Between Two Planes

There is no airport in the world that offers more activities for transit passengers than Hong Kong. Those who have six hours or more between planes can take a city excursion (I had 5 ½ hours). Terminal 2 has an exciting array of entertainment (I was in Terminal 1). A short taxi ride away in one direction is outlet shopping, and in another direction is a traditional Chinese bazaar. All those treats are best enjoyed by people who haven’t been thoroughly discombobulated by nonstop travel.

I might have taken advantage of a day spa that offered massages and other delights, but I ran out of time. Let me explain.

My first activity was the game of Up Against the Bureaucracy. Here’s the opening gambit from my opponents: Before giving me the airline ticket paid for by Cathay Pacific, Garuda Indonesian Airline wanted me to sign that I was willing to pay to have my unaccompanied baggage delivered to me. Naturally I objected. With time to kill I took my objections from one person to another. What if I refused to sign? Would I be stuck at the airport in Hong Kong until my suitcase showed up?

Eventually I buckled. The charge that I would incur would not be for shipping my bag from East Anglia, Africa, if that’s where it had gone. The charge would only be for having a local Indonesian driver deliver the bag from the airport in Jakarta to my hotel. And I could pick up the bag myself at the airport when or if it ever arrived.

While at the Garuda ticket counter I met three women who had been on my flight from Vancouver, and who were also trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get to Jakarta. One was an Indonesian woman with a son in Canada. Another was Canadian, with a son in Indonesia. The third woman was the Canadian’s sister-in-law. The four of us decided to go off together to have a leisurely lunch with the lavish allowance of $75 HK we had each gotten from Cathay Pacific.

It turns out that $75 HK doesn’t buy very much. It’s the equivalent of about $8 US, and for that I got a bowl of fish ball soup and a pot of green tea.

My $15 HK phone card from Cathay Pacific bought a 3-minute call to Bali, allowing me to tell a travel agent to have someone at the Jakarta airport meet me on GA 863 instead of on CX 777. I also asked that they call the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel in Jakarta and leave a message for Mr. Slava Timashev, to let him know that his wife would arrive 5 ½ hours late. What I didn’t learn until much later was that the person who took my call didn’t understand English very well.