It is 6am and I have been up for over an hour and a half. You see there is this rooster next door and he crows from 4:45 till noon, just in case you planned to oversleep. So given the twelve hour difference between here and there I decided to make 2 phone calls.
Now back to the past.
So last time I wrote was when I landed in Bangkok, well I just got back to Bangkok from Hong Kong. Now let me explain Hong Kong for those who have not been there. I is 42nd street meets Spanish Harlem but only has Chinese and British. This was very odd to me but it kind of felt like home, I guess it must of been the attitudes(NYC style) there.
So I arrived in HKK at 6:30p and headed directly to immigration. Now here is where I love being a US citizen: Immigration. Guy, looks at passport, looks at me, stamps passport. I walk through and wait for my Taiwanese friend. He approaches the gate and the Immigration. guy starts yelling at him, you see this is China, and he is from “China”. It turns out that the visa he got is a transit visa only they say. The visa says: here by grant permission to enter and remain upon, twice. Who am I to argue with the Chinese military. So it takes him about two hours to clear immigration and off to the hotel we went.
Now we are in HK to see this guy Conroy, he is the son of this really rich man and a friend of my coworker. His father owns New World Corp., which builds hotels, telephone companies, etc… The name of the hotel is “New World Renaissance Hotel”, and my coworker said our stay would be free. Great.
The phone rings, “Hello, Mr. Chow?” it said. And I said, “Yes.” He replied, “There is a problem with your deposit, you need to come down and fill out a new form and use a different credit card or cash.” Now this came as a surprise to me, because when a room is complimentary or is paid for by another the guest never has to lay out a dime! This is two days into our stay at the hotel. Well we had to pay, it was not free. NEVER ASSUME, you know what they say, right?
So off to the cheapest hotel I could find in the phone book. Dadol Hotel is located on a very well lit and neon street called Kimberly Road in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Now we arrive there to find out that they also have hourly rates. Now they don’t provide room keys for the guests, you have to go to the desk and ask for the door to be opened. Now if you don’t pay your rent they don’t open your door. Needless to say by the time we checked out they had over charged us by a thousand dollars. Well I decided to do away with this problem, so I argued, argued, called the police, got my way and missed the plane. DOH!
First I called the airline, and spoke with the gate manager, he said they don’t hold planes, but if I got there before the door was closed I could get on the plane. So there was 26 minutes on the clock before the plane left the gate. Down stairs I went with my luggage, dragging my other coworker, and into the taxi. I said to the taxi driver, “Airport quick!” He said ok, once on the road I informed him that he had 16 minutes to make it to the terminal. So doing 160km/h, we made it to the airport on my schedule. 9 minutes left, lets get to the gate. Passing one China Airlines employee, I stated that we need to get to flight 641. He proceeded to throw his hands up in the air and say no you can’t go it is to late. We argued for 8 minutes and I gave up, you cant clear customs and make a plane in one minute (yes Matt, even I can’t do that).
So now our only option looked like stay and wait for the next flight next day. This was unacceptable, you see these flights get in at noon local time, which in turn get you home by 2pm(3pm Singapore). We have business in Singapore to do on Thursday.
Now to create more options. I go up to the counter and as for some time tables, I wanted to take a flight from HKK and get to BKK anyway I could by 8am BKK time. So I noticed that they went to Taipei, Taiwan and from there they went to Bangkok. So I spoke to the reservation agent and explained the situation. She proceeded to try to exchange our non refundable, redoubtable, etc. ticket. She succeeded, around 4pm. But we made a mistake, Wednesday is the only day they don’t fly from TPE to BKK.
Back to the drawing board. I have realized that politely asking for a exchanged ticket and bending airline policy is no longer going to work. Time to hard ass. I go up to the desk, the shift has changed, advantage Jason. Now I start to converse with the desk supervisor, he tries to be most polite and accommodating. But his apologies and suggestions just don’t get me there on time. And I tell him this whilst asking for a higher supervisor. Enter the schmuck who made me miss the plane (I could not believe this guy was a supervisor). I just did not want to talk to him, so I asked him for his supervisor. He replied as all who will lose do, “I DON’T HAVE A SUPERVISOR.” You should never say that, it is a blatant lie. SO after two minutes of rephrasing the question he goes and get the boss.
Now when Mr. Li shows up he is very polite. But this does not detour me, I explain from the beginning of how the airline has given me misdirection one after another with the end result of me missing my plane. I told him he had two options. 1) to get me to BKK by 8am or 2) to provide me with a bed, and telephone to call Singapore the next morning, and on the plane.
Now of course he chose 1. At 10:15p we were on some random Arab airline heading for BKK then UAE, I don’t think they take kindly to meal requests.
So once in Bangkok I was able to arrange 7 meetings with venture capitalists so far in Singapore. Well I am off to Singapore Sunday morning (about 24 hours from now).
I miss you guys. And I will be back in 8 days.
-jp