Travel Documents pt.1

This seemed a fairly easy way to keep those of you that are interested up to speed with things in China while not filling up the inboxes of everyone else! haha 

So Sunday morning, after arriving the previous night from 4 consecutive gigs in other states, I made it to at the tiny airport in my home city of Shreveport LA to find that (of course) it was overbooked! This was a wonderful start to my already convoluted journey to my final destination – Chengdu, Sichuan, China – that involved 4 flights, 4 bus rides, and countless taxis and subway exchanges. 

Well I rescheduled first leg of the trip within enough time to make my second flight out of Atlanta, GA without messing up any of my other flights...miraculous! 

After a quick (and I mean very quick) layover, I boarded my first ever double-decker flight!  

As mentioned in the description of fav.me/d6wsczh, I was traveling with my keyboard (which weighs more than me), my suitcase with clothes for essentially a YEAR, my backpack, my camera, and the ever-so-convenient keyboard stand – perfect for snagging everything in it's path when you're in a rush! lol although I'm certainly glad that none of it was lost in transit, because I wouldn't be able to make it without any of them, no matter how annoying they may be!

Upon arrival at the "hotel," whose reservation was switched twice at the last minute, it was apparent that luxury and spaciousness weren't exactly its strong suits (featured here with my 72-key keyboard as a size reference). Though I'm hardly what you could call a diva lol so no worries! Again, I'm just thankful I found the place at all! Again, reference the description of fav.me/d6wsczh for that tasty story. 

I was essentially dropped in one of the most crowded areas of HK with no instructions, no cell reception, no GPS, no way of knowing which building of  conglomerate businesses contained my hotel (nor on which floor!), and on top of all this, I got to lug all of this lovely equipment upstream of the masses of people, none of which had the slightest clue where this seemingly imaginary hotel was. I finally was able to find a Chinese couple my age who was incredibly helpful, using their phone to take me to the correct building, asking the non-english speaking man in the front which floor to drop me, and even helping me take my stuff up the few stairs leading to the elevators! What a godsend, right??

It was also rather fortunate that I had packed  all the appropriate power adapters for China outlets. However, it wasn't of much help that the outlets in Hong Kong weren't the same! haha ah well...I made it work somehow until I was able to locate additional converters (how am I still alive???) 

There will be more to come, but there's no sense in cramming a book into one post! Hope you enjoy this method of documenting things. It seems to work pretty well I suppose, so you can expect more of these in the weeks to come

By request, here is a small panoramic of that same nightscape from Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong: