It's a small world ..........chance meeting

In May 1988 after 3 years working I took a 3 month break from my work (accountants after a law degree) to travel to Burma, Hong Kong and China with my wife (my girlfriend at the time and who was also taking a break after qualifying as a lawyer) before I went to law school for a year to continue to become qualified as a lawyer. I had fairly closely on occasions with one client involved in the insurance sector (we never met but only ever spoke on the telephone) and I had decided to use his services for various personal insurance policies pre the proposed trip. However, just before our departure at the airport I suddenly realised I had not completed all paperwork required for the insurances so I rang him to explain I was about to get on a plane and would be away for 3 months travelling abroad to Burma, Hong Kong and China and that I would deal with matters on my return. In the conversation he said "my daughter is also travelling (with her boyfriend) and she is in South America at the moment but she will be going to China....maybe you will bump into each other." At the time I made a rather flippant comment and about the unlikely chances of that happening. During our time in China, my wife and I arrived in one city (Kunming) and booked into a backpacker hotel. At the check in desk there was a message blackboard..........in the centre of the blackboard was a message that had been left (by persons unknown) for a person with the same name as an ex University law student colleague of my wife who had also lived with her at law school (in 1985) ......spooky. As we only stayed the one night in Kunming, we did not get a chance to meet up with the named person but, on our return to the UK we later discovered it was indeed the individual my wife knew. It turned out he had, on a whim decided to follow my wife's idea a couple of weeks later and to take a break after he had qualified as a lawyer and travel to China as well. We travelled on from Kunming and eventually arrived in Beijing. On arriving in Beijing we went to another backpacker hotel but found that, as indeed was the case with another English couple, after an exhausting day we had arrived after the check in desk had closed and so the four of us spent an appalling night sleeping fitfully in the brightly lit foyer. We then checked in to rooms as soon as we could the next day. We spent several days in Beijing with the other couple, travelled to and slept out overnight on the Great Wall in an observation tower with them and generally "hung out" together. We discovered that the couple were spending a year travelling after attending law school and before start their training articles in September 1988. In one of the many conversations we had, it transpired that: (i) the girl lived in a house in the same village where my girlfriend and I were at school (albeit she had gone to a boarding school in a different location) and my girlfriend and I had walked past her house almost daily for 8 years.......again rather spooky; and (ii) in a couple or so more months, in September 1989, she was going to be attending the very same law firm I was due to attend a year later, after I had completed my year at law school, in September 1989......this really was getting quite significantly spooky. Anyway after about a 5 or so days in Beijing we we were due to leave. We said our good byes to the copuple and the girls swapped names/address details/phone number contacts etc. My better half was in charge or all "essential papers" and looked after the contact details etc. Later that evening as we were about to get ready to depart for the railway station to catch our train to our next destination, something triggered in my mind about an earlier conversation re families and names etc so I asked my wife to tell me the surnames of the couple. I raced up to their room, knocked on the door to speak to the girl: "You know we discussed the unlikely coincidental chances of the occurances about where you live, where I went to school and where we are going to be working together" "Yes" "Try this one........did you say your surname was XYZ?" "Yes" "Did you say your father worked in insurance?" "Yes" Deep breath.......... "I don't suppose his christian name would be ABC would it? "Yes..............." pause "It is a small world and one that clearly is full of the most extraordinary coincidences..............I don't suppose you can take a guess who I believe was the last person I spoke to just before I got on the plane to leave the UK. He was someone I used to work with and who said "my daughter is also travelling (with her boyfriend) and she is in South America at the moment but she will be going to China....maybe you will bump into each other." We all remain good friends to this day and (coincidentally) live about 7 miles apart. I still wonder at the statistical chances of that series of really, really unlikely connections happening.