Well a cheese sandwich later I'm on the plane to Paris and almost instantly arrived, yeah I fell asleep. Didn't get much sleep last night. Paris airport was a bit confusing, coming out of the gate I couldn't tell which way to go. So having the old Brittish tendency of following queues I did, I looked for the longest queue and just stood there. Now a proper way would be to ask someone, which I did eventually and discovered that, obviously I've wasted 15 minutes in the wrong queue and had to get out to another terminal.
Cutting things short, when I finally got to the terminal and found the check in counter I thought my ordeal was over. I was going to have an ice cream, maybe some lunch and then hang out at the boarding gate until it was time to leave. But as fate would have it..
"Excuse me! Sir can you come over here please."
"French customs, please come with us,"
Duh...
"French customs, we need you to come with us."
"Do you have anything valuable in your bag worth more than 7500 Euro?"
No.
"Is this your only bag? Do you have check-in?"
No, this is my only bag.
"Are you sure?"
...Yes I am.
It was two men in vests, one was short, balding with stubby hair and the other a taller brown haired guy. Both appeared very dodgy and had a slightly thuggish demeanor but would easily be picked out as plainclothes policemen. They took my boarding pass and passport which was in my hands, and the taller one grabbed my one and only luggage leaving me with no choice but to follow them.
I was taken into a security room upstairs behind one of the customs information counters that was set up. The room was dark and my first thought was "great I'm going to get gang-raped by a gay frenchmen and put into a porn video, I hope they give me marketing rights for Asia."
One of them guarded the closed door while the other helped me open my luggage and take out everything. They went through all the envelopes, my business cards and clothes, then poked around underneath the bag and inbetween all the zippers. Then they began going through a series of questions all designed to confuse me and make me look guilty.
"Why were you in Brussels?"
"Is this your only luggage?"
"What do you do?"
"How long were you in Brussels?"
"Were you in Amsterdam?"
"Why were you in Amsterdam?"
"Where did you stay?"
"Where do you work?"
"What work do you do?"
And so on and so forth. I guess that went on for over 30 minutes and by the time I was done being searched, I've lost the window and appetite to have lunch. My flight was leaving in under an hour, and I've still yet to figure out where the gate is! They let me go, looking a little disappointed, can't blame em, caught the wrong guy - you bastards!
I found my way to the gate, of course there was a long queue again, and luckily the flight waited because I got there just in time. It was good to be able to just sit down on the plane and vegetate for a while, I've got only one day rest before I have to fly down to Singapore. That was quite an adventure.
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