Saturday, October 31, 2009

Beijing to Hong Kong

Phil packed while I futzed with the computer. Then I packed, and we had breakfast. We read and made sure we had all the info we needed before the trip. Shanliang rang the bell about 10 until 10 and we were off. Except he had left the change from the bill on the counter and had to go back. The driver even gave us a gift of a teapot.


We were surprised that there were no news shops in the departure area. Only expensive places where we managed to spend almost all of our Mainland China money.

Air China gave us lunch (pork rice) and an ice cream ball thing covered in a gummy sugar coating.

We got to the Hong Kong airport and couldn’t make the machine take our money for train tickets, so we stood in line and somehow got a ticket which was $20 HK cheaper than had we bought them at the machine. The train to free hotel express bus worked great.

I had trouble checking in because I did not have a voucher. The clerk had me go back in the office with her where I went through my email and printed our the message from Orbitz. It was not exactly what she wanted but it worked. Our room was an upgrade to a full harbor view. The hotel, the YMCA Salisbury, was under massive construction in its lobby area as was the surrounding street area. However, our room was perfect with a phenomenal view.

We unpacked and went across the street to the Cultural Center where we got Starbucks coffee and split a curry beef pie sandwich. We hurried to the waterfront for the Symphony of Lights show where the harbor side buildings in both Kowloon and Hong Kong had a light show orchestrated to music. It was really cool.

As it was Halloween, lots of people were dressed in costumes and people brought their kids to be photographed near a host of illuminated figures set up in the area to celebrate the East Asia games that will be in Hong Kong in December.

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