Things just didn’t go well for me on the way back to Malaysia. It all started the night before where the zipper on my leather jacket broke. Yes, yet another addition to the list of things already broken or lost on this trip to Mongolia. Broke 2 tripods, lost a sweater and 1 rechargeable battery. So how bad was bad? Here goes….We left the hotel at 10:30 am Mongolian time, and from there things were still great. We boarded the small Boeing 737 and just when we thought that we were on our way, the flight got delayed. Apparently, there was an issue with getting approval to take off from traffic control. I love Mongolia, but what’s with traffic control? There were no other flights for that day! Who else was in gonna take off or land? Anyways, the remainder of our Air China flight came and went pretty well and after 2 hours we landed in Capitol Airport Beijing. Got off the plane and then headed onto International Transfers, and that’s when the drama begins. “We cannot transfer Malaysian Airlines, you need to through Immigration!”. “What? I need to exit into China and come back in to the airport?”. And that’s what we did. We filled in all the forms, then went through the Immigration desk, had my passport stamped, but thank God it didn’t count as an entry on to my Chinese Visa. Headed through customs, then before we knew it, we were in China! Yes, we were in China without a Visa! We could have gone out taken a Cab, gone to the Forbidden City, but of course time didn’t allow that. So we took these quick pictures of us being in China, and then onwards to the Departure Hall which was one floor above us, and we could not find the lift, though everybody swears one exists! Anyways, then we had to fill in a security form, then onwards to the Malaysian Airlines counter. Check in was pretty easy, MAS rocks!! Then it was Immigration all over again. At this point we had less than 1 hour before our flight was suppose to take off. Met a nice American guy who spoke Mandarin so well, it made me a shamed to be half Chinese. Anyways, Immigration was hell, as the guy demanded I should have this form which says I am a International Transit passenger, and because I didn’t have one, he wanted to use my China Visa! I kept insisting that my China Visa should not be used as I was forced to come into China thanks to their wonderful system. He called his boss over and he told me the same thing, and I told him my flight leaves in 45 minutes, and finally he let me through Visa in tact. Then came customs. My friend Lin had bought a bottle of Vodka at the Duty free shop in UB, and as travelers we are allowed one bottle of Alcho each. They wanted to take away his bottle saying it was illegal to carry in, and you need to buy a new one at the duty free shop inside the airport and some silly thing like that. Lin managed to convince his that we are actually transit passenger! We got through, but unfortunately his watch got lost during the baggage scan. That sucks man! And then as we finally arrived at our gate, the flight was delayed! We finally boarded the plane 45 minutes later and then when you think its time to take off, you get all excited and then guess what? There were 7 other planes ahead of us waiting to take off in the runway and we just sat there for a good 30 minutes. Sigh..We finally were away. Plane in the air. Watched the movie, Herbie – Fully Loaded, and just when I thought nothing else could go wrong before I land in Malaysia, something else did. I turned on my laptop to blog about my terrible journey, and my blogging software’s database got corrupted. Argh! I lost all my post since 25 August, but fortunately I have been keeping them in blogspot as well, so I will have to manually recover them later when I get back home. This does mean that my posts will have different blog ID’s so, the permalinks and the comments will be all messed up. Argh. I love the blogging software I am using, however if you accidentally launch 2 copies of it at the same time, it corrupts the database! It has happened to me before, and hence I usually backup it daily, sadly I had gotten lazy over the last few days. Sigh!
And its now 8:27 PM, the flight scheduled to arrive around 11:30 PM, and I have plans all set up. As soon as I get back home, I am gonna go eat Nasi Kandar! Yes, I am craving for some spice in my life! My Indian blood burns for it. I am also gonna go shopping tomorrow with my friend. I need to buy a new tripod and a new sweater! Sigh. I hope to go get some Banana leave lunch, hoping she likes Indian food.
That’s it from blogging on a plane…..
On this day in History..
- Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around The Old Oak Tree - 2005
- First Day of School In Mongolia - 2005
- Things have changed - 2006
- Home once more... - 2006
- More pictures from Dhaka Bangadesh - 2007
- A Taste of Denmark in Bangladesh - 2007
- Sembunyi Spa @ Cyberview Lodge Resort & Spa - 2008
- Nathan Day 212 :- 7 Months Old, and has a new friend! - 2010
