Day 1: Passport Control

So. Here I am at the Hyperbaric Medical Centre in Sharm el Sheikh. And connected kinda too, which is a *big thumbs up*.

The trip down (on Saturday) went pretty smoothly, except I somehow managed to get "final call for passenger Lu"-ed on the Manchester-Gatwick flight. Hehe, oops. All I was doing was buying a couple of adapters at WH Smiths..

The 5-hour stop-over in Londres was a barrel of laughs (or not), especially since there was no *whistles McDonald's promo tune*, as Navdeep Gill promised. Hrumph. Had a good old fish 'n' chips instead. NOM. (Then also got fed on the plane, mwahaha.)

And there are lizards in my flat. Ick.

Arrived at Sharm El Sheikh International Airport at ~5am (GMT+1) and had a silly man at immigration:-

I filled out my landing card, as per usual; queued, as per usual; then handed the immigration man my passport + landing card. The immigration man looks at the passport and says, "China?"
Confused, I say, "No, Taiwan."
"Taiwan? No, China."
More forcefully, "Taiwan."
He held my passport up to me and says, "Where Taiwan?" "China," he says, pointing to the Republic of China text on my passport.
"Oh," realising reasoning behind the misunderstanding, "It's the same."
He looks up at me, "China."

Not. China. TAIWAN. Ugh.

Then he decides to go ask one of his chums. Comes back a couple minutes later and waves me along. I put on my best "And my passport?" face. Realising he'd left it with his chum, he retrieves it, returns, then asks, "This real, yes?"

....

"No actually, it's fake," "Yes," I smiled. (As IF I would've said on..????)



Anyway.

I've taken some noice piccys of where I am to reside for the next 8 weeks, so will post them up at some point. Maybe when (if ever) the internet stops being so temperamental..