Immigration Problems

I have to visit immigration to pick up some forms. This is easy. Hong Kong’s Immigration Department is housed at Immigration Tower which is clearly labelled with big white letters on the outside of the building so that new arrivals like me know exactly where to go.

On the seventeenth floor with my fair haired boys in tow I walk through crowds of seated Filipinas who eye us suspiciously. They know we are not in the right place. Then we find out we are not in the right place.

In Hong Kong lifts are selective in the floors they visit. I have already understood that this can be useful when travelling to the upper floors of a skyscraper; you climb in at G and the lift whisks you straight up to floors upwards of 30, ensuring your meteoric rise to the top of a building gets off to an uninterrupted start. Those who want floors below 30 get their own dedicated lift and are saved the scowls and irritation of those headed for greater heights.

What I haven’t yet grasped is why some lifts only serve the odd floors and others the evens. This is the case in Immigration Tower which meant we had a problem – how to get from the 17th floor back down to the 2nd?

I suggest we go down to the 3rd floor and take the escalator. On the third floor we can’t see an escalator. Growing nervous of that determined look in their mother’s eye the children suggest we go down to G in the “odds” lift and then return to the 2nd floor in the “evens”. But I have spotted the emergency exit.

I push open one fire door and then a second and hustle the boys inside hoping to silence the alarm we have activated by opening the doors. As we turn to survey our new surroundings the door slams behind us. The alarm does not stop ringing. I try the door handle hoping we might go back and use the lift after all. Locked. Ben goes upstairs to try the door one floor above. He returns looking worried. We go down two flights to the second floor only to find the exit there is equally locked.

Returning to the 3rd floor I hope someone might have seen us going in and be on the lookout for three displaced Brits. For a while the three of us wave frantically through a tiny glass window in the vain hope that we might be spotted through a second and equally small glass window by a clerk who is sitting some distance away across the floor and behind soundproofed glass. I am not really surprised when she doesn’t see us. There is a deafening alarm ringing through the whole building, at least on our side of the door, and no one has batted an eye-lid, why should three excited wavers make the difference. And anyway, if she did see us, she might think we were waving, not drowning.

We are drowning in the hottest staircase in Hong Kong. There are no windows and the doors are all locked and no-one knows we are here. Perhaps we will find the dried remains of other immigrants who got impatient with the lifts and lost their way. Perhaps dehydrating those who are not clever enough to navigate their way round Immigration Tower is one way of limiting immigration. I have clearly failed the intelligence test and deserve to be sent home. I vaguely wonder if I told my husband at breakfast where we were going today and, if I did, was he listening?

We head down. As usual when I’m trying to disguise the fact we are in a mess of my own making I get the giggles. The children are not fooled by my telling them this is a great adventure and Ben grows decidedly agitated.

Deep in the bowels of the building we find another fire exit. It’s the end of the road. The fact that we have not yet stumbled over the remains of any desiccated immigrants makes me think this might be the way out. I push the bar down and instantly set off another alarm but we are beyond caring and so is everybody else, if they ever did.

We find ourselves in a lower ground area entirely enclosed by a high spiked fence. I suspect it is to keep illegal immigrants out. Little do they realise what a good job they’re doing at keeping illegal immigrants in. I wonder if we have jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. The area is baking under the midday sun and there is no shade. Might we be discovered in three weeks time shrivelled up on the cement floor?

I cannot show the boys that I too am getting anxious. We attempt a circumnavigation of Immigration Tower and are fortunate to find a curtained window of a basement room which has a light coming from inside. Before us is a large high steel gate. I bang on the window hoping to attract the attention of a cleaner or a security guard. It has not escaped my notice that we have probably been observed by the latter on various CCTV screens so maybe they won’t even be that surprised to see us. Perhaps we will be welcomed in, covered in foil wraps and given cups of sweet tea. As I bang and call Calum and Ben open the large security gate and walk out, too embarrassed by their mother’s antics to hang around for one moment longer. Half suspecting they may feel inclined to close the gate behind them and abandon their rubbish mother I give the bemused looking cleaner a friendly wave and quickly follow.

We are back in the forecourt beneath Immigration Tower and I still have to get what we came for. The boys beg me to take the escalator and on the second floor I grab our forms and beat a hasty retreat.