About two weeks ago, one of my son's former rowing teammates at Northwestern called him with an opportunity to participate in a most-expenses-paid trip to China to participate in a rowing exhibition. my wife and I were nervous about the idea of a trip around the world to a communist country, but it was a rare opportunity, his wife was cool with it, his job gave him the time off, so we were good, too. But the people who were setting up the travel were really not on the ball, so our son and a couple of others pulled out last week, and the whole thing fell apart. We were disappointed for him, but this morning I heard about this: https://www.foxnews.com/world/hong-kong-airport-suspends-check-ins-due-to-pro-democracy-protest Had the trip gone through, they would have been flying right into this mess this morning.
that would have been spectacular. also, when there are protests like this, you can avoid them, they are not city-wide. also if you were going to hong kong, they are not really communist. if you were going to china you needed a visa for china from the chinese embassy. no visa is needed for hong kong. and going to china is awesome. its a tragedy you missed out on this opportunity
that would be amazing. i have seen large scale riots in colombia and greece and ukraine, and they were great. and, because we are white and american ,and obviously not a part of the riots, rioters/cops ignore us unless we start getting overtly involved. riots are super localized, you could go to hong kong now and not notice them, just hang out in other parts of town. like if there were huge demonstrations in downtown BTR you could just relax everywhere else in town and not care.
Only problem this time is the protest has closed the airport. He probably couldn’t have gotten in anyway. It’s a shame as it would have been a great time.
Hong Kong was just their connection. They would have then gone into China itself. And the brunt of the unrest is going on at the airport itself; its shut down, and will be until early tomorrow their time, which I believe is tomorrow night our time. I've never travelled abroad, so I can't agree with or refute anything you're saying. We would love for him to have been able to go, but flying into that would have been a mess
i suspect they just would have been rerouted through shanghai or beijing or singapore or something, no big deal. its like if you are flying to baton rouge from europe and JFK closes, no big deal you just fly to ATL>MSY instead of JFK>MSY
My daughter went to China 18 months ago by herself. She flew to Hong Kong, and from there you do your visa application to China. It was no big deal and she absolutely loved HK and China itself. She told me that the only problem was that in China itself, very few people speak English so when she landed there, she had a bit of difficulty finding her hostel. A guy on the street could tell she was a bit lost, told his wife to stay put and he walked her to the hostel. Seems people in general want to help others, especially damsels in distress! ETA, she didn't tell me about this till long after she was back.
Sounds like the airport was the least of your sons worries. Looks like the trip organizers didn't have their stuff together. Probably a good thing he and the others backed out.
