Alrighty, where shall I start? You know, usually, every great journey has its boring beginning. Maybe it's best, then, to start off with the early morning preparation in Hong Kong. It was 20th November 2002. I got up at 5am (bloody early) - but think back: it was 10am in New Zealand. So, I guess it was not that early after all. Geared up with a 15kg backpack (thank you, Hiro, you contributed 10kg of "useful material" to my load) and 10kg of hand carry luggage, I walked 10 minutes to the main road. I took the cheapest airbus in Hong Kong and headed for the airport. The ride took 1.5 hours and it cost only NZ$3.5 (you can't beat that for an airbus!). I got to the airport way too early again (one of many times during my entire life). So I checked in and walked around one of the best airports on earth, bought some duty free alcohol (alcohol... in fact, during the entire trip in Japan, I only got drunk once! See Getting Drunk in Japan). At the boarding gate there was absolutely no human being in sight, and as you know I am not much of a loner. So I walked back towards all the shops and guess what I found - free internet! There are not many airports I've been to that have free internet. Being a poor Kiwi university student, I made the best use of this wonderful facility, wrote 5 emails and browsed through about 20 websites (and watched a few games intro movies, of course!).
Finally, I got on the plane, but it had maybe 20 people onboard and was flying to Taipei! I thought: 'What the hell. I am going to Taiwan.' ... I didn't know that the plane was flying via Taiwan to Japan. When the Plane had landed, I could choose either to stay on the plane or to get off. Monkey that I am, I chose to get off, never knowing that I could only stay within the waiting area. I walked basically near the arrival gate and the duty free shops. If the alcohol at the shop hadn't been so expensive, I would have bought some more. The price of duty free stuff in Taiwan is the same as what we can buy alcohol with in normal shops in New Zealand; no wonder Taiwanese are not as alcoholic as Kiwis. While I was cursing the alcohol price, I heard someone calling my name with a really strange Asian accent. I yelled back, she came over and said: 'You are not supposed to be here, you have to stay at the boarding area!' I was speechless and just followed her back. Fuck, she must think that I was a fool. She spoke into her microphone in Taiwanese, saying that she found me blah blah blah. Half an hour later, I finally got back on the plane, finding myself surrounded by noisy Asian tourists. So, I just kept quiet and listened to my music. And there you go, my very boring introduction.