And then the fury......

It was our last day in Kagoshima there was still lots of stuff we wanted to do....... but no time to do it. It was a Saturday. We planned to fly back to Hong Kong and then get ready to fly to Kuala Lumpur on the Monday. We received a notification from our airline, Cathay Dragon, that our plane would be departing one hour late. No problem we thought. When we get to Fukuoka, we will go and visit a shrine I wanted to see - the Sumiyoshi Shrine - not too far from Hakata Train Station. Actually this turned out to be several different shrines next to each other. One of them was an inari fox shrine.

At the Sumiyoshi Shrine there were several wedding parties. This was great for us for photos, though I did not like to take too many in case we were annoying people.

The First of the Shrines.

Me at the shrine.

The First of the Shrines.

The First of the Shrines.

The First of the Shrines.

The First of the Shrines.

Peter at the shrine.

Inari Fox Shrine.

Inari Fox Shrine.

Wedding Party.

Beautiful Bride.

The god of sumo.

The god of sumo.

Then it was time to head to the airport. We took the subway from Hakata Station. When we got there, we found the flight was delayed by five hours and that we need not have rushed all the way to the airport. The check in girl advised us to go back into Fukuoka for a while, but we decided against it. We spent our time shopping at the airport and having some snacks and drink. When it finally got to boarding time, a new sign went up 'Curfew' flight cancelled. This meant that the plane was so late, the airport was going to close and the air traffic controllers were going home. There was very little information coming to us from the Cathay Dragon staff. Eventually we were all told to line up to find out what would happen to us. We were in the line for two whole hours and when we were finally dealt with, we were told: 'Find your own hotel, get there yourself, pay for it yourself, then try and claim it back off us." What a shambles of an airline. The delay was due to violent thunderstorms in Hong Kong which cannot be helped, but the airline's handling of its stranded passengers was, in my opinion, appalling.

We had befriended an English man in the queue for waiting to be dealt with. He was married to a Japanese lady and had lived in Nagasaki for several years. He helped us. We all went to the same hotel and got there in the same taxi. Then we went out to eat together. It was 1:30am when we finally got to bed and we were all utterly exhausted. Our room was incredibly hot and the air-con would only give out heat, not cool air, so we opened the window. The noise from outside was awful. It was a very unpleasant night. Then we were up at six to eat breakfast and return to the airport for more sitting around.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, we got on a flight and arrived back in Hong Kong in the early evening. We were both shattered, but we could not rest. We had to pack and get ready to fly to Kuala Lumpur next day. More airports! Joy!