Monday 23 April 2012

Escaping the Airport


What does a 13-hour flight across the Pacific feel like? Couldn’t tell you… I slept a lot. What I do remember is a great dinner (at an ungodly hour of about 4:00 a.m.), some movies that I couldn’t stay awake for, a great breakfast and a relatively smooth flight. We landed in Hong Kong without trouble, got off the plane quite easily and then waited 45 minutes for Trevor Day to pack and re-pack his bag. We then headed to immigration where the security guard had a good laugh at me trying to unpack 3 computers, the VividQ (ultrasound machine) and an iPad. Made it through there un-phased and straight to the lounge!

This requires it’s own paragraph…

Cathay Pacific hooked us up with passes to the business lounge at the airport. This is the single best thing I’ve ever experienced while traveling. We walked in to a Dim Sum like breakfast, a perfectly made Americano, which was then followed up by a beer. This was at about 9:30 a.m.  I spent some time catching up with the girls back home (Laurenne took a fall on a trampoline and put her top teeth through her bottom lip- great start to my adventure, but she is fine) and then went off to have a SHOWER! I should clarify, we all showered. We’ve been nibbling on food on and off all day, and having a sip of beer, wine, champagne and other libations all day and I just came back from my second shower!

A few of us decided to explore Hong Kong. This was a bit of an ordeal. It took forever to get out of the airport and become a visitor to Hong Kong, but eventually we were cleared for 90 days (although we only needed about 6 hours). We took the train to Hong Kong proper and walked around this crazy dense city with buildings that were at least 50 floors and up. It’s quite incredible that there are 7 million people on this island. We didn’t really find the ‘Chinese’ image of Hong Kong, so we hoped back on the train and went to Kowloon to try to find a market. We ended up in one of the richest districts in Hong Kong! Ferarri’s (599’s), Porsche’s, BMW’s, etc. everywhere. Gucci, Chanel, Dior, Cartier ($1,000,000.00 HKD, watch- about $125,000 USD), etc. all with line-ups! But we did find one of the craziest restaurants I’ve ever been in. 9 tables and they feed about 100 people while we were there. Lauren and I got seated with a lovely Chinese lady and her daughter who didn’t speak a word of English (I think the restaurateur only knew “thank-you”). I don’t think they were happy to have to sit with us.



We then headed back to the airport and had to go through about 3 or 4 checkpoints to get back into the airport. We’re now having some noodles and debating whether it is Sunday or Monday. Phil is confident that we’ll clear customs without too much trouble. Again, WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Hopefully another post tomorrow telling about the final flight and arrival in Kathmandu.

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