I arrived in Hong Kong very early in the morning. I pottered around the
\nairport for about an hour or so. I had a couple of cigarettes in the
\nsmall, somewhat nasty, smoking rooms. I couldn’t quite tell if all the
\nmen inside stared at me because I was breaking some kind of social more by
\nsmoking as a woman or whether it was that when I went in I managed to
\ncrash the glass door against the wall with some force. The doors did look
\nmuch heavier than they were and by this point I was operating on very
\nlittle sleep. Hong Kong itself was very misty, to the extent that I
\nthought the Pilot might struggle landing. The mist cleared slightly and I
\ncould make out the mountains in the distance.<\/p>\n
I was misled by my timetable as the landing time in Saigon was an hour
\nafter departing from Hong Kong. It soon became apparent that I was
\ncrossing yet another time zone and the flight was in fact, longer than I
\nthought.<\/p>\n
After a relatively short flight I touched down in Saigon. Prior to
\nlanding we were told that it was 31 degrees and by God it felt it when I
\ngot out of the plane in my long-sleeved top and jeans. My bag took what
\nfelt like an eon to come around the baggage counter and I wondered if it
\nhad decided to end its journey in Hong Kong rather than continuing as I
\ndid. Eventually it popped through the sliced rubber cat-flap and I
\nprasied it for making the journey from Heathrow without consulting me.<\/p>\n
At customs I had a plastic bag with two books in. I put it on the desk as
\nthe customs guy looked at my passport. He pointed at the bag and said
\n‘bomb?’. I said, ‘No, books’. He continued to point at the bag and
\nrepeat his question as I maintained my response. I was sligtly bemused by
\nthis and looked over my shoulder to check whether I was about to be
\nsurrounded by armed guards. When it transpired that no-one else was
\ntaking him seriously I decided that he just had a rubbish sense of humour.<\/p>\n
I went out of customs, changed some money and ordered a taxi at the desk.
\nAlthough this was probably more expensive (about 6 pounds for a 30 minute
\njourney) the sight of the gaggling crowd of drivers touting for business
\nwas not a tempting one in my somewhat dishevelled state. The man at the
\ncounter pointed to a spot where I should wait outside, smoke a cigarette
\nand then he would come and take me to my taxi. I obliged and, having
\ndiscovered half-way through my cigarette that I was surrounded by
\nno-smoking signs, I realised that he had also not come out. I tried to go
\nback into the airport and was stopped by a guard who said I could not
\nre-enter the building. After looking pathetic and making random hand
\ngestures he appeared to feel sorry for me and let me back in – or maybe it
\nwas just the smell he could not tolerate after my long journey!<\/p>\n
I went back to the desk and found the guy sat with all his colleagues
\nhappily tucking into his lunch. His instant overly apologetic reaction
\nled me to believe (I don’t think naively) that he had simply forgotten.
\nHe took me outside to a taxi and I began the journey from the airport to
\nmy hotel in Saigon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I arrived in Hong Kong very early in the morning. I pottered around the airport for about an hour or so. I had a couple of cigarettes in the small, somewhat nasty, smoking rooms. I couldn’t quite tell if all the men inside stared at me because I was breaking some kind of social more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}