if this planes a rockin'

As mentioned in my previous post, I was going to document the rest of my trip, but at this rate I wouldn’t be finished until 2013.  So I’ve decided to just to document a few of the funnier or interesting or just plain boring experiences I had and maybe throw in a bit about my last day.  I got caught up in the earthquake that ravaged Japan earlier this year. 

The remainder of my time in Japan was awesome!  Great snow, great weather, good food, and plenty more onsens…oh, and a couple more cold beers.  From Japan I was heading to Hong Kong for a few days.  Having never been to Asia I thought I should at least check out another city while I was there.  So off we headed.

On my first day I rolled about town for a bit.  I decided to try and high five some people.  For the day I was zero for twenty three.

I took somewhere around forty pictures of buildings.  My thought process was that my little brother is an architect and he’d probably like these.  To date, I haven’t shown him one.

On day two my resolve was stronger than ever.  I was determined to get at least one high five.  I got three.  Unfortunately, they were from out of towners.

One day I decided to head to Stanley, a small little town on the sea that was supposed to be pretty cool.  Greg gave me the lowdown on the bus so off I headed to the station.  I found the right bus and waited patiently to get on.  In front of me were two older English ladies exchanging words with the bus driver.  At one point one of the ladies turned, exacerbated, and blurted out the following to no one in particular.  The only problem is that she happened to catch my eye line.

Margaret:  “I can’t believe the fucking bus driver doesn’t speak fucking English.”

Me:  “You know you’re in fucking Hong Kong, right?”

Margaret:  “Well really!”

Me:  “Really?  So if he was in London would the bus drivers speak Mandarin?”

Margaret:  “Well, I never.”

I glanced at their husbands and they were stifling smirks and all out laughter.

One day I took the tram up to the top of some peak back behind Hong Kong.  It was a nice day so I decided to walk down.  It was a great walk with tons of greenery and amazing views of the city, the bay, and Kowloon.  I got back in to the city with a hankering for a beer.  As I was looking around for a suitable place I stopped at a light.  In front of me was, well, a very nice ass.  It was a ladies’ ass, by the way.  What was a little strange though was the way she was standing.  She had her legs crossed at her ankles so it kinda looked like she was posing for something.  Being the suave, sophisticated guy I am…oh wait…I’m a jackass so my opening line was, “hey, what are you posing for?”  She looked at me quizzically and said, “pardon?”  But it wasn’t just “pardon” as in Dolly.  It was “pardon” with that wonderfully awesome Australian accent.  I was hooked, instantly enamored.  Unfortunately, I was me so I chose an awful opening line that would be hard to recover from.  Fumbling, I said, “sorry, it just looked like you were posing for something.”  “Oh, okay”, was the reply.  I was in a hole.  With nothing left I went for the hail mary…”I was just going to grab a beer, you wanna join me?”  Slight pause and then following with, “do you know a good place around here?”  Slight pause on her part and she said, “sure.”  Not quite the jump out of your chair enthusiasm I was hoping for, but after that start I’d take it.  On our way down the street I said, “great, but I am NOT drinking  Fosters!”  That got a chuckle.  I was back in.  As Joel Goodsen said, “sometimes you gotta just say, what the fuck?”

A good trip indeed, but it was finally time to head back home.  My route was going to take me back through Tokyo.  It was a pleasant, uneventful flight.  The landing was smooth.  The only thing that could have made the five hours better would have been if I had one of those surgical masks on so I could have fit in a little better.  As we were taxiing to the gate the wings suddenly started to wobble.  In those first two seconds I thought another plane had taken off above us and we were caught in the jet wash like Maverick and Goose were and here I was without an ejector seat.  Then the fuselage started to twist and shake.  Then the wings really started going and that’s when the pilot slammed on the brakes.  I thought quietly to myself…wait, who thinks “loudly” to themselves?  Anywho, I thought quietly, “we just had an earthquake.”  About five minutes later the captain came on and confirmed it.  Thirty minutes later we were told the airport and tower had been evacuated so we were going to have to sit tight for a while.  Information started trickling in about the magnitude of the quake, but really we didn’t have any solid information.  Seven hours later people were annoyed to say the very least.  I’ll say this though, the All Nippon Airways crew was great, considering the circumstances, a plane full of cranky people locked in a steal tube.  We were finally let in to the terminal and when we saw the devastation and destruction the earthquake caused all the frustration and anger melted away.  I was left with a tremendous amount of guilt.

Once in the terminal the place took on the scene of a zombie movie.  Just a bunch of walking dead roaming around a deserted place aimlessly.  Bands formed, camps were set up, I think someone even fired up a hibachi ,blankets were used as currency…unfortunately, everything was closed so any form of currency was useless.  So I gave away all the blankets I grabbed from the plane, found a place to hunker down, and tried to get a bit of sleep.  The aftershocks made it a bit difficult though.  Oh and the cold, hard tile floor didn’t help much either, but hey, I was safe, relatively healthy, and did I mention safe?

The next day was a zoo.  Piles of people streaming in trying to get out of the country, it was chaos.  I stood in line for the better part of the day, but I finally got re-booked on a flight departing that night so all in all, I was just delayed for a bit.  In the grand scheme of things it really wasn’t that bad.

Thankfully, that hasn’t deterred me from traveling so there are plenty of stories to come from the past few months.