Narita Airport, Tokyo, and nightmare in China
29th and 30th of May, 2025.
Tokyo is known for being a very modern and developed capital. Therefore, it seems like Narita Airport is located in a completely different country, and not in Tokyo itself. Let me put it in this way: the whole airport has only one spot for drinking water. Do I need to say anything else? The best thing is that they have a 7-Eleven, which saves my life in terms of food, as I had a long layover in China and plenty of hours to fill up with food. Surprinsgly, I manage to find my beloved pao de queijo (cheese balls) from Brazil in 7-Eleven. And it’s pretty good!
But that’s pretty much when my luck stops.
What is luck? Do I really believe in that? Or is everything happening as it supposed to be, so it really doesn’t matter?
The website of Nzeta, the form you must submit before travelling to New Zealand is crap, and written by a mule. I believe an octopus could’ve written a better, more clarifying important note. And a very important one. Because of that I had to make mine while during my check-in for the flight. I got nervous and made a series of mistakes while filling up. One of them was the absolute truth, that I didn’t have an onward flight, as I was planning to do my first boathiking from New Zealand to pretty much island in the Pacific. The other one being that I didn’t pack my own bag. Laugh. How could that even be possible? What a stupid question.
By the time I get to Shanghai, for my layover in China, a security guards finds me and ask me to go somewhere. Now, apart from being extremely rude and ignorant, he has a very basic English. He gave me a lot of wrong information and directions, and nobody else who I asked was able to help me, because nobody could speak English. China sucks! How can they possibly be a strong economic power, if so many of their people cannot even communicate with the rest of the world? And why so rude? Anyway, after a lot of time wasted, I finally get a phone call from New Zealand Immigration, and long story short, they were demanding an onward flight in order to let me into the country.
Now let me make on thing very clear here: this is the biggest bullshit on the History of the existence of bullshit. I cannot express myself enough about how much bullshit this is it. Do you know why? When you are filling up your NZeta, they don’t ask you to attach a file as proof of your onward flight, so basically, if I had simply lied about it, they would never know. Oh, Lei, but then they would might ask you for one once you arrived in New Zealand. Yep, they might, but once there it would be much easier to persuade them to let me in by telling them my travel story, showing them my passport, etc. But from China, there was nothing I could do. To make matters worse, in this stupid fucking country, you cannot have access to Wi-FI unless you use a VPN. How oppressive! Here my “luck” changes a tiny little bit, as it seems like the only good Chinese airport staff was the one helping me. He shared his own hot spot with me in order for me to be able to book a flight, and then helped me out to figure out apps and stuff like that. What an angel! And all of this happening when everybody else was already boarding.
My initial plan was to spend three months in New Zealand, doing volunteer work for two months and travelling around all the two islands for one month. In the end, in order to avoid more questions and unexpected disturbances, I booked a flight departing only 50 days after my arrival. I would volunteer for one month only and travel for about 20 days.
That changed a lot my perspective about New Zealand. If before I had high hopes for this country, and consider it a good option for settling down after I finish my travels, now I would have my doubts. I don’t want to be in a place with such an unfair, and why not to say, stupid system / government / immigration department. Nope! I want to be in a country which does what is right and smart to keep illegal immigrants to come in and start living there. Not a country which treat travellers as criminals.
Why all of that had to happen I don’t know. I only wish that the universe had different ways of making me changing my plans, in order to avoid further bigger disappointments. This way, I wouldn’t have to suffer so much, neither have unexpected expenses, which were so not much on my budget.
10 Years Around the World 