Well, how things can change in a few hours. After writing up my blog yesterday I set about packing my bags ready to go to Sydney at 2.30 in the afternoon as the start of our journey to Sydney airport tomorrow morning for our flight out to begin our China adventure for this year.
Lyn & Richard were packed & ready & we were all waiting for the time to leave when I got a call on my mobile from the Director of "Golf China" (Our tour manager) to say that his company had gone into liquidation. I was stunned to say the least and could not believe that it could possibly have happened. However after discussion with the liquidators I was convinced that it was all over and it was then a matter of scrambling to contact all of the other travellers before they left home to make their way to the airport. Some were coming from Queensland and Moree so it was a panic to make contact with everyone. I was relieved that I managed to contact everyone in time. Some were at the stage of waiting for a taxi to pick them up to take them to the local airport. It would have been a worse mess if we had actually been on our way out of the country.
The rest of the afternoon was shambles trying to find out about insurance cover & where our passports were etc etc. George & Tosca came in to give us some support with a bottle of wine & a bottle of scotch under their arm.
Feeling very sorry for ourselves we decided to call our travel agent to see if he could book us somewhere else for a week to 10 days as our bags were packed & ready to go & we thought that Thailand looked good. We discovered that it was too short notice to book a trip like that after investgating lastminute.com it all become too hard. Many phone calls and emails and a stiff scotch later we decided that we should go out to dinner at a local restaurant to comiserate with ourselves. It was Lyn & Richard's wedding anniversary tomorrow, this year was also George & Tosca's 40th anniversary which we had missed so that gave us cause for celebration.
We went to the Gilberto's Italian Restaurant in Mann Street which was a beautiful meal & we polished off some wine along the way.
During the night I got a phone call from the group that went to Beijing on Tuesday to say that they were being sent home on the next plane but had to pay their own way. With that added stress I ended up having a pretty bad night.
Today, Saturday was no better but I did get some information & phone numbers for insurance claims & managed to track where the Beijing group were. 12 of them are flying home tonight and another 4 on the 20th.
Well so much for being the travel guide extrordinaire - this is one path I will never travel again!
It has probably been the most stressful day of my life. The Golf China manager turned up with our passports this morning (to his credit) which was probably the only shining light of the day.
Lyn & Richard have gone to have the night with Richard's brother in Sydney and I think that an early night will be appropriate for me.
Image attached: Richard, Tosca, George, myself & Lyn at the restaurant last night.
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