It’s about 6 am and I wake up in our hotel room in Hong Kong with a strange feeling. I look at my iPhone and see there is a message from Leonardo. Panic! Why is he ringing me? I see there is another call coming in (I’ve turned off the sound during the night) so I answer it. “Leonardo, what’s the matter?” “Hi Mum, where are you? I’ve been waiting for you for two hours!” “I’m in Hong Kong. I’m coming on Wednesday”. “Mum, it IS Wednesday”. “No, it can’t be! I’m still in Hong Kong”.

I frantically wake up Relationnel. “Leonardo’s at the airport in Sydney waiting for us. Have we missed the plane?” Relationnel finds the paper and checks the dates. No, thank goodness, we haven’t missed the plane. I have just got the arrival dates mixed up. I apologize profusely to Leonardo who very sweetly says “Don’t worry Mum. The important thing is that you’re OK. I was worried when I didn’t see you.”

After writing emails to all the people who are expecting us on Wednesday and trying to reschedule our already overloaded schedule, we decide to go and have breakfast which is not served at the hotel. The streets around the hotel look deserted and naked in the early morning. We are given a strange omelette and ham sandwich served with milk tea in a little Chinese eatery. Everyone else is eating noodles!

We go back to the hotel to sleep for a couple of hours and check out at 12. We have lunch over the pier at “The Carvery”, obviously frequented by Hong Kong’s young executives from the offices nearby then do the shopping we didn’t do the day before and head off for the airport before anything else goes wrong!

This leg of the journey is only 9 hours, a whole two hours shorter than Paris-Hong Kong. I haven’t got any more episodes of Friends to watch so I watch an Australian film called The Hunter about a man hunting the Tasmanian Devil for a pharmaceutical company and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, strongly recommended to me by Brainy Pianist, by which time they are serving breakfast.

I open the cabin window and see the first light of dawn. Unfortunately, we’re just next to the wing, but it’s still quite magical to watch the sun come up as we fly into Sydney.

Everything goes smoothly. We go straight through passport control and customs. Our luggage has arrived without any hitches and there is Leonardo, waiting for us!