Trip to Hong Kong

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First, I’m here. Safely.

I landed in Hong Kong yesterday afternoon, around 14h30 (HK time), which took roughly 23 hours of travelling from Jozi.

Where to start? For anybody who doesn’t know me, this little escapade of mine has taken a bit under a year of planning. If you need to know more about that, feel free to mail me, but the poor folks who lived through it don’t want to read about it.

So let me start with a quick description of the trip. I left OR Thambo at 12h55 (SA time), on a Quatar airlines flight. We flew to Doha, in Quatar. Stopped there for 6 hours, then flew to Hong Kong. Yawn.

Turns out, Doha is hosting the 15^th Annual Asia games, which is a hang of a lot bigger than Africa Games, or at least better publicised. If you look at the tail of the plane, you’ll see the little mascot for the games, which appears to be some kind of bear/rabbit/kangaroo hybrid. Whatever it is, Doha are very excited about the games, and have signs all over the place telling you just how excited they are.

How anybody is going to do any sport in Doha is beyond me though, since when we landed there, around 22h15 local time, the temperature was 36deg C, or 1 billion deg Far, for those still on Imperial. The difficulty is not so much the heat as the humidity, which surprised me a bit for what is essentially a desert. The air is thick and muggy, and the two minutes spent walking from plane to bus to airport left everybody more than a little light-headed. The condensation that forms on the windows of the bus (aircon on inside, Hell on outside), should give you some idea of the issue.

Anyway, sat in that airport for a few hours, and learnt a few things. For one, all airport lounges (from my vast experience) are the same, only the colours change. The general feeling is one of boredom and hope, mixed up with a fair smattering of impatience. It’s decidedly odd. Fortunately, there is always the professional travellers pose to provide a couple of hours respite.

Somebody kept passing wind on the plane, and I hope that person feels ashamed of themselves, because they stank.

Finally landed in Hong Kong, which I could only describe as…. Well, there is no description for it from the air, especially not for somebody on their first trip, coming in during rain and unhappy weather. We do land about 5 m from the sea, which is quite fun.

The less fun part was getting my luggage back, and finding out that all of my locks had been cut, and my sleeping bag had disappeared. I’ve lodged a report with the Hong Kong airport, who have promised to look for it, but since it’s only a few hundred rand sleeping bag, and could be in any one of three countries, I don’t hold out much hope. Sigh.

But, to Hong Kong itself. I caught a train and a bus from the airport to my “hotel”, which was pretty easy. Everything here just runs, and runs well, and everybody is happy to help, especially those people who don’t speak any English. The first thought that went through my mind when travelling on the train is that I will never call Durban or Cape Town villages again. Johannesburg is a village. The sheer volume of this place is amazing. The buildings are all massive, the freight terminal we passed is massive, all construction is massive. It’s as though everybody is trying to compensate for something.

It is quite a beautiful city, in a grubby, hopeful, driven, passionate, busy, falling down, being built and re-built kind of way. There are trees everywhere coming in to the city proper, and they are the kind of green we only see at the height of summer.

According to my hotel host, there was a typhoon a couple of days ago, or there is one expected in the next few days, or there’s one in China right now, or these are my room keys. I’m not sure.

On the walk to my hotel, I noticed an amazing number of people outside, meeting in parks, sitting on benches, or walking between the millions of shops, which surprised me a bit until I saw the rooms. I reckon if you want to make people more social, the best way has to be to give them a bedroom of this size.

This photo is taken from the top corner of the room, while I’m standing in the shower. I can just about not lie on the bed – it’s only about 15cm too short for me.

The shower and ablution… worth every cent of the $50 extra I paid for it. It’s one room, space being at a premium, so you can have all three Ss and a W at the same time. If you don’t know what that means, I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.

I dumped my stuff in my room, and decided to explore the city a little bit. Now, let me give a word of advice to those of you planning to explore a foreign city, on your own. Take a map. Or, at very least, remember the name of the street you’re staying in. Write it down or something. Because the other option is to do what I did, and spend 30 minutes walking away from your hotel, and 2 hours walking back. I eventually found the street by pure blind luck, and even then I walked past the hotel.

Every single street I saw in Hong Kong looks more or less like this. Some are wider, most have fewer cars, all have shops. Many many shops. I people here are serious about shopping. I got back to my hotel around 10pm local time, on a Sunday night, and I felt like I was retiring early. The shops were almost all still open, the clubs were just opening up, the streets were seething. Again, I expect this has something to do with the alternative of sitting in your massive room.

Which I then did, and went to sleep. Eventually. Wish I could have stretched out a bit.

There is a ton more I could write about, but I think this is enough for now. I hope everybody back home is well.