I’m currently in Hong Kong! I’ll be here for a couple of weeks before heading over to Shanghai for a few days and Xian after that to take a look around.
Things could have started more smoothly… While I was walking to the train station on Monday morning, bag on my back, I got a call from my mate George in Hong Kong to say that the place I was staying had accidentally cancelled my room booking. They wouldn’t have another available until Friday. Great. Then I arrived at the airport to find that Cathay had misplaced my seat booking as well. Again, great. I was travelling standby and the flight was overbooked so even after they found my listing I still had to wait until 10mins before the gates closed to be given my ticket. A sprint through customs ensued, finishing in record time: 7mins from check-in to boarding, 3mins to spare!
The flight was awesome, once I got on. I had a jump seat, which was up in front of first class and incredibly comfy. A couple of movies and a decent kip later, we landed in Hong Kong. Because I was one of the last people on the plane, my bag was one of the first off so I was out of HK customs and on a train into town in about 15mins, to be met by George and a fried breakfast.
We spent the day sorting out an alternative hotel (Garden View, facing out over Central and Admiralty, giving me a grandstand view of the city lights) and checking out my old camera kit and electronics shopping haunts. Geeky? Yep. Oh, and I narrowly escaped being sharked by an old chap playing some kind of card game. He saw Gerorge and I watching and offered us a game for money. It seemed to be something a little like snap, where the players take it in turns to throw down a stick-like card and then try to pair it up with one of the ones already on the table. My pathetic Cantonese vocab includes ‘No, thank you’ so I walked away with my cash intact.
Hong Kong hasn’t changed at all since I was last here. I can still remember my way around and it’s still as entertaining as ever just to wander around. I don’t have anything planned until Saturday so I intend to take it easy, steal lots of photos and book my flight to Xi an for early December…
