The China Experience

29.01. Hongkong-Auckland

Once we found our way through the huge Hongkong Airport, we were picked up by a lovely chinese lady who took us to a shopping mall, that I definately do not remember the name of. We had a lunch there at a small, quite crowded restaurant. She picked out some dishes that she wanted for us to try. They were all very delitious, what more to say? Then we took a taxi to downtown. We went through a market where people buy really cheap souvenirs, fake Gucci bags, for a priece that says: ‘‘Made in China’‘ and usually it is lowered three times once you show the interest. Oh, and the city.. I didn’t notice a building that wouldn’t be called a skyscarper in Latvia. It’s fun for one day, but I didn’t even try to imagine myself living there, too different.

One Starbucks frappucino later, we found ourselves in the inner shopping paradise among the airport gates. And now, 4 hours away from our destination, perfect New Zealand, we have been scared by their customs. A4 sheet of paper with a list of things you can’t bring in, and we have some of those, and a lot of questions to answer. The answers that I have given mean that I’ll have to spend a lot of time declaring goods. What makes me slightly not optimistic is that they had to write down the possible outcome of failure in decleration- prison. But we’ll see.