MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Vacation in Hong Kong

> How's Australia's? I hear your Australia's government slavishly follows whatever the
> US tells them to, so I am imagining Australia's airport security is just as
> draconian.
>
> Full disclosure: I have never been to Australia.

Yeah, the politicians do like sucking US cock politically. Aus airport security isn't as bad as US, particularly when flying domestically.

You can take most liquids on domestic flights, the most screening you're likely to encounter is explosive residue swab, and you can avoid that with careful timing if you fly often enough to see how they select people. You have to take aerosols an notebook computers out of hand luggage for the X-ray, but you can leave jackets, shoes, etc. on. Ropes, power tools, hammers, knives, scissors and nail clippers must be in your checked in luggage, not carry-on hand luggage. You can't take hot drinks onto a plane from the departure lounge due to issues with people getting burned when people spilled hot tea on them on crowded aerobridges.

For international flights, the silly gel/liquid restrictions apply at departure security. They randomly select people for microwave backscatter screening. It happened to me once out of six international departures in a one-year period. They don't generally ask many questions or do much unless you act like a jerk.

On arrival you have to declare food, wood, seeds, etc. for protection of local agriculture (there have been cases of people intentionally trying to introduce pests to harm the industry). If you actually declare something and show it to them, they'll usually believe you and not hassle you about anything else. They're more likely to select you and make you unpack your bag if you don't declare anything, even if you had nothing to declare. Also, if you don't declare anything and they see something that looks like food on the X-ray and it turns out to be food, then you'll get an intense search. But it's really things that could hurt agriculture that they're worried about more than anything else.

You occasionally get weirdness when flying to Australia. For example when flying to Australia from HK they will ask you to open your hand luggage to check for liquids when boarding the plane. So you can't buy a liquid at duty free in HK and then take it on the plane to Australia. They're pretty nice about it and if you quickly put your bag on the table and open it they don't even really look. If you're uncooperative they might try to make your life hard.

In the spirit of general inconsistency, other countries don't do this check on people flying to Australia. You can take liquids on the plane to Australia from Japan. Yeah, it's all very arbitrary and inconsistent, but it's not as bad as it could be.