by Alan Goodwin

Created on: July 29, 2009   Last Updated: July 30, 2009

The day we left Heathrow off on our Honeymoon to China there was, out of the whole aeroplane, just one woman who felt brave enough to publicly declare herself a piggy paranoid petunia by sporting the irksome surgeons mask.
They were the latest fashion accessory for the streets of Mexico City and in Spanish speaking Texas at the time, but hadn't really gained a marked popularity amongst us I'm-not-ill-I'm-just-tired British.

I wasn't sure if it was for our benefit because she herself was ill or because she thought the rest of us were Oinky but she did look a little silly, and even more so when she took the mask off to go to sleep before putting it back on to be awake and aware, as if she could see the disease coming.

The H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak was in its infancy, and nobody else on board looked even mildly concerned.

Ten days later and I'm Man-Poorly (exponential rules of man-suffering apply) on a 2 hour 40 minute Cathay Pacific flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong surrounded by shifty Doogie Howser MD lookalikes all masked up.
Three days earlier two sickly foreign people in Beijing airport had tested positive for swine flu and so had panicked the entire nation of Chinese air travellers who donned their masks of suspicion en masse and occasionally pointed at clammy men.

I too was clammy and ergo more paranoid than a teenager going home after his first giggle cig to find his mum waiting up for him in the brightly lit kitchen.

Despite my best efforts to get us a guaranteed place on the quarantine express, I got from the toilet on one side of Hong Kong Customs booths to a toilet on the Hong Kong side without being carried off and locked away.

Into Arrivals, and we were met eventually by a laissez faire female who generously supplied us with a ticket and a bright orange sticker and told us where to sit to get taken to our transfer coach. I exchanged glances with my shiny new wife and knew we were both wondering what had happened to our private guiding and immediate taxi transfers.

Clearly I've been affected by the previous 10 days of 5 star treatment, but honestly? a coach? With other people on? I gently adjusted my sticker so the smiley logo was straight and sat with the general public and waited for my bus.

We used the time on the coach reading our free maps and both valiantly displayed an embarrassingly sketchy knowledge of this former colonial outpost that was handed back to China in 1997 by Chris Patten and a very large key.

We thought we were going to Hong

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• Next Page >>