February 20, 2009 - This morning was that kind of anxious time that happens the last day of vacation; there’s not enough time to really do much of anything, but you kind of hate to waste the last few minutes.
We had an 11:00 checkout, and the car was supposed to be there to pick us up at the same time. For the first time, they were a little late – not enough to make a difference, but enough that we noticed it. Turns out that the drivers were all running ragged because the Queen Victoria cruise ship had come into port the night before, so they were picking people up and dropping them off around the City.
Once again, we were amazed how the airports in other countries are everything that our own are not. There are staff who are actually courteous and helpful. Signs clearly mark what you’re supposed to do, usually in multiple languages (incidentally, bilingual here appears to mean English and Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese rather than Spanish). People are incredibly friendly when you go through the security and they still accomplish what they need to accomplish. We only had to hit American soil at LAX to discover that nothing had changed in the US.
US Customs and immigration officials were indifferent or unfriendly when they weren’t downright surly. For some reason, the guy wanted to know my occupation, specifically what type of attorney I was, and that got typed into a computer while he had my passport. What that has to do with anything I don’t know, but it doesn’t make the conspiracy theorist in me any more comfortable.
