Prelude: A Series of Almost Unfortunate Events..

Okay, so I had originally joined the trip to Guilin when I was still working in W.P Putrajaya and now that I've transferred to Sabah I had to fly to KL one day early as our fligh to Guilin was at 6.50am on the 14th January 2011.

As you know, when we go through the hand luggage screening and stuff we have to put our cellphones in a separate container they have near the scanner. I put my handbag and knapsack through the scanner and put my phones in said container. After going through security, I confidently grabbed my handbag and knapsack and went to the immigration counter.

I don't remember what I was thinking about at that time but I know I was distracted because I could hear someone shouting 'Handphone! Handphone!' in the background but it didn't click anything in my brain. It was only when I was handing over my IC to the immigrations officer that I realized that I had not taken my hand phones with me.

After collecting my hand phones (red-cheeked I must add, I was teased mercilessly by the officers) I went to the waiting area near the two boarding gates. I waited.... And waited... And waited... My flight was 3.45pm and it was almost 4pm already but the gates still displayed the flight number of a plane to Hong Kong and another destination that I couldn't remember.

The waiting area was packed with people and I did hear a couple of announcement made but I was not able to hear clearly what was being said. After a couple more minutes I decided to listen to my instincts and asked one of the staff there if my flight was delayed. Turns out my counter was almost closing up. Everyone had already boarded the plane!

I quickly gave my boarding pass to the attendant and ran to my plane. They had already rolled away the steps from the back entrance of the plane. It was only a matter of minutes before they removed the one at the front entrance too. That was how late I was.

The only small comfort I had was that I wasn't the last one on the plane. We had to wait for another passenger to board before we could take off.. Imagine almost losing my hand phones AND almost missing my flight all in the span of one hour.. Sheesh... If I was a superstitious type, I'd have thought that it was a bad omen for my trip to Guilin.

Stay tuned for daily recounts of my Guilin Trip.. Cheers!