The start of my trip to China wasn't exactly smooth...

I should have flown Edinburgh to Amsterdam to Shanghai to Beijing and would have already been exploring.

Visa issues occurred (I admit this was my fault, apparently it never crossed my mind to apply for one). Three hours of phone calls later and I had a new plan. It boiled down to get on the plane and be denied entry to mainland China (and who knows: Chinese prison; permanent ban from the country, life in the no-man's-land between countries?). Plan 2 was to fly Edinburgh to Manchester to Dubai to Hong Kong and where I would be able to get a visa to enter mainland china within 48 hrs. It would have been 6-7 working days if I applied in the UK. Then I will fly to Beijing on the evening of Thursday 12th.

However due to standard cheap airline Flybe delays, then a drunk throwing up twice (narrowly missing me both times) and having to be taken off the flight, I missed my connecting flight to Dubai. So Flybe said they'd put me up in a hotel in Manchester, provide taxi service, and pay for new flights the next day (Manchester to Paris to Hong Kong).

I arrived to Manchester at 9.50 pm. My bag was late off the flight and I was given terrible advice on how to find the taxi. I was sent to the information desk to Flybe (where about 30 people had missed a connecting flight to Southampton) to Arrow Cars, where they told me the car had gone without me, back to Flybe, to Arrow Cars again. At 12.30 am a Flybe representative put me and the other guy who missed the original taxi in a car from a different taxi company and gave them the address of the hotel.

I got to Manchester Holiday Inn Arena and the guy gets ahead of me in the queue. He barely speaks English so I've been explaining our situation for him for over an hour by now. Unsurprisingly there was a problem. Holiday Inn had no record of the bookings, but somehow with some difficulty the guy gets a room. My phone was dead but I managed to charge it at the desk so I can call every number for Flybe, Manchester and Edinburgh airports I can find, but they are all closed for the night. So I decided to pay for the room and charge it back to Flybe. So the woman at the desk tried to book me in... and they are fully booked for the night. She said she could move a booking around and get me a room. This literally took an hour. I get into my room at 2.15 am.

I had flown an underwhelming 180 miles from home and door to door it had taken me 11 hrs 15 mins.

Anyway it is now 12.30 pm in France and I am boarding my flight to Hong Kong.