Xiamen says good-bye 
At night, another man came to the room, but he left in the morning as fast as he had come. At that time, I had been awake and read so much on facebook that I had enough for a while. So, when the alarm of Shaun, the young guy from Taiwan, rang for the 3rd time, I changed into working position and finished the blog entry and started cutting the Halong bay video (25min beautiful landscape that I want to reduce to 5-10min)
When his alarm rang the 5th time, Shaun got up, we talked a little and he left. At night, I had got an email with the ticket – no, not TO Taiwan but FROM Taiwan (to Melbourne)! – which was good new or at least a good sign, because I always had got the information that I need to prove how and when I would leave Taiwan to get the ferry ticket to Taiwan.
At 11h, I prepared everything for leaving and at 12h, it was time for check-out. Originally, I wanted to leave at 13:00 and now used the time to look for a print-shop to get the ticket on paper, but there was none open, then, to find my Chinese “chocolate” in a shop, but no one had it, next to buy more of those taro-dumplings that I had eaten at dinner, but I didn’t eat them, only put them in the box for later and finally I said good-bye to the family where I had eaten porridge last lunch, but they were very busy. No wonder that they were busy, because it was not only noon, it was a very pleasant, warm and sunny noon after a period of cold and windy days. In the room, I had not realized that, I had been freezing after the bathroom and needed two hours to get rid of my cold hands (not by cutting them off, but by warming them up under the blanket up to my nose. So, I had put on 5 layers of shirts and jackets and now stood in the bright sun and could only remember how cold I had felt 30min before. After adjusting my outfit to the new situation, I slowly cycled to the port. Slowly, because I always looked left and right to find a printshop and forward and down to compare reality with the route on the GPS. We lost each other only once, it was a typical situation for that: A big road with3 lanes gets another one, the directions are written only in Chinese and Mr.G “tells me to go right. You cannot see which lane actually goes to the right, Mr.G doesn’t tell you and I took the right one. The right one apparently was the wrong one. But In a city, on an island, it is not that hard to find each other sooner and later and then we stood together until the end. The end was a road with a sign telling that bicycles are not allowed and a policeman at the end of that road who smiled at me, stopped me and showed that I should push the bike from there on on the pedestrian way. This was only the last 100m or so.
At the entrance, on guard wanted to stop me with my bike, but the security man that had helped me on Sunday was there and explained him that I go to Taiwan. I had arrived at the Cosco office at 13:30, 1,5h before it should open but the place was very crowded. One family seemed to be the first queued up, but they told me that they go to Japan. And I hope, so will the rest of the crowd. When the office opened at 14:20, I was the first in the row, but one man managed to get in front of me and even my strict and disapproving look didn’t stop him, but at least the next one, who also wanted to be served before me. And to make a short story even shorter, I got the ticket (And needed only my passport, nothing else). With a little bad luck, I could have lost it a few minutes later: I put it on top of my bag and took a picture of it, then turned away because I couldn’t read the screen of my phone and I wanted to inform Amy in Taichung and all those whom I had involved in my case that I had got the ticket!!!
When I turned back, I wondered about a guy in his mid-50ies, travelling since 207 days, teaching at a high school, father of 2 sons who managed to grow up beside him etc etc who left a ticket for 558Y unattended and I wondered about the patience of this ticket that didn’t fly away (ok, there was not enough wind) and the honest of the people (ok, I was standing offside, because I didn’t want to be in the way of someone, so maybe no-one interested in stealing a ticket saw it).
I bought some food, tried a last time to get this chocolate, sat down in a park, enjoyed the sun and the food and the ticket and my free time until check-in at 5.
you would see: Martin, enjoying sun, food (taro dumplings), ticket and free time, but the camera also enjoyed free time and was too lazy to focus…
After a while, I wondered where my bike keys would be. I remembered that I had done something when I had changed the jackets because of the warm weather but the keys were not in the pocket where they should be. I also remembered that I had put all my money in that pocket (and it still was there) so I looked in the other pocket that was open (it should not e open!) and no key inside. Now I was ready for a little panic because there was no good reason to put in in the other jacket (that was in the bike bag, but without keys) and even less reason to put it in the other trousers (that’s also, why they were not there). In such a situation, at least I look in every bag and pocket a second time, but normally things don’t change their position just because you wish they would, so the keys still were not there. I saw myself writing an embarrassed email to Doron to organize a new key again and I wanted to contact the cleaning personnel whether they had found the keys. Before that, I thought it was worth to take a second look in my front bag on the bike. As I said, things don’t change their position only because you wish, but if you look a bit harder the second time it might seem as if. I don’t know why the keys were there and I only can wonder why I didn’t see them the first time, but I was ok with the result.
I went back to the port, changed most of my money to Taiwan $ and waited in front of the check-in. I was the first but a little bit on the side and the queue grew a little bit left of me, so I was sure that I would have to be very strict to defend my position. Now, there were only 20 persons in the row, so I thought, better be friendly and relaxed , because with my bike I anyway would slow down everything and then I don’t want to have a bad reputation additionally. And then, “my” security man came to me and led me aside all the others, opened an extra gate and I was the first at the X-ray. I put down all bags, put them in and at the other side an officer asked me to open the bag with the food. I wondered about it but on his screen, he showed me a thing in that bag that he wanted to see. At first, I only knew that my spork (spoon-fork) was inside but then I remembered that the leatherman that Doron and Marvin had given to me for the journey, was in that bag. The officer looked at it turned it around, tried a bit to find out the function and gave it back to me, it was ok for him. I fixed the bags on my bike moved on and soon came to a second X-ray. I put down all my bags, put them in but this time no officer wanted to see anything. I fixed the bags on my bike and moved on. After a passport control with the well-known problem that they couldn’t scan it because of a reflecting foil, I could go on to the ship.
it looks as if the cars would go from the bridge into the ship 
…and from the ship on the bridge (but they didn’t) 
Last difficulty: I had to use an elevator down and they wanted me to enter the bus that brought the passengers from the building to the ship (maybe 300-400m). But in the end, the officers saw that this was not possible and one of them called someone on the phone and after that took a bike to lead me to the ship. In the ship, I should store my bike on a lower deck, which meant to lift it down some stairs and I should leave my luggage on it. So, I just took a few things (and later saw what I had forgotten to take, but too late). In my cabin (to share with 5 other passengers),
was a young man from HK who showed me around on the ship
i saw women entering the powder room but I didn’t hear any Karaoke noise 😀 
and told me that the restaurant would close in an hour, so we went there, because I had not enough food in my small bag. At the money exchange, they didn’t take all my money, only enough for full 1000 $ notes, so I had still smaller Yuan notes and this was exactly the price of the food. On a table, I found half a Wiener Schnitzel and took it to my fried rice with vegetables.
We talked for a while and Ming showed me award wining photos he had taken in Tibet and told me a bit about his views on HK and China and Taiwan and China. China has bought many newspaper and other media in both countries and massively influences the people. Some of Ming’s friends are political activists that cannot go to mainland anymore but he “is only a photographer” and China so far didn’t care about him. I wanted to know if he fears the future, but it doesn’t seem like that.
We went back to the cabin, because I was tired anyway and he wanted to catch the sunrise. At 21:30, the light was turned of and surprisingly people became silent, too.
