Brunei, Day 15, May

May 1st, 2008

I'm officially on my way HOME! I can't believe that its actually been 15 days since I've entered Brunei. Its crazy to think that so much time has passed and that I was able to see and do SOO much. It really was the trip of a lifetime because I honestly don't know when I'll have the opportunity to come back again. Although, if work sends me I'd try to find a way for my wife to come too! I think she'd LOVE it.

I work up this morning and pressed snooze on my make-shift alarm clock until a little past 7:30 and then went downstairs to get myself ready to start the day. When I got downstairs I ran into a few of the guys from Malaysia who were here to do some business with my sponsor. I met them last week when we were participating in the launch of the software application.

We went to the office for a few minutes to do a few things and to let my sponsor get some work done before we went to the airport. I said a few goodbyes to some of the people that I have been working with and then went to the airport where I was scared the I would have to pay extra for my luggage as it was heavy. I brought my things to the counter and put it on the scale.... 22.3 kg. I'm allowed 20 kg and then I started to panic because I saw a sign that told of the different charges that I would have to pay if I was over, and Hong Kong was something ridiculous like $65 a kg. The lady didn't say anything and then proceeded to check my luggage to Toronto (because it is a domestic flight after that I have to move the baggage myself.) I was talking to my sponsor afterwards and he told me they only make you start paying when you get to 25 kg. Phew!

Once I got my ticket I had to get out of the security area to cash in some Brunei dollars that I had, I still have a $100 bill that I needed to get ride of. The $5's and $1's I can give away as souvenirs to friends and family. I received $70 Canadian and $30 Brunei because he couldn't give me anything smaller.

I said my goodbye to the sponsor and went back through the checkpoint, then in through immigration. The guy took my passport, scanned me and then said “Who's your favourite player? Ronaldo?” In reference to the Manchester United jersey that I was wearing. We have a nice little talk about it before I left. What a way to start a trip! Normally Customs/Immigration people are very cranky, well they are in Canada. But I guess, if you're a fan of football, you can get along anywhere in the world. :-)

I walked around the Departures area to have a look at the sights. I walked into a souvenir shop and saw a little elephant statue for sale that I thought would be a fantastic little souvenir for myself as I didn't buy my statue..... listed price.... $89.00. F*ck that! (Though I didn't ask if it was listed in Brunie dollars or Malaysian ringits which are 15-1 for BND.)

They had a pretty cool little salt-water aquarium with a Dory and Nemo in it. It was nice to stand there and watch them swim around. It got a little weird after a few minutes when a couple of British fellows walked up to the aquarium and said, “This is cool, we saw these on the reef.”

Bastards.

I wen to find my Gate so that I knew where to go at 11 when they started boarding when I cam across a peculiar sight. There was a good dozen people sitting on the floor infront of a television. I could tell immediately they were from the UK:

1.They were white.
2.They were watching a replay of the Chelsea v Liverpool game from the night before.

I was there for Chelsea's third goal (They won 3-2) and not a single person cheered. They all seemed to take great offense to this particular goal. Stupid Chelsea.

The flight should be in Hong Kong on time, giving me about 2 hours in the airport to navigate my way around to find where I will be going. Maybe I'll have time to buy something? Think they'll take Canadian dollars?

A few minutes before take off one of the stewards on the flight, yes all of the staff on the flight are gusy and not the really cool dressed girls, comes up to me as I'm crammed into my seat with an elderly chinese woman and her son, both of whom are holding Canadian passports. He asks me, “Are you travelling together.” I say No.

He then says, would you like to sit up front? My mind immediately jumps to FIRST CLASS. As if he can read my mind, he begins to tell me that there is an empty row beside one of the emergency exits over the wind and he wants to know if I will occupy it. I agree and walk down the corridor to my new seat.

As we're taking off I realize that it was good deal, I looked to the window and managed to take a few aerial shots of the water village thats in the capital city, there are few of them in the area, but this is the biggest.

Did you know that 12-15% of the population of Brunei live in these villages? They're essentially homes on stilts in the water, a pretty cool idea, though dangerous. I was told that a few years ago there was a fire in one of them and because the houses are so close together the fire's spread easily. Such a shame.

I'm beginning to not like my seat any more. There is a really cool vertical cloud formation just out side to the left that I wanted to take a picture of but the flippin' wing was in the way so I couldn't get a full shot... maybe I can see out out the window behind me in a few moment.

2:30pm

I have arrived in HONG KONG. I'm a little disappointed in everything though. As we were flying in it was very overcast/cloudy/smoggy which isn't that good for taking pictures off the cool ass land marks in the city. Though I did try my best to take what I could some of them will need some editing to try and clear up the blueish tint of the pictures while the rest are hopeless. But it was still fun to try though.

Coming into the airport and looking at the different airlines that fly here is amazing. I saw planes for: South African, Turkish Airways, Qatar, Jordaian Airlines, Air Asia, Vietnamese Airlines. Its crazy because we're so limited in our choices in Canada that we only see less than a dozen, maybe closer to 10 or 12 when you get into a place like Toronto.

When I got off the plane there was a few people standing at the bottom of the runway with a sign, one of them had my name. It was just a friendly reminder that I need to go to transfer area E2 to get to the Cathay Pacific Counter. I knew that, but if I didn't E2 is across the hallway from E1 so it wouldn't be too hard to find.

I made my way through security without any problems, the only problem I had was putting my watch in the bucket for the scanner, it just wouldn't leave my hand. After making my way upstairs I really found out how cool this air port is. It has EVERYTING. A Ralph Lauren store, a Svardovski (watch place) all the really expensive high priced fashion outlets are here! How cool is that!?

I told Amanda that if I had time I would wander my way around the airport and see if I could find us any souvenis, I found some, and after spending $100 HK, which I think works out to be about $15 Canadian on two Key Chains, I think we'll both be happy.

After leaving the shop with the expensive key chains I wandered around to see if I could find something else that would catch my eye. Turns out I was very easily swayed. I saw a wireless rechargeable mouse in one of the electronic stores in the airport, it looked really promising. But it was $425 HK, I went to the currency exchange to find out how much that would be Canadian, and it looked like it was about ... wow my math was really wrong when I was thinking about this... it was $50! What the hell? Hong Kong is expensive.... but then again, when is the next time that I'm actually going to be here? Probably close to never. It was worth it. (Though it means that I might not be able to get a new pair of shoes... hahaha... )

I went back to my gate to see if I could find a seat since I had gone around the entire air port in a little more than 23 minutes and went to find a seat, you'd think that the seats wouldn't go that fast, but man they flew! I was lucky to find a seat on the end of an aisle looking out the window.

For shits and giggles I turned on the wireless component of my laptop to see if I could get anykind of a signal. I could... there were TWO unsecured wireless.

I tried the first one labeled “Free Wireless” after 3 minutes of trying to load a webpage... nothing.

Tried the other one labelled “PCCW”, when I tried to load a page it brought me to a login screen where I could enter in information and pay for Internet. Whats the point of having unsecured wireless if you have to pay to use it?

So, its 3:35pm and my flight is boarding in 30 minutes. Shit, do I ever hate waiting for stuff! Thanks Amanda for sharing your impatience with me! Hahahahaha

I just can't wait to get home to Canada! I could spend the night in the airport in Toronto and I wouldn't care, just as long as I'm in Canada!


5:15pm (Hong Kong)

I'm on the flight! Making my way back towards Canada, so very exciting. I can't believe that its come to this. I was very scared getting on the flight because I didn't want to be smooshed into the window next to two people and not be able to get out to go pee or anything. Turns out I lucked out BOTH trips, on the way to Hong Kong on the 15th I had a really nice kick-boxing gentleman sitting next to me and we chatted our way through the sky.

This time I have a very lovely English lady (living in Toronto) sitting next to me who's oh so very nice to talk tto. She told me all about her trip to Brisbane and some of the things that they did in Hong Kong, such a pleasant lady.

Asian people can be, not to sound like an asshole, demanding and pushy. I was in line to get on the plane when this little fellow, not much older than me walked right past me, looked at me and then stood in line. How rude!

On the take off I still didn't have much luck seeing Hong Kong, there were some aspects that I could see: little bits of civilization in and around the volcanic mountains, very nice. But it was still too cloudy too see what was past or around those mountains. I think I'd like to come back this way and do a little tour of Asia. Visit Hong Kong, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, and then head down to Austalia where I can get lost in the out back and never come back.....

The nice lady also told me a bit about the news lately, apparently Beijing made an announcement that for the next 100 days leading up to the Olympics the entire city is going to be a smoke free zone. Organizers are worries about the quality of the air in Beijing and figured that doing this would help with the pollution. How about if they stop building oil guzzling factories? That would help. Better yet shut down all of the Coal Fueled Power stations in the country, they're probably responsible for about 45% of the pollution. It sucks that they're advancing so far behind the rest of the world and encountering the problems that we've worked around 20 years ago.

Shit, that got a little political, sorry about that.

There's a lot of turbulence on this flight right now and they also made an announcement that some of the in flight services/entertainment are all messed up due to “technical” problems. Here's what I think happened: someone pushed the “reset” button on their system, and if it functions like anything else I've seen lately, resetting it won't help. Or the other cause could have been that some schmuck (me) turned on his laptop and left the wireless Internet turned on. Now that I think about it, I bought a new wireless mouse in the airport and I can't use it because its a “wireless” device. Dammit. I wanted to play!

Again, I digress and end up bitching about something that doesn't need to be discussed here.

I tried to use the power plug thats in the seat in front of me but when I plugged in my laptop cord the little green light on my transformer didn't light up to indicate that there was power. I mentioned it to one of the stewardess' (yes there are women on this flight) that it wasn't working while she was handing out drinks and she told me she'd find out as soon as she was done with the drinks. She walked back and forth a few times; I began to worry that she' forgotten about what I asked her.

On her third trip by my seat she stopped to tell me that there was a problem with the fuse and they were trying to reset it. Within 30 seconds of her leaving the little green light came on to indicated that there was power going to the outlet. YAY! Now I can turn up the brightness on my monitor and work until my hearts content. If I had a disk I'd take this opportunity to reformat my computer...

If I wanted to fill it with crap I'd put Vista on it.... nah.

We're only 4 and a half hours from Toronto, and I'm surprised we made it this far to be honest. Shortly after takeoff we hit the absolute worst turbulence I've ever experienced In my life. I was honestly terrified that we were going to drop out of the air.

At one point I raised out of my seat because the plane dropped about 10-15 feet and then rose again with the turbulence. I thought we were going to end up crash landing into downtown Tokyo! I looked at our moving map and at that point we still had 11 hours to go. Side to side turbulence I can handle, but that was terrible.

I'm glad that I got to sit next the lady from Toronto, she was very kind during the bad turbulence, offering me Gravol and checking to see if I was alright. I was like flying with my mom. Kind of weird, but refreshing at the same time.

We were in and out of normal turbulence for the entire rest of the journey. Hitting little bits here and there.

I did what I normally do in those type of situations.... I slept. I closed my eyes and imagined I was anywhere but on a plane. I pictured myself sitting on the couch at home with my wife, but then a plane crash landed into our television.

Every time I pick up the laptop to do some work we end up hitting turbulence and making the journey rougher and making it every harder to concentrate.

Currently we're flying over top of Whitehorse and I opened the window, after nearly going blind by the sheer volume of light coming in the window, I was absolutely mesmerized by the landscape. I managed to take a few pictures of the outside before our crappy lady ordered me “politely” to shut the window before she broke my face.

Ok, I added in that part.