Monday, 5 October 2009

A foul wind rises

As the cab drivers restlessly look out for potential customers, the few passengers left at the airport hurry their way to their next destination. Their palms sweaty and their hearts heavy with an unexplainable feeling of impending doom.
As the arrival gate for flight CX 107 from Hong Kong is announced the wind picks up speed and dark clouds block out the sun.
As the doors of flight CX 107 open, a mass of travellers hurry their way out all with a small hint of hysteria in their eyes. As the dust the mass left behind settles, two figures begin to take form. Their impressive forms accentuated by the impressive gear they wore. From their magnificent boots and (mostly) spotless jeans and vests, to their bags of superiour quality.
As one of the figures began to speak you could feel the atmosphere grow heavier.
And these words they spoke to the mortals close enough to hear them:
"I'm so tired, I bet I'll fall asleep in the buss" and "I want to brush my teeth first, I smell like monkey butt. I wish they didn't take my deodorant at Hong Kong airport, I could really use it right now. . ."
The custom officers were in fact so impressed by these two figures that they wanted to know everything about them and asked them every single question that sprang to their minds.
Feeling flattered by these signs of affection, one of the two decided to pretend he had lost his arrival card. And just as the customs officer wanted to send him back to his colleague, with a hint of glee in his eye, the card was mysteriously found once more and they had to leave the dissappointed oficer behind.

And so began the wondrous journey of Jasper "the giant" Visser and Tim "the bit shorter one" Scheffe.
Later that day they both fell asleep on the bus.

I'll pick off where I last stopped. After we found that internet cafe we decided to slowly head back to the train. Luck would have it that we ran into an arcade hall. For you people that don't know me and Jasper too well, we love to play video games and if we run into an arcade hall we just can't pass it by without playing a few games.
The acrade hall was in the basement of some building but still fairly large. What surprised us the most was the amount of people there, this was on monday at around 1 pm, and the great diversity of the people. There were school kids, older men, guys in black suits we even saw a girl or two (though one of em might have been a guy). At one point we tried some kind of guitar hero rip off, the guitars were pretty beat up and they only had 3 buttons. The game was harder than I expected and definately harder than your standard guitar hero (though this may have to do with the fact that you could only play J-rock songs). We both fumbled around a bit and ended up getting horrible scores. We decided the game was crap and went to the one next to it. A few minutes later some chinese boy picks up the guitar and plays a song at what must have been the hardest stage absolutely flawlessly. Our ego hurt by this humiliation we decided it was a good idea to head towards the station again.
Ofcourse we were completely disorientated and had no idea which way we had to go. We decided to do the smart thing and just head into a direction that seemed like it could be the right one and pray it ends up actually being the right one. After about 15 minutes we still didn't recognise anything and decide to just ask one of the store owners. It seems that if there is even a hint of an r in your question, they don't understand you. leave the word with the R out and they understand you fine i.e. Hong Kong station instead of Hong Kong Central Station.

By the time we got back onto the airport it was 3 pm and we still had 6 hours to kill. By this time we'd both been up for about 24 hours and were really starting to feel the strain. We decided to walk around the stores they had to keep ourselves busy and awake. The stores all sucked and had nothing fun for sale, just your typical airport nonsense. So we just sat at some benches and live in a state of half-sleep. Unfortunately when you're in this state when it seems like 10 minutes have passed in reality it's only been 30 seconds. This made the wait a grueling battle against exhaustion.
We bought some coke to re-hydrate ourselves and fill up on the caffeine a bit (I bought 2 bottles because I was particularly thirsty) 1 bottle and 5 trips to the bathroom later we decided to just go through customs and wait at the gate. Ofcourse we found out just a second too late that you couldn't take any drinks that weren't in bags beyond that point and we couldn't go back (there was some kind of pre-customs we had to go through). So I downed about half the bottle and left it there.
After what seemed like forever we were allowed on the plain, where I promptly fell into a coma, awakening only when there was a hint of food or drink.
the rest of the trip went fine and we ended up in our hostel without any problems. We share a room with 4 others, there are plenty of pcs with internet available and the beds all have blankets.

Nothing exciting will probably happen for the next few days.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Tim,
    Nice report of your adventures so far. Very cleaver of you two to mention each others sites. Nice to read that everything has gone well. I wish you a very plesant time there. But probably that will be very easy ;-)
    I will follow you two by reading your blogs. I try to react on your blog in proper English. Its probably poor but for me a good opportunity to practice ;-)
    Again a very nice time and I'm already curious what the next story will tell me!!
    Greetzzz,
    Ralf

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  2. Heyyyy
    Nou op een vroeger tijdstip ga ik het nog eens even nalezen want na een werkdag gaat dat engels me toch egt niet zo goed af.

    Maar ik neem aan dat je je niet verveeld!
    Dikke kus Jo

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  3. Ha die Tim,
    Hardstikke leuk verhaal. Echt Bep en ik hebben dubbel gelegen om sommige stukjes. We volgen je weblog. Het is maar goed dat ik het Hong Kong verhaal lees nu ik weet dat jullie goed zijn aangekomen. Je weet de sfeer goed weer te geven. Hoe je de start van de terugreis naar het vliegveld beschrijft vanuit het internet cafe. Ik zie het helemaal voor me. Op goed geluk een richting op. Dan gaan mijn handen naar mijn hoofd en bedekken ze deels mijn ogen. Deels want ik wil weten hoe het afloopt. Natuurlijk goed, want het gaat altijd goed. Na al die jaren weet ik dat ook wel, maar ik zie jullie wel vrolijk fluitend de verkeerde kant op lopen in een wereldstad met nog slechts enkele uren voor het vliegtuig vertrekt. Stressssss. Maar trek je daar niets van aan. Geniet. Have fun. Both of you.
    Freek

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