It pays to check your email

Our last few hours in Bangkok were spent on a computer terminal frantically hunting for accom in Hong Kong. We ended up not prebooking anything, deciding to wing it and head back to the hotel we'd stayed at before. Big mistake.

So our first 3 hours were spent back at the Mansion, with Nazma guarding the packs while I raced up and down 16 floors, asking at and getting rejected at every guesthouse. This was a competition: other backpackers could be seen across the central courtyard, trotting along the outdoor corridors in their own vain rummage for rooms. Nazma found out from one of them that Hong Kong is in the throes of a series of trade fairs until the end of April, and places that aren't already full are sporting newly doubled rates. Alrighty then.

Finally we bunkered down in a grim little triple, with the requisite phone-booth shower/toilet, for a whopping HKD400 ($59CAD). We secured the room after a large, very hairy man was seen leaving it. We discovered that he'd already christened the toilet for us, remnants of his golden shower leaving amber trails down the side of the bowl. Thank you, Sasquatch. After almost 4 months of ups, downs, twists and turns, as we dumped our bags on the third bed and sat down things seemed about as low as things had ever been.

Nazma went off for some retail therapy while I tried to troll the internet for a vacant cot somewhere in the city that wouldn't cost us hundreds of dollars (seriously: the Holiday Inn wanted $370CAD a night!). Lo and behold, my cousin Joanna had written me to say her mother is out of town, and why don't we stay with her. A grown man crying in a public place is never a pretty thing, no matter what the movies might say, and I will never show my face again at that internet cafe.

We'd already paid for the roach hotel, so we managed to doze a full night tucked into our Vietnamese silky sleepsheets. First light saw us beelining toward the nearest subway station, to be whisked off to an unexpected, serendipitous salvation.