Monterrey, Mexico

From Chicago, we continued our trip to Monterrey, Mexico.

By fly, it was approximately 6 hours to reach it. We only visited one customer as the others were not confirmed with appointment.So, we spent one night and returned back to Los Angeles the next afternoon.

The weather was fine. It was not so cold and windy as in Chicago, but still, I loved to wrapped myself under my coat.

Our Mexican agent brought us to Mexican restaurant, El Tio, if I'm not mistaken. It was not so far away from our hotel. Yup, we were quite tired with all jumbo steaks and burgers. There was a recommended Mexican food we had. It was baby goat dishes. I regret to forget the dish's name. It was quite nice. I had mine wrapped under tortillas, while my superior had his in grilled. The size of serving was sufficiently filling so we could breathed during our nice and easy after-dinner conversation.

The next morning, we made our appointment with customers and talked all about business. The sun was so bright, it hurt my eyes.The coat which I carried around looked silly on me, since everyone else were comfortable in sweaters. Some even had short-sleeve shirts and pants. Ouch, excuse me ...

Finish with business by noon, we had plenty time to catch our afternoon flight to LA. We headed to Mexico Aeropuerto to have early check-in and some light lunches. It turned out that the check-in was not early at all. Understood we need to go thru x-ray check point before checking counters in all airports. However, in here, we had manual checking. None of this x-ray method whatsoever.

To be honest, I did not have any suspicious items within my two luggages. However, this manual checking by man was quite troubling us. I had locked both luggages so I had to re-open them for inspection. Towards end of trip days, my suitcases were not tidy enough and they started to feel overloaded by gifts and other business-related items such as film samples. In my hotel room, before I checked-out, I usually sit on the luggages as to properly close them. But, I had no choice when airport authorities requested us to open them for inspection.

I felt sorry for my superior. He had one big luggage and one medium box. The luggage was fine. It was easy to open and zip it close again. However, he must open the box to show them the inside. He had scotch-taped the box almost in every surface of it, to make it secure for check-in. He tried to bargain his position by saying the content were Lego's and some other toys for gifts, which he purchased earlier in USA. During the flight from USA to Mexico, they did not even bothered to open the box (yes, that because Americans was using their x-rays ...)

Nevertheless, the man said there was no other way for them to see what's inside than to open it, right? so he reluctantly allow the man to do so after being assured the officer had tape to put the box back in shape

Well, that counts as one of my-airports-experiences