Rewind to mid June

I am about to board a plane to return to melb

at the airport with my man

go to check in hand over my passport and the woman at the counter asks wheres your ticket

i say to her 'no i have an electronic ticket' (holllllllllllllllllllllly shit)

she repeats no i am supposed to have a ticket

it turns out she is right and almost 12 months ago i was handed a ticket (that somewhere along the way i misplaced)

as a result she tells me that i can't board the plane without buying another ticket

i try to call my travel agency to see if they can fax something

from a pay phone that cuts out several times before i can get to them

finally i get through and they do fax it but no thats not enough proof apparently

oh my what a nightmare

i can feels my eyes burning up

what the hell am i going to do

she tells me AGAIN if i want to board the plane i have to re purchase another ticket

i ask how much

approximately au$2,000

toby is now by my side now starting to ask in her Cantonese (in case there is some sort of language confusion)

for a one way ticket?

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

i don't have the money

SHIT! i was returning to aus with about $1,500

after alot of asking from me in Eng and him in canto she tells me that i will get most of the money back (minus maybe $200 a lost ticket fee)

ok ok i can do this

the whole point of me returning today rather than in 2 weeks is to see my little sisters debut dance performance (by herself) the following day

i have to be on this plane

so i get toby to run and get all the money out of my bank account (by this stage i am almost late to board the plane)

and put the other part of my almost maxed out cc

I'm crying by now, crying from how crazy the situation, this is not how HK is supposed to end

he returns and i purchase another ticket

i have about 2 minutes to say goodbye

i hug him and cry really cry, cry not for the ticket or the mess of the airport because i don't want to leave, because i'm questioning maybe i shouldn't have made such a fuss to leave. i don't want to leave. People are staring at me hugging him and crying out loud. He is crying too, not making a big mess like me, not loudly like me but crying. Everyone else is really staring by now. We are at HK airport where people don't show any signs of any emotion, where kissing is banned. I tell him i love him and leave . The last image he has of me is me with my red blotchy crying face. How truly graceful!

Once i get through the gates i run and run and run to my plane. I'm way too late. I'm the last passenger to board the plane. I'm sure the fellow passenger next to me thinks i'm crazy i watch some stupid show on my little tv set and laugh then cry several times.

______________________________________

A few days later i return the form that they gave me and all my details to my flight centre for them to follow it up with Cathay Pacific.

I call up both Cathay and my flight centre several times in the last few months only to be told by each it takes at least 3 months for a refund to go through and i just have to wait.

Yesterday i call Cathay Pacific only to discover they have no record of receiving my form and without the new ticket (which i didn't make a copy of) they have no record of it in the system. They also claim that since it has been so long it makes it even harder to trace and that most probably i won't get the money back.

yes two tickets for one flight!

Not happy !!!