok, what does that mean?”
He then proceeds to whip out his phone and show me on Google Maps where I was and where I needed to be.
He then runs to the police van and barks something in Cantonese to the 2 men with small guns. Everyone laughs. They point at me. And then laugh some more.
The semi helpful guard then runs back to me and says…
“Ok police will drive you”
“What?”
“Yes, Police will drive you”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
“Get in”
So after spending a day flying to HKG, cocking up the getting out of the airport bit, I finish the day by getting driven the last kilometer in a Hong Kong Police Divisional Van, with the lights flashing. All the way.
We pull into the lobby of my buddies apartment block and he greets me with a smirk on his face.
“It’s never simple with you is it” he grins
I will admit that this is not the first time I have been in the back of a police vehicle, but that is a story for another day.
More in a minute...
Last edited by eightblack; Jan 17, 2018 at 6:09 am
Jul 5, 2017, 10:57 pm
#52
Moderator, Trip Reports
Original Poster
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Denver, CO
Programs: UA GS-2MM, Marriott Ambassador
Posts: 3,715
You know as I was heading to the airport this morning, I drove past the US Consulate, which is in Central. The enormous queue struck me as impressive and I thought to myself “thank God that’s not me”
Except now that it is.
Things have decidedly gone from bad to worse and you know how I had said previously that there’s really nothing you can’t fix with a credit card and alcohol, sadly this may not be one of them.
For the most part, I am relatively organized. At least I think I am. I had lucked out this morning and found an Uber only 5 mins from the apartment. A quick tap on the app and it was mine.
Five minutes later, a late model BMW arrives and I am on my way to the airport. All was well. Drive past the embassy, laugh at the queue of people and as I said above, thank the Good Lord that that wasn’t me.
Get to HKG, and retrieve my bag from the baggage storage place. Head upstairs to the First Class check in section and am warmly greeted (well, ok, there’s no such thing in Cantonese) but there was a forced smile and then a lot of arm waving and barking at each other)
A very polite young man asks for my destination. I respond. Hand over the passport. And then go to grab my Green Card.
The young CX attendant waits patiently. He then does the finger tap routine on his keyboard. You and I both know that he’s not actually doing anything at this point other than buying some Pokemon artifact on eBay.
The tapping continues…
I calmly say to the young staffer that I cant find said Green Card but I have a photo of it on my iPhone and that surely will be plenty and he can go ahead and check me all the way through to DEN.
Except for the fact that he couldn’t. Not even the slightest.
I then decide to apply for an electronic Visa, thinking that there is always another way. There are now a gaggle of CX staffers standing around the minimalistic F podium and there is an almighty cacophony of noise, much arm waving and much use of the word “idiot” in their mother tongue.
However the ETSA angle was no good either. One of the staffers was on the phone now to the US Consulate talking to someone important. A lot of nodding of the head ensued.
“Mr Eight Black you will have to go to the US Consulate and they will issue you a temporary Green Card so you can travel”
“You’re kidding”
“No Sir, I am Cantonese. We don’t have a sense of humor”
“Umm ok”
“So go now then?”
“Yes, go now”
“Here’s the address”
“We will mind your bags”
My heart sinks. I look for anyone to blame but me. But there isn’t anyone within a bulls roar.
On the bright side, I have stacks of time. Oodles in fact. My flight was wheels up at 1255pm. It wasn’t but 930am when the slight hiccup occurred. I was in an Uber at 935am (Only in HKG can you order an Uber, and some 25 year old kid rolls up in a brand spanking new Tesla Model X, worth a paltry HKD $2.5 Million (approx. US$320K). ETA to the US of A Consulate was 1015am. Allow 45 minutes to fill out a few forms, pay a few hundred HKG dollars and then hoof it back to HKG with plenty of time to ingest a basket or 2 of wonderful Dim Sum and a copious amount of F class liquid refreshment before my perfectly relaxed flight to LAX. Pointy end here I come.
I mean, in the immortal words of Jeremy Clarkson, How Hard Could It Be?
Well, as it turns out. Very Hard. Nigh on impossible in fact.
Wait until you hear this.
So I get to the Consulate. This is not a place you can navigate in 10 minutes. You basically have to strip naked and hand them all your worldly possessions. There is the obligatory cavity search, which is the equivalent of a colonoscopy without the KY jelly.
Amazingly, there was more than 1 person at the Consulate who knew I was coming. I am convinced that people who work at Consulates also have a part time job at those sex lines. You know the ads you see of a gorgeous goddess, where you are seduced by those digital eyes and in a moment of weakness, you call the 800 number.
They tell you to come around for the most incredible massage and you agree. You arrive, heart racing, you knock on the door ever so gingerly and then. And then an 85-year old woman opens the door on a walking frame. Minus her teeth.
On multiple occasions – while on the phone en route to the Consulate people would tell me “it will be fine. You can get an expedited pass, we will help you, you are practically American, do not worry, Donald Trump doesn’t yet know that he doesn’t own Australia so we will issue you a temporary permit in the blink of an eye”. Lies. Damn Lies. All of them.
I managed to wave my arms enough to skip the outrageously long queue, clear security with nothing more than a pair of ironed underwear, my passport and my billfold. There was still hope. Maybe only a glimmer. But it was still there.
I approach a plexiglass window and some women smiles and says “Ah you must be Mr Eight Black”
There is a genuine sigh of relief on my end. I hand the overly nice woman my passport and my Green Card number. Surely, they can tap away at a few buttons, issue me an impressive looking US Federal Government document and presto, I will be on my way in the blink of an eye.
Except this nice young woman was quickly over ruled by the Cantonese version of Satan. The Devil Herself.
"Mr Eight Black I am now the voice of reality. This is the US Federal Government. I am about to explain to you 2 options. None of which are pretty. Yes, we can help you. But you need to fill out this application. It is form I-131A, commonly known as a LPR Boarding Foil"
"Once you complete this application, we will “request” an expedited interview with a real American with a gun, you will pay a fee of somewhere north of US$500 and maybe, just maybe we can get you clearance to travel in 2-3 days. It has been done before"
"Or you can have your long-suffering wife FedEx you your Green Card, the one you stupidly left behind, to someplace here in HKG and then you can proceed as normal"
So that’s where we are then. I sheepishly Ubered back to the airport, retrieved my luggage from the CX folks, who all gleefully took pictures of me and wanted an autograph for their most stupid passenger of the week award.
Called my buddy who lives in the swanky apartment…
“Paul, this is Simon”
“What’s up?”
“Has Rose changed the sheets on the bed yet?”
“Not sure, why?”
“I might be here a few more days. No longer than a month I promise”
“Umm ok”
“Does this mean you’ll be coming back in a Police Car. Or the same van?”
“Very funny. Things have not gone well today”
“Obviously”
But that was an easy call. Piece of cake in fact. Now came the hard part. Calling the wife. That was going to be a challenge. But its not the first time she has had to bail me out of something.
Here goes then…
Except now that it is.
Things have decidedly gone from bad to worse and you know how I had said previously that there’s really nothing you can’t fix with a credit card and alcohol, sadly this may not be one of them.
For the most part, I am relatively organized. At least I think I am. I had lucked out this morning and found an Uber only 5 mins from the apartment. A quick tap on the app and it was mine.
Five minutes later, a late model BMW arrives and I am on my way to the airport. All was well. Drive past the embassy, laugh at the queue of people and as I said above, thank the Good Lord that that wasn’t me.
Get to HKG, and retrieve my bag from the baggage storage place. Head upstairs to the First Class check in section and am warmly greeted (well, ok, there’s no such thing in Cantonese) but there was a forced smile and then a lot of arm waving and barking at each other)
A very polite young man asks for my destination. I respond. Hand over the passport. And then go to grab my Green Card.
The young CX attendant waits patiently. He then does the finger tap routine on his keyboard. You and I both know that he’s not actually doing anything at this point other than buying some Pokemon artifact on eBay.
The tapping continues…
I calmly say to the young staffer that I cant find said Green Card but I have a photo of it on my iPhone and that surely will be plenty and he can go ahead and check me all the way through to DEN.
Except for the fact that he couldn’t. Not even the slightest.
I then decide to apply for an electronic Visa, thinking that there is always another way. There are now a gaggle of CX staffers standing around the minimalistic F podium and there is an almighty cacophony of noise, much arm waving and much use of the word “idiot” in their mother tongue.
However the ETSA angle was no good either. One of the staffers was on the phone now to the US Consulate talking to someone important. A lot of nodding of the head ensued.
“Mr Eight Black you will have to go to the US Consulate and they will issue you a temporary Green Card so you can travel”
“You’re kidding”
“No Sir, I am Cantonese. We don’t have a sense of humor”
“Umm ok”
“So go now then?”
“Yes, go now”
“Here’s the address”
“We will mind your bags”
My heart sinks. I look for anyone to blame but me. But there isn’t anyone within a bulls roar.
On the bright side, I have stacks of time. Oodles in fact. My flight was wheels up at 1255pm. It wasn’t but 930am when the slight hiccup occurred. I was in an Uber at 935am (Only in HKG can you order an Uber, and some 25 year old kid rolls up in a brand spanking new Tesla Model X, worth a paltry HKD $2.5 Million (approx. US$320K). ETA to the US of A Consulate was 1015am. Allow 45 minutes to fill out a few forms, pay a few hundred HKG dollars and then hoof it back to HKG with plenty of time to ingest a basket or 2 of wonderful Dim Sum and a copious amount of F class liquid refreshment before my perfectly relaxed flight to LAX. Pointy end here I come.
I mean, in the immortal words of Jeremy Clarkson, How Hard Could It Be?
Well, as it turns out. Very Hard. Nigh on impossible in fact.
Wait until you hear this.
So I get to the Consulate. This is not a place you can navigate in 10 minutes. You basically have to strip naked and hand them all your worldly possessions. There is the obligatory cavity search, which is the equivalent of a colonoscopy without the KY jelly.
Amazingly, there was more than 1 person at the Consulate who knew I was coming. I am convinced that people who work at Consulates also have a part time job at those sex lines. You know the ads you see of a gorgeous goddess, where you are seduced by those digital eyes and in a moment of weakness, you call the 800 number.
They tell you to come around for the most incredible massage and you agree. You arrive, heart racing, you knock on the door ever so gingerly and then. And then an 85-year old woman opens the door on a walking frame. Minus her teeth.
On multiple occasions – while on the phone en route to the Consulate people would tell me “it will be fine. You can get an expedited pass, we will help you, you are practically American, do not worry, Donald Trump doesn’t yet know that he doesn’t own Australia so we will issue you a temporary permit in the blink of an eye”. Lies. Damn Lies. All of them.
I managed to wave my arms enough to skip the outrageously long queue, clear security with nothing more than a pair of ironed underwear, my passport and my billfold. There was still hope. Maybe only a glimmer. But it was still there.
I approach a plexiglass window and some women smiles and says “Ah you must be Mr Eight Black”
There is a genuine sigh of relief on my end. I hand the overly nice woman my passport and my Green Card number. Surely, they can tap away at a few buttons, issue me an impressive looking US Federal Government document and presto, I will be on my way in the blink of an eye.
Except this nice young woman was quickly over ruled by the Cantonese version of Satan. The Devil Herself.
"Mr Eight Black I am now the voice of reality. This is the US Federal Government. I am about to explain to you 2 options. None of which are pretty. Yes, we can help you. But you need to fill out this application. It is form I-131A, commonly known as a LPR Boarding Foil"
"Once you complete this application, we will “request” an expedited interview with a real American with a gun, you will pay a fee of somewhere north of US$500 and maybe, just maybe we can get you clearance to travel in 2-3 days. It has been done before"
"Or you can have your long-suffering wife FedEx you your Green Card, the one you stupidly left behind, to someplace here in HKG and then you can proceed as normal"
So that’s where we are then. I sheepishly Ubered back to the airport, retrieved my luggage from the CX folks, who all gleefully took pictures of me and wanted an autograph for their most stupid passenger of the week award.
Called my buddy who lives in the swanky apartment…
“Paul, this is Simon”
“What’s up?”
“Has Rose changed the sheets on the bed yet?”
“Not sure, why?”
“I might be here a few more days. No longer than a month I promise”
“Umm ok”
“Does this mean you’ll be coming back in a Police Car. Or the same van?”
“Very funny. Things have not gone well today”
“Obviously”
But that was an easy call. Piece of cake in fact. Now came the hard part. Calling the wife. That was going to be a challenge. But its not the first time she has had to bail me out of something.
Here goes then…
Last edited by eightblack; Jul 6, 2017 at 2:59 am Reason: Fixed the exchange rate conversion!
Jul 6, 2017, 9:06 am
#54
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: YOW
Posts: 1,024
“
I'm from Michigan, I can vouch for the truth of this 
Oh, this is going to cost you.
Do we have an iron at home in America?”
“Why, yes we do”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s just that your mother is from Michigan and they don’t use irons there”
“Why not?”
“I think they are illegal”
“Why, yes we do”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s just that your mother is from Michigan and they don’t use irons there”
“Why not?”
“I think they are illegal”
But that was an easy call. Piece of cake in fact. Now came the hard part. Calling the wife. That was going to be a challenge. But its not the first time she has had to bail me out of something.
Jul 6, 2017, 9:40 am
#55
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jul 2010
Programs: AA
Posts: 14,735
And suddenly we all realize this trip report actually happened two years ago and it's taken him this long to work up the courage to call his wife.
Jul 6, 2017, 4:31 pm
#57
Moderator: Delta SkyMiles, Luxury Hotels, TravelBuzz! and Italy
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 26,543
Eightblack, I have had a crappy morning and the fact that you are back and writing has definitely improved my day. You had me laughing out loud. Welcome back.
Jul 7, 2017, 2:55 am
#60
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: JNB
Programs: Flying Blue, Miles and Smiles, Hhonors, ICHotels
Posts: 1,307
An awesomely funny report. Thanks for remembering us.
I enjoyed the part where they dug up the garden to lay the fiber connection - I am going through that now and know the feeling. But the way you describe it has made me feel much better about my garden.
I enjoyed the part where they dug up the garden to lay the fiber connection - I am going through that now and know the feeling. But the way you describe it has made me feel much better about my garden.