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3:10 PM, June 24, 2003 (5.5 hours travel time)
The flight from Cebu to Hong Kong was great. Completely uneventful. As we landed, they handed out immigration cards to those who would be staying in China. I didn’t need one since I was just a transit passenger, and I thought I would be all set.
When we landed in Hong Kong, I tried to get off the plane as quickly as possible – keeping the relatively short connecting time in mind. Unfortunately, I was in the back of a fairly large and fairly crowded airplane, so it took a bit to get off. We had landed at gate 64 if I remember correctly. My connecting flight to LAX was at gate 3. I looked around, had no idea how to even get to the correct level to be at gate 3. I asked someone working for the airport to give me directions. Her English wasn’t clear, but the direction she was pointing was clear enough. I was off to the races.
The Hong Kong airport was much larger than I had seen on my trip in. I was spoiled on my trip to Cebu – my walk was relatively short. To get to this gate from where I arrived, I had to go through two health check stations, two security checkpoints and through the whole airport. Even with walking on the moving sidewalks, it was quite a stretch to make it to my flight on time. It was interesting though to see the airport. They even had a full health clinic set up where you could see a doctor and a nurse and get a full heath exam if you felt like you were sick – SARS or not. I, of course, didn’t have time to have my tonsils checked – I was hauling ass to get to my flight.
I arrived at my gate at 3:50 and they were just getting ready to board. I looked around to see who was wearing surgical masks. I found one particular family to be interesting – the father and daughter were wearing a surgical SARS mask, but the mother and the son were not. How odd.
Just as they were calling the first group onto boarding, I was approached by a young Chinese woman who was doing a survey for the airport. She had a few questions, and the line to get on the airplane looked long (oh no, a full flight) so I agreed to take the survey. She asked questions about why I chose the Hong Kong airport, what it was missing, my concerns for SARS. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much to say considering I went through Hong Kong because my airplane ticket was cheaper and I didn’t get to see much of it because I was just hauling ass to hit my flight. She was asking me the last question as my group was called for boarding, so I gave her the answer and got in line for my flight.
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