Hong Kong Days 1 & 2 - Travel and Arrival (Liz)

Our adventures began with a nice lengthy 14 hour flight. I can't complain too much though because it was much less painful than a non-direct flight would have been. Props to Delta for having a very large media collection and I'm also very happy that you can now download Netflix shows to be watched offline so that I could continue working on the Great British Baking Show. Since we were traveling west from Seattle to Hong Kong, it was daylight the entire time which was pretty crazy. We departed around 12 pm on Monday from Seattle and arrived in Hong Kong around 6:30 pm on Tuesday. The flight was uneventful aside from Delta running out of my entree of choice during both meal services, so that was a good thing. We only got a couple hours of sleep which was what we wanted in order to fight jet lag.

Dale and Mark snoozing in the sunshine

It was super simple and quick to get through immigration and customs, and also very simple to take the Airport Express train then transfer to a shuttle bus to get to our AirBnb. Of course Mark was very happy to be on a train in a new city and naturally he took photos. Unfortunately none of us had window seats on the train so we didn't get the best view but we still got a sneak preview of the high rises and bustling city.

Our AirBnb is in a very convenient part of town. We are on Kowloon in the Tsim Sha Tsui neighborhood which is very close to the harbour. After settling in we decided to go for a walk to help us stay up until a "normal" bedtime. We ended up walking down Nathan Road until we reached the harbour. Nathan Road is home to much of the high-end (and some knock-off) shopping. To some degree it reminded us of walking along The Strip in Las Vegas. It was very crowded and full of tourists. There were lots of men, mostly of Indian descent, trying to give us business cards and convince us to go to their stores to buy handbags and watches. At least it wasn't cards advertising prostitutes like in Vegas, right? :) Let me tell you, Victoria Harbour was just lovely and breathtaking. It was a cloudy evening but I feel like that just added to the effect. I'm looking forward to going back another night to watch the light show. And it's so nice that it's walking distance (about 15 minutes) from where we're staying.

Signs like this crack me up 

 

On the way back we stopped at the Wellcome supermarket to pick up some water and groceries for breakfast. I have never seen so many groceries crammed into such a small place. They offered small carts for you to use (luckily we skipped that), but the aisles were so narrow that you couldn't have 2 carts traveling in opposite directions in the same aisle. There was also lots of extra inventory sitting in the aisles which made it quite the maze to get around.

We went to bed at a normal time in the hopes of adjusting to the time difference. Unfortunately I am typing this post in the 4:00 hour of the morning, so we were not totally successful. I think we will be needing a power nap today.

Observations:

• Car traffic travels on the left side of the road as we anticipated. When we were in Japan, that led to foot traffic also traveling on the left side of the sidewalk. However, I noticed that foot traffic still seems to move on the right side of the sidewalk here.
• Many of the high rises have big air conditioning units hanging out the all the windows on one side. I think it's pretty ugly (but necessary given the climate) but Mark thought they looked kind of cool. We will try and get a photo of it to post.