26 hours and counting...

So we boarded the plane in Adelaide bound for Melbourne, we stopped for a drink before hand at the only place in Adelaide Airport that sells alcohol and after a second mortgage on our home we had a drink.  Well played Adelaide Airport, way to rip off the people.  We then met up with Robert and Jo, Robert works with John and Jo is his wife and we all boarded our first international leg bound for Hong Kong.  After a movie and some food, John and I tried our best to sleep in what most would know from travelling overseas as a dog box and were woken around 4am local time to eat breakfast and get ready for our arrival into Hong Kong.

Hong Kong although we only saw it from the airport was beautiful, really beautiful a place that is now on my list of cities to see.  We did some looking around, had a coffee and then headed down to our third leg of Hong Kong to Shanghai.  This flight was not as long and soon enough we were descending into Shanghai.

Shanghai airport is huge, I think bigger than Beijing which I find ridiculous as that is the largest airport I have ever been in, however the bit that kind of hits you in the face is when you turn a corner and there are two men looking at you and each has a rather large machine gun, that is intimidating.

Now we were suppose to transfer internationally for our leg to Taipei however China don't do things the way the rest of the world do things, so instead of doing the usual transfer lounge and boarding gate, we had to go through Customs, Immigration, security checks and then walk about 1km to the other terminal to catch our 4th leg flight, in a nut shell we missed the flight.  Great!

Firstly the Customs people dragged me off to a holding area and I couldn't catch John's eye to say um think perhaps I am about to have a finger inserted in places no finger should go, only to then realise that Robert, Jo and John were all joining me.  Robert explained as nicely as a fiery Italian can that we are late and trying very hard to get to our final flight, the Police man, he didn't really care, he took his time, checked all passports and boarding tickets about three times, finally wandered over and got a stamp and let us go on our way.

Then we ran like ran, 1km to try to terminal 1 from terminal 2, without the knowledge that we could have gotten a shuttle bus.  Not that it would have helped we were never making that flight as soon as we realised China treats their transfers differently to any other country in the world.

So four very tired, smelly, slightly less than impressed Australia's trudged through the airport trying to find some kind of a coffee shop to rest.

However firstly we had to go the 1km back to Terminal 1 to get our backs that had been dumped off the plane since we missed our flight.  Jo and John they are the glass is half empties on our trip, Robert and I we are the glass is half full.  So Robert and I were sure our bags would be there, Jo and John not so much.  Glass half full won out, thank god. 

So then it was another trip back on the shuttle with bags in tow and we checked in for our flight.  Finally we were called for boarding and our final leg was under way.

We arrived into Taipei around 6pm hence the 26 hours of flights and airports this post references.  We were collected by our driver and promptly taken to our hotel. 

I believe every single time I went through customs I was patted down, I had to show my passport about 20 times, I had to talk to about 5 customs and 5 immigration officers and I was hot and smelly and tired, but I didn't and still don't really care, I am extremely blessed to be on this trip, and I get to go overseas and spent time in another country with my husband, so all the little issues that happen along the way, really they are just little blips on a screen that is full of fabulous.