Hong Kong, the last day.

We had a lot of stuff. Five huge suitcases, two back-bags but fortunately, a friend just arranged someone to pick us up from the hotel so me and my wife did not have to carry everything to take the ferry to Shenzhen.

But we did not know this early enough and we just bought 2 turbo jet ferry tickets in the morning. My wife called the ticket office and asked to return the two tickets and get the refund. The answer was "no way". The sales rep claimed that no ticket can be returned within 48 hours of departure. A little absurd, isn't it? Because we got these tickets from the "advanced booking" window this morning, about 20 hours before the departure time.

Although the sales rep was a little rude to my wife on the phone, we really want to get something back and did not want to give up right away. This time, I picked up the phone.

They were much nicer to me. Instead of hearing a "absolutely impossible", I was transfered to their customer service department, the manager, a higher manager and then back to the customer service department and was greeted with 4 or 5 apologies for the "inconvenience" within 15 minutes. Eventually, of course I can get 70% back and the manager even made an appointment with the ticket office and even gave me the name and phone number of the guy on the night shift.

My wife was shocked, so was me. We called the exact same office, same person for the same reason. My wife called in Chinese, but I was speaking English all the time (except that I faked some British-Cantonese accent to pronounce a local street name).

I do not know what the sales rep was thinking when I showed up in his office telling him that the boss of his boss said that I came to collect the refund. I do not know if French or German will have the same effect, but I strongly recommend against some languages of the world while travelling in HK, if you know what I mean.