Oh thank goodness - the first time this popped up in Google it was in Chinese and I couldn't find the button to change it back to English. It may have been there, but who can say?
Departure from Sydney
For those of you who know me and travel, this will come as no surprise to you. For the rest of you, I assure you that I have only missed a flight once. The other time I happened to arrive 24 hours earlier than necessary, but that's another story.
Luckily I happened to check my itinerary again for departure to Hong Kong because I didn't trust my math when I calculated departure from Sydney at 11:55pm and arriving in Hong Kong at 5:55pm (local time) with a flight time of just over 8 hours. Then I called my lovely travel agent because it occurred to me that I had the wrong 11:55. Sure enough, I had forgotten that Qantas writes its time in 24hour time. All of a sudden I had 12 hours less than envisioned in which to do everything necessary to get to the airport.
JelLo, I apologize profusely - I needed those 12 hours to wash the sheets and towels and fold and put them all away. Guest sheet sets are in the same closet as the guest towels, just a shelf up. Obviously I did not succeed in finishing the laundry, so please tell your dad he can put them somewhere in a corner and forget about them. I certainly will - I hope.
The flight was on time until 11:10am when we were supposed to board. There was an announcement a while later that we would be delayed for an hour due to routine something-or-other. Which confuses me because if it was routine, surely they would have allowed for that when allocating departure times? Oh, and my big bag was 3kgs over. So I had to reshuffle my luggage - FYI, if you didn't already know, paper weighs a TON. It was no use telling the lady at the counter that it's only a teensy weensy bit over. I make it a policy not to piss off the person who controls where I am going to sit. Or the security screeners (TSA, what did you think I could possibly hide in my rubber slippers with clear straps?)
Dodger and Jester, sorry about the rush for the airport. Those truffled scrambled eggs at Zigolini's are really good. It might be worth having breakfast/brunch there anyway.
Hong Kong
The flight to HK was uneventful once we left Sydney. They made up almost all of the lost hour (although, Qantas, did you think I wouldn't notice that the lock was gone from my small bag? Really? A bit disconcerting really - I will have to wash all of my underwear before I am willing to put them on). Once we landed, it was another story altogether. The carts you can use for your hand carry only go so far before there are metal poles sticking up out of the floor to make you leave the carts behind. I happened to be schlepping one more bag than originally intended because I had to carry my dispute resolution and pilates readings.
Immigration moved really quickly, but it took a few moments to sink in. This is mainly because you have to find the right line (visitors with some kind of electronic thing, HK residents, etc. etc.) and then there's another set of lines for people who need stamps, I guess. I didn't know which passport to give them, so I filled out both. Hopefully the immigration official stamped both passports, which I haven't checked yet. Otherwise it will take a lot longer to complete my mission to actually fill up an entire passport, especially since they added extra pages to my US one.
So the taxis in HK are color coded. Luckily my travel packet had something about it and my taxi driver spoke English. I was confident that I could get around fine and it shouldn't be an issue that I speak no Cantonese or Mandarin. This lasted until about 8:15 when, after checking in, showering and needing to meet S&J for dinner, I got into another taxi outside my hotel and found out that he couldn't understand me. Thankfully S had told me her address phonetically - after I repeated it a few times and tried to describe it, he got the idea and I realized that because I don't know the proper accent, I may have said something indescribably rude to him. It was more interesting after dinner - we went around in circles a bit (we got to the general area). I have since put the enclosing envelope to my room key in my pocket so that I can show it to the next taxi driver.
By the way, you still have to do the smell test of your room. My non-smoking room had previously been a smoking room. I'm not sure when they switched it over but my foot didn't even make it in the door. I swiped, I opened, got a whiff, then went straight to the satellite hotel desk by my room and requested a switch. Better a twin room which hasn't had smoke than a queen bed with smoke lingering.
Hong Kong may now be part of China but it doesn't feel like it is. For one thing, I haven't been grabbed by anyone on the street trying to sell me things. For another, it's a lot cleaner. The number of designer shops that I have seen all over the place make it quite clear that if you want to spend all day shopping, this isn't a bad place to do it. Personally I find the crowds overwhelming and the traffic where I am (Wanchai) sucks. It seems to be walker friendly, but I haven't tried that yet - definitely on the list for later today.
The grid layout also helps - the hotel's directions to a suggested dim sum place was to walk two blocks up, then turn left and it was halfway down the next block. It's like getting directions in the grid portion of Manhattan...
Food!
S&J took me to a steak place somewhere between their place (really nice place, but any place where S has had an influence always is) and my hotel. What's to say except the food was excellent? Must remember that my idea of medium (steak) and a restaurant's idea is different. The waiter and I had a slight difference of opinion...their description said pink in the middle. My steak was red and still bleeding. J said it was on the more rare side of medium. The waiter nevertheless took it away and brought it back more cooked. I'm sure their chef probably thought it was well done. In either event, the restaurant gets bonus points for waiting to clear appetiser plates until J and I had finished our salads (we got a set menu, S didn't) and for replating my steak when they brought it back instead of putting it back on my half-demolished vegetables. Dinner was well paced until we got to dessert - mainly because they forgot two of us were having a set menu. It may have appeared that we were settling in for a long night of catching up but there was no rushing us out the door - very civilized.
Note: I may fail steak grilling at the Cordon Bleu. Must practice cooking steaks. A lot. S's salad was delicious - main sized Caesar salad where the dressing coated all of the leaves without drowning them and no single ingredient overpowered it. You know the kind - the garlic or anchovy knock you over and you wonder why they switched your Caesar salad with something that wasn't on the menu, while other dressings are so bland you wonder what happened to the lemon/garlic/anchovy/etc. This one was more-ish. For the Americans, this is Australian for "you want more".
We were all impressed to see what must have been the AUD$100 steak go past. It sounds excessive until you read that this is meant for 2-3 people to share. Apparently food in HK ranges from stratospherically expensive to cheap (and delicious, at least according to Time Out HK) street food. I would try the street food if it weren't for the fact that I have to get back on a plane in a few days to continue on to London. A plane is not a fun place to be sick, as some other friends can attest.
I am sitting in the hotel lobby and trying to drink coffee. It tastes really burnt, which someone told me means that the water got pushed through the espresso too fast. I never knew that I would ever be able to tell good coffee from bad. The pain au chocolat is nondescript. A bit floury...on the other hand, who goes to HK or China and eats French pastries? My bad, the hopes are saved for dim sum/yum cha this morning when I meet S & J at 11am at my hotel. I have to walk down the street and find the place (and see if I can make a booking) - it's unfortunate that I didn't write it down when the airport taxi driver told me its name.
S&J have not yet been able to find HK versions of essential pantry items, so I brought back a small section of Coles with me. Thank goodness for the requests! Left to my own devices, I may have packed unncessary items (and still been over the weight limit). They will still have to leave on the extra "Heavy" tag on my big bag, but I don't expect I'll have to take things out and carry them on the next leg. Am wondering about girly credentials - having trouble finding all cosmetics in my bags despite having packed most of my bathroom cupboards into the bags. Think perhaps I should pack makeup bag with essentials for travel, like I do with my shampoo and conditioner. Well, perhaps not. No one seems to care here, in complete contrast to Seoul where all the women were dressed up, makeup and hair done, matching bags and shoes...everything that seems to take so much time in the morning when you are trying to get dressed. I'd rather sleep...
Find the money really confusing. Now I remember why I had that extra little pouchy thing out, which I left behind in Sydney. It was for currency which wasn't USD/AUD/GBP. HKD and GBP resemble each other quite a bit. Have taken to carrying HKD folded up in my pocket. Figure if I get pickpocketed from my jeans pocket, there are probably bigger problems than some missing cash.
Wish me luck - I am about to sally forth onto a street whose name I don't know to find a restaurant whose name I can't remember in a city where I don't speak the language. More later!
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