We have a problem

So i'm still in Hong Kong, slightly hung over, and not in the Philippines.

I did not arrive in the Philippines due to a series of unfortunate events. Which will not require too much explaining.

Firstly we arrived at the airport on time, two hours before the plane was due to take off. This made me happy because I like things to be on time.

We waited in line to check in with mostly Filipino people and more than a few ladyboys. The ladyboys kept looking at us and smiling which was made more amusing because they looked terrible. Like grown men who had applied makeup whilst drunk and on a rollercoaster.

We arrived to check in our bags at the counter, the bags were taken and then there was a problem. The credit card Richard used to pay for the flight tickets was not actually his, it belonged to his mother and whilst the money had been paid for the flights and our names were on their database they needed to see a copy of the card used for the transaction.

In a perfect world they would have told us all this information at once upon arriving at the counter, we would have phoned up the mother of Richard and she would have faxed us a copy of her credit card to the airport head office. However they did not tell us all at once, they sent us to see someone at a separate counter who was not there. We waited, and waited, and waited. I did not wait in a quiet manner but still my increasingly angry manner did not make anyone come to help us.

So by the time someone did come to help us we discovered it was too late for us to do anything. The flight had closed, the plane had boarded, the bags were on board (though we got ours back). We could not transfer to the next flight the following day because it was fully booked, and all flights were booked till Christmas. We will get a refund on the tickets, but our Christmas trip was not going to happen.

We were both pretty angry about this but there was nothing we could do. A guy was in the airport crying and in hysterics about something that I never discovered and we both decided that it could be worse, we could have a serious problem like he seemed to be having.

We had money in our pockets and were in Macau, so of course we went gambling and drinking at the Venetian casino. We watched a fantastic live band, drank far too much and spent hours at the Roulette table. I set my limit for gambling at 500 HKD as this was the amount of money I did not mind if I lost, I did lose it, but I had a great time doing so and enough free drinks at the table to make it an economic way to spend an evening.

The plan now is that Richard and I will be doing something different every day in Hong Kong during the Christmas break. Today we are going hiking up Lions Rock which is part of the mountains surrounding Kowloon. Tomorrow I think we are going to the beach.

bx