Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing
It was an early morning arrival
in Tokyo followed by bus trip to the Hotel, I was feeling a little isolated as
the mobile network in Japan and Korea was (is) different to the rest of the
world and my phone would not work again until we arrived in China in five days
time. I had arranged through our agent to rent a mobile that worked in Japan
but they were not able to deliver it until the afternoon so I was tied to the
hotel until they called me in my room to say they were there. I took the
opportunity to have an evening in Tokyo part of which was spent trying to find
a reasonably priced meal. The exchange rates meant that everything in Japan is
significantly more expensive than most other places in the world and
significantly more than my per diem. Day
seven started with a call to the team that had taken the aircraft from Sydney
to Melbourne, this was the first sector with all the passengers on board so it
was essential to iron out the small difficulties that might have arisen. With
all the details from this sector it was then off to the pre arrival meeting at
the airport where all the details were run through, this meeting took a couple
of hours followed by a phone call to the aircraft team to confirm everything to
them, by mid afternoon it was all sorted and I was back to the hotel where I
got an early night. I was up at 0300 on day seven for my first taste of the
relay. The aircraft were due into Haneda at 0600 which was the opening time for
the airport. I was out of the hotel at 03:30 and in a taxi to the airport where
I arrived in the rain at 04:15. I arrived at the assigned security gate and
found no one who spoke English but after a quick phone call I was soon rescued
by our local agent and taken airside with the convoy of vehicles for the relay.
There was then a final run through of the arrival process. At 05:55 5 minutes
early the backup aircraft arrived,
it was all hands on deck to get the
motorbikes offloaded; we were told that there would be no need to clear them
through customs, result!! Within 20 minutes the bikes were off the aircraft and
the riders were away with their local police escort to the petrol station for
refuelling. Everyone else was on the to the convoy vehicles most of which left
for the relay start point within 45 minutes of the arrival. We now had half an
hour to get everything on the aircraft and get set up for the main aircraft
arrival. At 07:20 the main aircraft arrived but being Japan everything needed
to be precise and the “follow me” truck drove very slowly and the aircraft
arrived on stand at precisely 07:30. I had a radio with me that allowed me to
talk directly to the relay director on the aircraft whilst it taxied to the
stand to brief them on the final details.
After arrival steps were put on the
rear door so the travelling media could disembark and run around to join the
local media pack, a separate set of steps were Placed on the front door which
was then opened and the “Ambassador of the flame”, a Greek diplomat, came out of the door to hold the
flame aloft. It was then brought down the steps and greeted by local dignitaries;
I cannot recall the specific details of the arrival ceremony in Japan but given
that it was televised it will have involved local cultural figures. As soon as
the ceremony was finished everyone left leaving us with to prepare the aircraft
for the flight to Seoul the next day and also to look at the decals which
following the decent through the rain storm were looking a little tatty. At
10:30 we were just about done and I got a lift to the international terminal
for my flight to Seoul where the flame was due the following day. I Arrived in
Seoul at 14:00 and went straight into the run through meeting for the following
day, Korea was one of the more complicated setups and as a result the meeting
did not finish until 4:30PM it was then across to the hotel room service a long
bath and bed,
I was up at 5AM out of the hotel
by 5:30 and back at the airport by 06:00, the arrivals were going to be very
close together due to the fact that the airport in Tokyo did not open until
06:00, the flight was two hours long and the relay was starting by 10:00.
The
first aircraft was due in at 08:00 and the second at 09:00 added to this the
bikes were not being allowed to be driven off the ramp and would have to be
taken to the cargo shed a mile away from the aircraft to be cleared. The first
aircraft arrived on time at 08:00 and we had the bikes off and on the way to
the shed by 08:20. I accompanied them and fortunately the customs agent was
very efficient and they were being loaded onto the truck by 08:45, it was a mad
dash across the airport to get back to the stand during which the second
aircraft landed but we beat it by a few seconds, fortunately there was no
arrival ceremony today.
At this point it was clear that some of the decals were
beyond repair and something would have to be done. Having got the relay staff
off we negotiated with Korean Air to provide a man lift at remove some of the
decals. Four hours after the arrival I made my way back into the airport for
the flight to Beijing. I arrived into Beijing at 15:30 and again went straight
into a run through meeting for the arrival the following day. With Beijing
being the host city for the 2008 Olympics, they were keen to make a show and
the meeting was not finished until after 6PM.
Day 10 dawned with yet another
early start this time as I was staying down town it was a half hour taxi ride
out to the airport where we were operating in the VIP lounge which always makes
things easier. As you would expect in China, a country controlled by the
communist party and a country that was to host the next Olympics, the arrival
was flawless although there was a small issue from the relay team,
It was after
the arrival in Korea that we discovered that on the taxi in the primary
aircraft was supposed to fly the flag of the country we were visiting from the
escape hatch of the aircraft, we did not have a flag pole so the engineer was
hanging out of the window holding the flag tightly. There was a spectacular bit
of ambush marketing by McDonalds. Somehow they had discovered that we were to
be using the VIP terminal and they had turned up with a McDonald’s breakfast
for everyone that was gratefully accepted. Coke and Samsung were the sponsors
of the torch relay and there was a bit of a fuss about the McDonald’s logo
being everywhere ... even if the Coke and Samsung marketing teams were also
guilty. The VIP lounge were very keen to get rid of us and only later did we
find out that the President of China was due in the lounge 30 minutes after us
to leave on a visit to Europe. It turns out that our primary aircraft was
blocking in the presidents aircraft.... we had to move it quickly! With the
aircraft put to bed we took the opportunity to go down and see the relay.
Having done this we were back at the aircraft by 6PM to reload it, the bikes
needed to be emptied of almost all the fuel in the tanks to comply with
dangerous goods regulations and it proved quite difficult to get rid of it,
initially we offered it to the cargo staff but they were very suspicious about
it with no other options we finally persuaded one of them to add it to the tank
of one of the company cars. With this was done by 22:00 and it was back to the
Hotel. The plans called for me to go direct from China to Cairo however it was
becoming apparent that we needed someone on the ground for the arrival of the
primary aircraft to coordinate and it was decided that I should fly with the
backup aircraft to India. This gave me an extra day in Beijing as day 11 was
planned as a rest day.
It was on the morning of day 11 that I was
witness to quite an emotional scene, Apart from the relay team the hotel was
also being used by a group of Danish couples that were adopting Chinese babies.
On the day I arrived they were all sitting in the lobby taking to each other
and going through the paperwork, it seems that they had all “received” their
babies on the day the relay took place and when I went down for breakfast on
the rest day they were all in the lobby showing them off. We spent the day looking around the sights of
Beijing before heading out to the airport at 17:00 to set up for our evening
departure to Delhi.
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