The planes departing from Kuala Lumpur fly over the neighborhood where my hotel is. Just after midnight I seem to hear that the cargo plane my motorcycle is in is taking off. In the morning I see on my phone that my tagged motorcycle is on the stopover in Qatar, so that's going well.
Around noon I arrive at the airport and I squeeze him a little anyway. At the direction of the booking office, I put my first and last name on the plane ticket, not my baptismal names. When checking in online, I therefore received an error message that the name in the passport and on the ticket do not match. Fortunately, I managed to check in manually online and once at the airport there appears to be nothing wrong and I don't get any comments about the difference in names.
The first part of the flight goes to Taiwan where, after waiting 4 hours, I have a transfer to the plane that takes me to Amsterdam. 19 flying hours later I set foot on Dutch soil again. Now first looking for my motorcycle, which turns out to be 3 km away at a freight company. A taxi takes me there and the Swissport Cargo employee places the pallet in a corner of the warehouse so that I can work on it at my leisure.
This time I opened the cardboard box in no time and unpacked the motor. With the help of a nice forklift driver, who lifts the motorcycle, I put the front wheel back on and I'm ready to go to the customs office, another 4 km away. But the employee of the transport company thinks otherwise. I can't get the motorcycle until I have the stamps in my Carnet de Passage. Even when I angrily explain to her that they check the engine there for frame and engine number, she continues to insist that I have to go there by taxi to stamp the papers.
Fortunately, just at that moment a customs officer drives onto the site to seal a truck and I walk over with her to explain the situation. He doesn't know what the correct procedure is in this case, but I can follow him on my motorcycle to the customs office. Once there, my papers were stamped within a few minutes and it turns out that I was indeed right, which I can rub under the nose of the unruly lady from the transport company.
Anyway, I'm ready to drive home!
