Kind of a Lost in Translation moment (or at least the DVD menu).
Delicious Air Travel Tidbits (safe for eating)
Writing from the Signet Lounge at Tokyo Narita, after arriving on NH 812 in Y from HKG, connecting to my flight back to SFO (groan)
Possibly one of the brighter (and very simple) ideas for seatback tables. There’s a hole in the table! Whatever for?
Especially useful when the ride gets bumpy. I’ve worn Diet Coke (erm Pepsi) before on SWA and UAL when we hit turbulance. Eeeeee-splash.
The economy meal from HKG. You can guess this because of the brand of water and one of the meal choices on this morning flight was DIM SUM!! This is the first time I’ve ever had dim sum on the plane. Granted, it was just two pieces each of siu mai and har gau and a baby joong along with the ANA standard issue cold soba and salad. Could you imagine a full dim sum service on a plane? Hella cool!!
And oh yah, my flight NRT-SFO is booked solid in steerage. So I reluctantly accepted being bumped…to BUSINESS CLASS AGAIN! Op-ups helped by being 1K.
Writing from 30,000 feet on NH8, NRT-SFO
Here’s the Business Class dinner.
Wah! I love this airline! Ya dun hear ppl saying that about UAL, do ya? =P
Airport Station
The last things you see before you enter the confines of the Airport.
More Useful HKG advice: Cash when you arrive and how to spend it when you depart
When you arrive at Hong Kong Station (Airport Express) from HKG, you will need money. There’s a Citibank on the first mall floor (IFC 1) which is in the same building. Get your money there. If you have an HSBC account in the states, there’s ATMs in the arrivals hall near 7-11.
Leaving…If you have a morning flight, splurge on the cab ride to the AeX station. It’s only about HK$40 (US$5.00, give or take) and it will save you a lot of effort. Traffic doesn’t really begin to suck until 0800 or so, if you’re earlier that should be fine.
In-Town check in: the greatest boon to travellers since frequent flyer points. Use it. Then you can putter around the airport, relatively stress free, once you get to your terminal building. Speaking of that:
Once you get to the Airport, make all due haste to get to the correct building. If your gate is a higher numbered one, you’ll have to take a shuttle and walk a bit. Maybe about 10 minutes added to your journey.
Just some things to keep in mind should you arrive or depart all flustered and confused.
Kosmo Coffee
This is the famous Kosmo Coffee on Wellington Street in Lan Kwai Fong.
They make coffee and tea and they have snacks. They’re also down the street from California Fitness.
Now what makes them worth an entry? They are the only other place (aside from Zambra Coffee in Wan Chai) I’ve found in Hong Kong that has FREE Wi-Fi. Buy a drink or a snack and park your butt. Their internet is pretty fast too.
Kowloon Walled City
When the British took possession of the New Territories, there was an Qing outpost there called the Kowloon Walled City. Although it was abandoned in 1899, there was still no real arrangement on who had jurisidiction over it. Over the years, tenements and slums grew up around it. Read here for more.
Anyhoo, it became a health hazard so the HK Government (with approval from the mainland), razed it and made it into an award winning park with history inside.
Looks so serene inside, right? There’s a neat garden too.
This is how it looks outside.
eeeeeeee
The most hidden Chill spot in Hong Kong…
…is probably the Chi Lin Nunnery in Kowloon City (near Diamond Hill MTR). It’s one of the more easily accessible of HKG’s attractions. Walk into the mall from the MTR and through the Marks and Spencer. Hang a right and go up a block. 5 minutes max. However, if there’s heat and humidity, your time may vary.
The nunnery was rebuilt in 1998 with the actual temple parts (the ones with the various Buddhas housed) made of wood and in the Tan’g Dynasty style of construction.
The gardens and foundations (there’s a garage underneath) are of course, modern stone and concrete.
It’s amazingly quiet and comfortable inside the compound. Like I wrote in the title of this post, it’s chill. Despite the fact that the Nunnery is surrounded by housing blocks, a big mall and an expressway, you don’t really feel or hear much of it.
Unless you look up…
So where am I today?
Let me see…passport, got it. Money? Dollars, baht, RMB, yen? Hong Kong, yah, dollars. SIM Card…Hong Kong, New World.
Now THAT’s a life!
Weirdness!!!
You know when people that live in humid, icky areas (not California) keep saying that “you’ll get used to it”, etc etc etc?
It’s usually crap, because as they stand there in a full suit and tie, totally dry, I’m in sandals, shorts and a t-shirt, dripping sweat by the litre.
On the way in to HKG this AM (EARLY this AM), the pilot made his usual happy talk once we got to cruising altitude.
“Hong Kong is rainy with a high of 28 degrees”. I then said to myself, “a cool day, eh?”
AGGGGGGGHHH!
Of course, let me preface this with the fact that I’ve been in BKK for the past 3 days, where it’s usually 32-4 degrees with buckets of humidity…
But that’s a bit freaky, dun you agree? I think I’m going to freeze my ass off when I get back to SFO.
Mr. Cranky Pants
Yup, that’s me. Because I had to roll out of bed at 0445 to get to a check in counter for a 0645 flight back to HKG. I got in from BKK around 2330 and was updating the blog and talking on the phone until 0100. Then shower and shave and pack. Bedtime: 0200. Bleagh!
The A/C in the wing of the transit hotel where my room was was working backwards (blowing humidity instead of dry air). Because of that, my A/C in the room was also blowing cool humidity too.
If I could take that room and turn it into a walk-in humidor, that would have been perfect.
Then to add to my crankiness, my flight to HKG was on UAL. I ran into a “flight attendant” at the McDonald’s near the gate. Apparently she’s not too fond of the inflight food either?
It was a typical UAL flight. Screaming babies, indifferent service and crowded. I was sooo tired.
I ate what passed for “breakfast”, had some coffee, slipped into superhero mode (sleep mask) and passed out for 2 hours.
Of course the movie on the big screen was “National Treasure”; that may have had something to do with it…
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