The cab trip from the office to the airport is supposed to be about an hour but due to traffic being more complicated than usual we planned for (and rightly so) 2 hours.
Getting out of the crowded parts of the city took a while – lots of stop and go. Once we got to some of the countryside roads my driver would really let the Corolla show its mettle. We were flying at 80-100 kph on some of these streets. And these streets were usually single lane bi-directional streets (each side has one lane). And there are trucks and bikes and other things that move far less quickly, so my driver would pass them. Often around blind curves made doubly-blind by the large truck we were passing. This is not unique to my driver – others would do it to, and at one point we came upon (quickly!) an oncoming case of a truck passing another truck. We had to come to an almost screeching halt so that we didn’t have a head-on collision. It was harrowing in other ways than I had previously experienced but, well, interesting.
When we finally got to the airport, I tipped the driver 1500 rupees. I hoped that would be enough for him to set up a trust fund for his wife and kids for when he died a tragic but not unexpected accident on the roads.
My flight was still a couple of hours away from departure, so I figured I’d head inside through security and find a nice place to sit, eat dinner and work. There are a number of places inside the terminal that serve food, but what I was looking for was something light and familiar, maybe with a nice glass of wine or a beer to balance out a tiresome week and a couple of flights still ahead of me. I surveyed all of the places twice before settling in on one that, once I got up close and saw the menu, decided that I could just grab a coke zero and that’d be “good enough.”
Hunger grew, but I prevailed. It inspired a nice little poem as I stood at a charging station trying to bleed a few electrons into my starving phone.
Here I stand my phone a-chargin’
All around me smells are bargin’.
Food, Oh Yes! I would adore!
Were I not in Bangalore.
The flight to Shanghai was in two parts. First to New Delhi, wherein I had a 1h40m layover, then to Shanghai. I have had several connections to make in the past where the first flight was delayed but I figured that (a) this was not shown on the net as a flight often delayed, (b) this was a short flight, roughly 2 hours, and (c) we left on time anyway, that 1 hour and 40 minutes was going to be sufficient.
I’ve often said that expecting the worst all the time means you will at worst be happy in being right, and all other surprises are pleasant. I did not expect the worst here, else I would have opted for a much longer layover.
Nothing specifically went wrong (well, not exactly, but such things are not always revealed immediately). There were a number of factors conspiring against me.
The airplane landed at around 1am local time. There were not many planes in the arrivals terminal but to be on the safe side the airport folks apparently thought it best if our plane used a gate that was all the way out at the end of a terminal. Thus the walk we needed to make after deplaning was long. Like 10 minutes long.
I kept following the signs for international transfers. This eventually got me to a doorway that had a pleasantly empty queue to a guy in a booth, and behind him was security. However, the sign next to the door said to have your boarding pass and passport ready. I had the passport but the boarding pass could not be issued in Bangalore and I had to get it here in New Delhi. I popped in anyway and asked the booth dude where I needed to go to get that – was it past him or somewhere else? His response was to head out to the China Eastern ticket desk and pointed in that general direction.
Getting to that ticket desk took another 5-10 minutes and entailed going to the very front of the airport. I then had to stand in line to get my ticket. I asked the ticket counter lady to confirm that my bag was being checked through to Shanghai, and she said yes, even made a call to confirm. Time has been elapsing and I now am not sure what security and the walk to the gate will be like. My flight departs at 2:55am and it is now 2am. Technically I should be at the gate now.
Since I am still carrying >20,000 rupees I want to exchange them for yuan. I ask the lady at the ticketing counter if there is a currency exchange inside security. She seems baffled by my question and points to the one right out here with us (so not behind security). I ask if she thinks I have enough time to make an exchange and still get to my gate on time. She issues a very confident “yes.”
Currency exchange is complicated by the fact that since I don’t have a receipt for the rupees they can only do 10,000 rupees. OK fine. Let’s just do it quick. But quick entails filling out forms. Counting and recounting money. Answering questions from the guy who came up AFTER me and is all curious about exchange rates and whatnot.
The route to the international terminal is well indicated by signs leading me up to a huge set of open doors with the words “international arrivals” on it. Airport lingo always gives me trouble. I’m arriving here but need to depart. Rather than assume India has something different I ask a military garbed dude with a nice automatic rifle whether this is where I go to board international flights or only for folks coming out. He points down the long airport lobby to a smaller sign saying “international departures.” There I go.
When you get there, there is another guard. He’s a busy man, now, and his job is to make sure you are equipped with the right paperwork to enter the international departures area.
I have the right paperwork, but it isn’t as easy as that, because I’m just one of several folk who he can divide his attention between. He interrupts checking my paperwork to force someone else to open a cooler before heading in, for instance. When he’s finally done with my paperwork, he directs me to a single elevator all the way in a darkened corner. There is a working escalator right behind him.
I start toward the elevator but then ask the guard if I can take the escalator. “No. Only for when there is fire. Use lift.” Given an explanation was enough for me. But not for him. I think he wants to tell me the story of the escalator. It has something to do with “it would take me upstairs.” Ah, yes. THANK YOU. Gotta run! As I dash off toward the elevator, I think that if all my rushing fails and I am stuck here, I may come back to ask why, in the case of a fire, would I want to take the escalator UP when I’m on the first floor and right across from me is the exit from the building. But that’s for another day.
I need only go to the second floor. The elevator must be way up at the 900th floor, because while I’d been chewing the fat with Talkative Tim I’d been watching the guy with the cooler (on a cart) who had been let through before me go up to the elevator and push the button to summon it. By the time I got there too, it had still not arrived.
Finally the doors open. The elevator is empty, long and dark. I mean dark like there may be a single light bulb that is glowing somewhere behind centuries of accumulated dust. It’s dark enough that when the doors close, you notice your eyes are adjusting. Usually such eye adjustments take time, and the elevator folks know this, so they made this lift move at speeds approaching 0. It turns out there are only two floors here, and the long wait was because of this amazingly safe velocity that the lift maintains.
I mentioned that the elevator was long. It was also narrow like a hospital elevator where you can fit a gurney. Or a coffin. So it is me and this cooler-bearing dude waiting in the long, uncomfortable and dark silence for the elevator to reach amazing heights of 2. When level 2 was acquired and announced with a ding, I turned toward the doors I came in through, ready to dash out and continue my race toward my next flight. But the doors on the other side of the elevator opened instead. This would have presented no problems except that the cooler dude is now in front of me heading toward the next guarded entrance for international departures, and there is no way to pass him by. The cooler dude is indeed a dude who is cooler than I, meaning he is not so uncool as to be rushing around, showing a sense of urgency, or otherwise proceeding with anything approximating “haste.”
We finally get through the next checkpoint and the halls are wider so I skirt around cooler dude only to come upon an immeasurably large crowd of people. As I get closer, I can see security on the far side of this crowd, so this isn’t even security. This is immigrations. There are a number of immigration counters and the room in which this check occurs is very, very wide. Like maybe a football field’s length. And each counter has its own queue. The first one I came to, since the entrance to this room is at one far end, is almost empty of people but is for Nigerian departures only. Why they get their own is beyond my patience to investigate. All other lines, as far as the eye can see down this long room, seem to be more or less equally full of people and I don’t feel like I have sufficient time to gauge where the faster moving lines are. So I choose one of the few next ones I hit that looks shorter than the others and get in line.
As I’m waiting in this slow-moving queue, I notice that there is a girl ahead of me filling out a form. It occurs to me that immigrations officers like forms. I start looking around and notice a number of other folks holding on to these same forms. Uh-oh. I ask the girl where she got that form and points me toward a bunch of people standing outside of the glass walls dividing this room from the rest of the universe, all gathered up at a mini-desk filling out forms. I wish someone had told me about that. So I exit the line, go all the way back to the only entrance to the room and exit the room and go up to the first of these counters. Lots of folks filling out forms but no forms. There are more counters. And more of the same. I keep going up the hall until I find someone standing at a booth with a sign “Immigration Info.” Asking him where I can get these forms yields a look of confusion. I point to the people filling out these forms. I’m not sure English was at the top of his list of academic excellence awards, and he says something that sounds like “for Indians only – you no need one.” I think that maybe I should fill one out just in case but he is neither offering me that option nor does he seem to have any of these forms. I think I’ll chance it and fall on the mercy of any immigrations officer who asks me where my form is. After all, bureaucrat kindness is world-renown.
I re-enter the room and choose another line that looks shorter than the one I left. Nothing to do but wait, I look at my phone and see that (a) it is getting very low of battery reserves and (b) its clock tells me that it is now 2:15am. I take the next 5 minutes to count the number of people in line ahead of me (28) and how much time it takes for each person to move through (2-3 minutes). I begin to feel panic.
I hate doing this – I really dislike inconveniencing others – but I have no choice. I start asking folks in front of me if given that I should be on my plane now if they would mind if I moved ahead. One guy several folks ahead of me hears before I get to him and turns, saying what amounts to “you’re feeble efforts to save yourself by sacrificing others will avail you nothing since there is no one at the booth this line is queued up for anyway.”
Since the guy was correct, I exit THIS line and start heading up the length of the room again, looking for a line that is (a) shortish and (b) populated with an immigrations officer. When I find that line, I immediately whip out my most pathetic look and begin asking if folks would mind if I moved ahead given my predicament. I’m overwhelmed at the fact that I didn’t even get a dirty look – everyone all the way up the line was willing to allow me in front of them, some even with a sympathetic nod or comment.
Immigrations guy took his 3 minutes with me, asked me no questions, and passed me on through to security.
Fortunately security is not backed up because of the amazingly good job that immigrations is doing keeping people waiting farther up the line. It took maybe 5 minutes. But when you have a severely limited amount of time (I think I recall the time now being like 2:35) and you’re not sure when they will close the doors to disallow any further entry on the plane, you can physically feel every second of that 5 minutes.
Once through security I cannot breathe a sigh of relief because I have to make it to gate 20. And I can’t even see gate one. What I do see are all of the cleverly placed duty-free shops where you have to walk through them in non-linear paths so they can try and suck money out of you. I don’t have time for this. I don’t want to run because I’m carrying a backpack and dragging a carry-on suitcase and running will be an unstable activity but I’m close to it as my last option.
I see a security guard ahead and ask him how far gate 20 is. I’m thinking that if it is long minutes away I’ll see if there is one of those senior citizen beeping carts he can use to get me there faster. He responds by pointing. Just pointing. Defeated, I power-walk on.
It takes about a minute of near jogging speed to get to a part where I can actually see any signage of gates that isn’t as general as “that way” and I’m relieved that I’m coming to a T intersection where the count of gates is divided and I don’t have 20 gates to walk through but, because of the way it is divided, only 4. Of course, each gate is like 150’ distance from the other. There is a moving walkway that helps though, and I choose that.
By the time I got to the gate, they were in final call and clearly preparing to close the doors. I arrive at the gate ticket and passport in hand, literally dripping sweat. I feel bad for the poor sucker(s) who will sit beside me on this 5 hour flight. But having gotten through the gate and on the gangway I relax.
Classic mistake.
Long minutes later as I’m sitting on the plane, basking in the air (clean or not at this point I don’t mind) coming out of the mini-jet in the ceiling, someone in airport garb approaches me. “Are you Scott Hamilton?” I affirm his believe system with a fearfully expectant “yes” and he asks me for my ticket stub to prove it. I’m thinking that if he believes me to be in the wrong seat he would have started with that, not my name, so what am I in trouble for? Did I illegally leave a trail of slime and sweat through the airport? Have I left something behind that I should have brought with me? Did I offend Talkative Tim and he is getting the last laugh?
This guy looks at my ticket stub and then tells me that he’s sorry to inform me but my luggage isn’t going to make it.
My first thought was that, knowing all of the circuitous route and bureaucratic steps I had to go through to get this far leaves my luggage with very little plausible excuse to have not made it. But arguing the point isn’t going to solve the problem. “Ok…” I respond. I’m thinking that they could have just not told me since there was nothing I can do now, but the guy continues by saying “when you get to Shanghai you can ask them when it will arrive.” You think?
At this point I’m tired, it’s almost 3am, I’m sweaty and I’m through the hurdles necessary to make it to the next leg of my Asian Adventure. As long as you tell me that my luggage is somewhere that you know where it is and it will eventually get to where I will be, that’s fine. I prepared for this contingency, purposefully packing stuff in my carry-on. In fact, for those wondering why I’m travelling with two suitcases and a backpack, THIS IS WHY.
So while I could get all worked up and stressed out about it, I do not. I sit back in my already sweat-stained seat, and relax, inasmuch as it is possible to do so in a seat clearly designed to prevent comfort, relaxation or circulation of blood through your butt and legs.
And all that done, the plane and I begin our 5 hour long trek to the world of the orient.
Getting out of the crowded parts of the city took a while – lots of stop and go. Once we got to some of the countryside roads my driver would really let the Corolla show its mettle. We were flying at 80-100 kph on some of these streets. And these streets were usually single lane bi-directional streets (each side has one lane). And there are trucks and bikes and other things that move far less quickly, so my driver would pass them. Often around blind curves made doubly-blind by the large truck we were passing. This is not unique to my driver – others would do it to, and at one point we came upon (quickly!) an oncoming case of a truck passing another truck. We had to come to an almost screeching halt so that we didn’t have a head-on collision. It was harrowing in other ways than I had previously experienced but, well, interesting.
When we finally got to the airport, I tipped the driver 1500 rupees. I hoped that would be enough for him to set up a trust fund for his wife and kids for when he died a tragic but not unexpected accident on the roads.
My flight was still a couple of hours away from departure, so I figured I’d head inside through security and find a nice place to sit, eat dinner and work. There are a number of places inside the terminal that serve food, but what I was looking for was something light and familiar, maybe with a nice glass of wine or a beer to balance out a tiresome week and a couple of flights still ahead of me. I surveyed all of the places twice before settling in on one that, once I got up close and saw the menu, decided that I could just grab a coke zero and that’d be “good enough.”
Hunger grew, but I prevailed. It inspired a nice little poem as I stood at a charging station trying to bleed a few electrons into my starving phone.
Here I stand my phone a-chargin’
All around me smells are bargin’.
Food, Oh Yes! I would adore!
Were I not in Bangalore.
The flight to Shanghai was in two parts. First to New Delhi, wherein I had a 1h40m layover, then to Shanghai. I have had several connections to make in the past where the first flight was delayed but I figured that (a) this was not shown on the net as a flight often delayed, (b) this was a short flight, roughly 2 hours, and (c) we left on time anyway, that 1 hour and 40 minutes was going to be sufficient.
I’ve often said that expecting the worst all the time means you will at worst be happy in being right, and all other surprises are pleasant. I did not expect the worst here, else I would have opted for a much longer layover.
Nothing specifically went wrong (well, not exactly, but such things are not always revealed immediately). There were a number of factors conspiring against me.
The airplane landed at around 1am local time. There were not many planes in the arrivals terminal but to be on the safe side the airport folks apparently thought it best if our plane used a gate that was all the way out at the end of a terminal. Thus the walk we needed to make after deplaning was long. Like 10 minutes long.
I kept following the signs for international transfers. This eventually got me to a doorway that had a pleasantly empty queue to a guy in a booth, and behind him was security. However, the sign next to the door said to have your boarding pass and passport ready. I had the passport but the boarding pass could not be issued in Bangalore and I had to get it here in New Delhi. I popped in anyway and asked the booth dude where I needed to go to get that – was it past him or somewhere else? His response was to head out to the China Eastern ticket desk and pointed in that general direction.
Getting to that ticket desk took another 5-10 minutes and entailed going to the very front of the airport. I then had to stand in line to get my ticket. I asked the ticket counter lady to confirm that my bag was being checked through to Shanghai, and she said yes, even made a call to confirm. Time has been elapsing and I now am not sure what security and the walk to the gate will be like. My flight departs at 2:55am and it is now 2am. Technically I should be at the gate now.
Since I am still carrying >20,000 rupees I want to exchange them for yuan. I ask the lady at the ticketing counter if there is a currency exchange inside security. She seems baffled by my question and points to the one right out here with us (so not behind security). I ask if she thinks I have enough time to make an exchange and still get to my gate on time. She issues a very confident “yes.”
 |
| I shoulda remembered this wisdom from the X-Files. |
The route to the international terminal is well indicated by signs leading me up to a huge set of open doors with the words “international arrivals” on it. Airport lingo always gives me trouble. I’m arriving here but need to depart. Rather than assume India has something different I ask a military garbed dude with a nice automatic rifle whether this is where I go to board international flights or only for folks coming out. He points down the long airport lobby to a smaller sign saying “international departures.” There I go.
When you get there, there is another guard. He’s a busy man, now, and his job is to make sure you are equipped with the right paperwork to enter the international departures area.
I have the right paperwork, but it isn’t as easy as that, because I’m just one of several folk who he can divide his attention between. He interrupts checking my paperwork to force someone else to open a cooler before heading in, for instance. When he’s finally done with my paperwork, he directs me to a single elevator all the way in a darkened corner. There is a working escalator right behind him.
I start toward the elevator but then ask the guard if I can take the escalator. “No. Only for when there is fire. Use lift.” Given an explanation was enough for me. But not for him. I think he wants to tell me the story of the escalator. It has something to do with “it would take me upstairs.” Ah, yes. THANK YOU. Gotta run! As I dash off toward the elevator, I think that if all my rushing fails and I am stuck here, I may come back to ask why, in the case of a fire, would I want to take the escalator UP when I’m on the first floor and right across from me is the exit from the building. But that’s for another day.
I need only go to the second floor. The elevator must be way up at the 900th floor, because while I’d been chewing the fat with Talkative Tim I’d been watching the guy with the cooler (on a cart) who had been let through before me go up to the elevator and push the button to summon it. By the time I got there too, it had still not arrived.
Finally the doors open. The elevator is empty, long and dark. I mean dark like there may be a single light bulb that is glowing somewhere behind centuries of accumulated dust. It’s dark enough that when the doors close, you notice your eyes are adjusting. Usually such eye adjustments take time, and the elevator folks know this, so they made this lift move at speeds approaching 0. It turns out there are only two floors here, and the long wait was because of this amazingly safe velocity that the lift maintains.
I mentioned that the elevator was long. It was also narrow like a hospital elevator where you can fit a gurney. Or a coffin. So it is me and this cooler-bearing dude waiting in the long, uncomfortable and dark silence for the elevator to reach amazing heights of 2. When level 2 was acquired and announced with a ding, I turned toward the doors I came in through, ready to dash out and continue my race toward my next flight. But the doors on the other side of the elevator opened instead. This would have presented no problems except that the cooler dude is now in front of me heading toward the next guarded entrance for international departures, and there is no way to pass him by. The cooler dude is indeed a dude who is cooler than I, meaning he is not so uncool as to be rushing around, showing a sense of urgency, or otherwise proceeding with anything approximating “haste.”
We finally get through the next checkpoint and the halls are wider so I skirt around cooler dude only to come upon an immeasurably large crowd of people. As I get closer, I can see security on the far side of this crowd, so this isn’t even security. This is immigrations. There are a number of immigration counters and the room in which this check occurs is very, very wide. Like maybe a football field’s length. And each counter has its own queue. The first one I came to, since the entrance to this room is at one far end, is almost empty of people but is for Nigerian departures only. Why they get their own is beyond my patience to investigate. All other lines, as far as the eye can see down this long room, seem to be more or less equally full of people and I don’t feel like I have sufficient time to gauge where the faster moving lines are. So I choose one of the few next ones I hit that looks shorter than the others and get in line.
As I’m waiting in this slow-moving queue, I notice that there is a girl ahead of me filling out a form. It occurs to me that immigrations officers like forms. I start looking around and notice a number of other folks holding on to these same forms. Uh-oh. I ask the girl where she got that form and points me toward a bunch of people standing outside of the glass walls dividing this room from the rest of the universe, all gathered up at a mini-desk filling out forms. I wish someone had told me about that. So I exit the line, go all the way back to the only entrance to the room and exit the room and go up to the first of these counters. Lots of folks filling out forms but no forms. There are more counters. And more of the same. I keep going up the hall until I find someone standing at a booth with a sign “Immigration Info.” Asking him where I can get these forms yields a look of confusion. I point to the people filling out these forms. I’m not sure English was at the top of his list of academic excellence awards, and he says something that sounds like “for Indians only – you no need one.” I think that maybe I should fill one out just in case but he is neither offering me that option nor does he seem to have any of these forms. I think I’ll chance it and fall on the mercy of any immigrations officer who asks me where my form is. After all, bureaucrat kindness is world-renown.
I re-enter the room and choose another line that looks shorter than the one I left. Nothing to do but wait, I look at my phone and see that (a) it is getting very low of battery reserves and (b) its clock tells me that it is now 2:15am. I take the next 5 minutes to count the number of people in line ahead of me (28) and how much time it takes for each person to move through (2-3 minutes). I begin to feel panic.
I hate doing this – I really dislike inconveniencing others – but I have no choice. I start asking folks in front of me if given that I should be on my plane now if they would mind if I moved ahead. One guy several folks ahead of me hears before I get to him and turns, saying what amounts to “you’re feeble efforts to save yourself by sacrificing others will avail you nothing since there is no one at the booth this line is queued up for anyway.”
Since the guy was correct, I exit THIS line and start heading up the length of the room again, looking for a line that is (a) shortish and (b) populated with an immigrations officer. When I find that line, I immediately whip out my most pathetic look and begin asking if folks would mind if I moved ahead given my predicament. I’m overwhelmed at the fact that I didn’t even get a dirty look – everyone all the way up the line was willing to allow me in front of them, some even with a sympathetic nod or comment.
Immigrations guy took his 3 minutes with me, asked me no questions, and passed me on through to security.
Fortunately security is not backed up because of the amazingly good job that immigrations is doing keeping people waiting farther up the line. It took maybe 5 minutes. But when you have a severely limited amount of time (I think I recall the time now being like 2:35) and you’re not sure when they will close the doors to disallow any further entry on the plane, you can physically feel every second of that 5 minutes.
Once through security I cannot breathe a sigh of relief because I have to make it to gate 20. And I can’t even see gate one. What I do see are all of the cleverly placed duty-free shops where you have to walk through them in non-linear paths so they can try and suck money out of you. I don’t have time for this. I don’t want to run because I’m carrying a backpack and dragging a carry-on suitcase and running will be an unstable activity but I’m close to it as my last option.
I see a security guard ahead and ask him how far gate 20 is. I’m thinking that if it is long minutes away I’ll see if there is one of those senior citizen beeping carts he can use to get me there faster. He responds by pointing. Just pointing. Defeated, I power-walk on.
It takes about a minute of near jogging speed to get to a part where I can actually see any signage of gates that isn’t as general as “that way” and I’m relieved that I’m coming to a T intersection where the count of gates is divided and I don’t have 20 gates to walk through but, because of the way it is divided, only 4. Of course, each gate is like 150’ distance from the other. There is a moving walkway that helps though, and I choose that.
By the time I got to the gate, they were in final call and clearly preparing to close the doors. I arrive at the gate ticket and passport in hand, literally dripping sweat. I feel bad for the poor sucker(s) who will sit beside me on this 5 hour flight. But having gotten through the gate and on the gangway I relax.
Classic mistake.
Long minutes later as I’m sitting on the plane, basking in the air (clean or not at this point I don’t mind) coming out of the mini-jet in the ceiling, someone in airport garb approaches me. “Are you Scott Hamilton?” I affirm his believe system with a fearfully expectant “yes” and he asks me for my ticket stub to prove it. I’m thinking that if he believes me to be in the wrong seat he would have started with that, not my name, so what am I in trouble for? Did I illegally leave a trail of slime and sweat through the airport? Have I left something behind that I should have brought with me? Did I offend Talkative Tim and he is getting the last laugh?
This guy looks at my ticket stub and then tells me that he’s sorry to inform me but my luggage isn’t going to make it.
My first thought was that, knowing all of the circuitous route and bureaucratic steps I had to go through to get this far leaves my luggage with very little plausible excuse to have not made it. But arguing the point isn’t going to solve the problem. “Ok…” I respond. I’m thinking that they could have just not told me since there was nothing I can do now, but the guy continues by saying “when you get to Shanghai you can ask them when it will arrive.” You think?
At this point I’m tired, it’s almost 3am, I’m sweaty and I’m through the hurdles necessary to make it to the next leg of my Asian Adventure. As long as you tell me that my luggage is somewhere that you know where it is and it will eventually get to where I will be, that’s fine. I prepared for this contingency, purposefully packing stuff in my carry-on. In fact, for those wondering why I’m travelling with two suitcases and a backpack, THIS IS WHY.
So while I could get all worked up and stressed out about it, I do not. I sit back in my already sweat-stained seat, and relax, inasmuch as it is possible to do so in a seat clearly designed to prevent comfort, relaxation or circulation of blood through your butt and legs.
And all that done, the plane and I begin our 5 hour long trek to the world of the orient.
Good one Scott. I got the biggest laugh when the punch came at the end - your bags wouldn't make it. You see - they got stuck at the duty free shops.
ReplyDeleteHopefully you got them eventually :)