The Hong Kong Story

The situation here has not improved. We discovered that there is the added complication of Chinese New Year. Why is this a problem? The hotel we have just moved into (which is OK and alot cheaper than where we were) can only accommodate us until April 30th. The New Year celebrations and holiday are May 1st, 2nd and 3rd. All hotels in Hong Kong are booked - predominantly by chinese coming down from the north. We might find a room but at an exhorbitant price.

At the moment we are not scheduled to leave here until May 4th although our original booking was for 29th April.

We spent a good hour and half in the British Airways office on the island yesterday. They gave us some insight into the possible cause of our problems but it does not provide a solution.

It seems that on one our journeys we changed one of our flight dates (actually I have changed quite a few) and the operator put us on a new flight and forgot to cancel the old flight. With the kind of ticket that we have, if we miss one of our flights all remaining bookings with that carrier are cancelled. They think we missed a flight when in fact it should have been cancelled or moved. They keep telling us here that we missed a flight on 27th February, despite the fact that we have never missed any flight and have no record of any flight ever having being booked for 27th February. So the other flights by Cathay were cancelled. Hence arriving at New Delhi 2 days ago to find we had no flight.

Since our onward flights from Hong Kong were cancelled and they are now all booked up, we are stuck. The earliest flight possible is the 4th of May which we are now booked on but at the same time we are "wait listed" for 29th and 30th April and 1st May. No one can tell me what the chances are of getting on a wait listed flight.

The count down in on. Do we get out of here before our hotel chucks us out (April 30th) or do we go live in the airport for 3 days?

Today we are going off to Ocean Park on the island. It is an aquarium/theme park type of place to try to forget it all for a moment. I will also try to get into the Cathay Pacific office and raise a little hell.