Day 25 -- Sanya, China to Hong Kong

Another early morning for us. We met Caddie downstairs to get our airline tickets from her and ride to the airport. In town, we met her husband. He drove us the rest of the way so she could go do some work in the office. We got to the airport by 9:45am for our 11:30am flight. We had to figure out where to check in as her husband didn’t speak any English to offer us guidance. We walked into the security/ customs area and there was no one there. We found the customs declarations form and started filling it out. An employee brought us departure cards to fill out, so we did that and started forming a line behind the yellow line on the floor along with 5 or so other people. When the security/ customs agents arrived, they told us to go back further and form another line behind a different desk. We did that, got to the front, and then were shown that we had to fill out another form and get at the back of the line again. This form was a health form that had questions about if you have had a cough, headaches, fever, etc. in the last 2 weeks. I chose not to report my headaches that I’ve been having as I didn’t want to take any chances. They also look at you with a heat sensing infrared camera to check your temperature for fever. These are all precautions to help prevent the spread of bird flu. We got through that line and up to the declarations line again. Mom and I didn’t claim anything; Dad and Daniel claimed their computer and camera equipment so it wouldn’t be an issue when we came back in from Hong Kong. Mom and I got through quickly while Dad was still trying. The woman was talking to him in broken English, so I tried to hang back and help in Chinese. A security guard ushered Mom and I through to scan our bags and wouldn’t let us go help. Dad had to fill out the form again and list serial numbers (even though the form only said ‘model number’). He also had to claim how much was paid for them and not just the value. He explained that one was purchased many years ago and the other was a company purchase, so he didn’t know what the purchase prices were. He finally made up prices and was allowed to go through, provided he understands that he MUST bring them back to China. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he said that he lives in China or showed his resident/ work visa to them, they just didn’t want to believe this big white guy lived in their country apparently. In the mean time, the guard that ushered Mom and I through motioned for Daniel to go to the other line (‘No goods to declare’). He followed his directions and was promptly sent back to the other line by the agent there. When he finally got to the agent, they started hassling him too. He argued that the lenses didn’t have serial numbers (not true, but he didn’t want to unpack the bag and write them down for all four lenses). They asked for the one on the camera, so he showed them where it said ‘D70’ as we had written on the form. They decided if it said that on the camera it must be the serial number then. They finally let him go through, scanned his and Dad’s bags, and we were on our way to yet another line to check in. The line to check in was relatively painless. They weighed our bags and sent us to another line for customs clearance. This is where they actually check your passports, see if you are who you say you are, and in some countries see if you have visited any forbidden countries (this is usually in the Middle East and religion based though). They looked at mine with a microscope under a black light for a few minutes, stamped it, then sent me through. It didn’t seem to matter that the name on my passport didn’t match the tickets. It does have an amendment on the back page, but she never even looked at that. I went through while she checked out Daniel’s passport. She asked for additional ID from him (I guess the bleach blond hair on a picture from 9 years ago just didn’t look like him) before letting him through. Dad and Mom were in another line where they struggled to explain that they live in China and their visas were different. The agent used the microscope on Dad’s passport and then let them through. In all, the customs/ security/ etc. took us 40 minutes to clear. Maybe 2 minutes of that was actually spent waiting in line; the rest was spent with them giving us the standard hassle. It’s not always this bad traveling in China, this airport was particularly a pain in the butt though. We had about 20 minutes before boarding time by the time it was all said and done. The plane was very small. There were only 12 and a half rows, 4 seats wide – 50 seats total. Even though it was small, it seemed to have more legroom than our last flight and was reasonably comfortable. The nearly two hour flight put us into Hong Kong shortly before 1:30pm. We were ushered through customs and zapped in the head with a hand held temperature gun before we were allowed into the airport. We hit the ATMs to get Hong Kong Dollars and headed to McD’s for lunch (they only served us seaweed covered peanuts on the flight which we all opted not to eat). After lunch, we figured out where to catch our hotel shuttle and headed for town about 3:15pm. Connie and I got in touch on the way to the hotel and made plans for dinner. She had already made reservations and figured out that our hotel had a free shuttle to get us where we would meet her and what time it left. We got to the Metropole Hotel in the Mon Kok area around 4:30pm and got settled in. We took a shuttle at 6:00pm down to Tsimshatsui (TST) and walked a few blocks to meet Connie at 6:30pm. We walked a little ways to Knutsford Terrace and she treated us to an excellent dinner. Everything we had was great and we had no worries about accidentally getting food we were allergic to. We had a good chance to visit and catch up with each other. Dad asked her if she knew why Chinese people need a visa to visit Hong Kong (even though it is considered part of China) but Hong Kong people don’t need a visa to visit Mainland China. Her answer was that the Chinese government wants to ensure that the Chinese people would return to China and know that the Hong Kong people definitely want to return to Hong Kong and not stay in China. We all thought that was a pretty good explanation seeing as how Hong Kong is very modern with seemingly greater freedoms and higher standards of living. Mom and Dad have promised her a barbecue at their place next time they are all in town since she insisted upon treating us to dinner here. After dinner, we all walked around town for about an hour. Connie pointed out places to shop and other things around town and took us down to the waterfront for a view of the city lights of Hong Kong Central. We headed back to the shuttle bus about 9:30pm and went back to the hotel. I had another killer headache and fell asleep fully-clothed, over the covers, with my feet hanging off the side of the bed.