But I Don't Even Drink Coffee...

Ever just have a whim to travel to New Zealand tomorrow? Ever act on it? Well, I did yesterday. I was in Bangkok for a teachers’ conference and as I headed home I realized that I didn’t want to spend a week hanging out in Guangzhou or Hong Kong. I wanted something a little different. So, sometime after lunch yesterday, I started scouring hotwire for travel deals. I looked just about everywhere and decided that I wanted to spend a week in Auckland. What exactly I would do during the week I wasn’t sure of, but I knew that I would figure it out as I went along and have a great story to tell about my spur of the moment trip to Auckland. At 3:30 as I was about to board my flight from Guangzhou back to China, I clicked purchase and thought about what to pack.

I rushed home from the airport so that I could swap a few things out of my suitcase and put in fall clothes rather than summer fashions. I don’t own a printer, so I was unable to print out my ticket, but I figured in a day of e-tickets, it wouldn’t be a problem. By midnight, 4 hours after landing in Guangzhou, I was up in the air again on my flight to Auckland. For the most part it was a good flight. I was in seat by myself, I had a movie screen to watch. I did wake up at one point to find that a woman had moved into the seat next to me and was practically sitting on top of me because her friend had laid down in the whole row she was in. I did some pretty wild gesturing to get across the point that it was not OK for her to sit next to me. She had her own seat. I stood up and pointed at it. She got the hint and sat somewhere else (although she sat in at least three more seats that weren’t hers taking pictures as we were getting ready to land).

As I got off the plane, I figured the fun would begin. My space invader was nowhere to be seen. I went to customs, and it was gratifying to know that they spoke English. The agent asked me what my plans were in New Zealand. I explained that I had only purchased my ticket a few hours before and I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do. I told him I may bungee jump. He asked if I had my return ticket. I told him I didn’t as I don’t have a printer and I literally had an hour at home to pack before my flight. He typed in a few more things and waved me on. I got my bag and as I approached customs guy #2 I got waved to the special line. This was getting interesting.

I went over to the guy in line 4 and he asked me the same series of questions. I explained my story again; I had been in Thailand for a conference and decided on a whim to travel to New Zealand. I was beginning to think that not too many people travel on a whim here, as he didn’t seem to think it was a romantic or amusing idea. He looked at me like I had swallowed 50 condoms filled with cocaine, as, in his experience, people who leave Thailand, fly to China and then head to New Zealand are generally drug mules. I explained again about the printer and sitting in the airport in Bangkok deciding that I didn’t want to be in Guangzhou for spring break and that maybe I would bungee jump and that really, I did just decide a few hours ago that a trip to his beautiful country was a good idea. He asked me where I worked. I told him. At this point, I was trying to open my e-mail so that he could see that I really did have a return ticket booked for Saturday night. It was taking forever. He asked if I had a work ID or something from the conference. I told him that I took it all out of my backpack when I went home for an hour between flights. I showed him my insurance card from work. I laughed a bit and explained that I’m a Mormon. He told me everyone says that in these situations (perhaps much like Americans pretend to be Canadians so that everyone will like them…tell them you’re a Mormon so they won’t think you are trafficking drugs, didn’t work). I told him he was willing to search my bags and my person, as he wasn’t going to find anything. He said he was working hard to avoid that. I complimented him on doing his job, as he was fantastically thorough. If had swallowed a bunch of drugs to sneak into the country, I would have been sweating bullets at this point, but fortunately only thing in my stomach was a terrible sandwich courtesy of China Southern Airlines. I told him he was welcome to open my e-mail as the airport Wi-Fi still had not opened, but that was against protocol. Finally, I managed to fish a business card out of my wallet. I was really glad I didn’t give the last one away at the conference as I sensed a body cavity search in my future. He looked up the address of on the card and just like that he told me to gather up my stuff and took me back to the second line and told me to have a nice trip. I’m still not convinced that someone isn’t following me around Auckland just to see if I do turn out to be a dealer, as they will be sadly disappointed. The craziest thing I have done so far is to sit in Denny’s for an hour eating a chocolate peanut butter lava cake. It’s amazing how appealing Denny’s is when you haven’t seen one in almost a year.

Moral of this story: if you are travelling to New Zealand from Thailand via China, don’t expect immigration to give you an easy time. And, even if you don’t think you need one, buy a printer. You never know when your itinerary might come in handy.