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March 30, 2002
Memories of a Fragrant Harbour: Day 1 (Saturday 2002.02.16 and Sunday 2002.02.17)
As mentioned in an earlier entry on 2002.02.20, I basically stayed up all night and went to the airport to hop a flight to Hong Kong. For those that cared, it was Continental 99, direct from Newark to Hong Kong. If you're going to Hong Kong, I couldn't recommend this flight more. It was 15h29m flight time and, compared to the experiences of my relatives, it was definitely the shortest flight to Hong Kong that any of us enjoyed.
This day is annotated as spanning the 16th to the 17th primarily because I "lost" a day going across the International Date Line. The flight was pretty good, although I sat in Economy so the legroom sucked. I had a little girl that was fascinated with the Baldur's Gate II that I was playing on the laptop. It's hard to play a game when there's a little girl trying to push her finger through your laptop's LCD screen. Too bad her mother was asleep. I distracted her with candy thrown down the aisle.
My arrival in Hong Kong was incredibly smooth and I got my first chance to brush up my Cantonese at Immigration. Fortunately for me, I managed not to say something like "I have 5 kilos of pot in my shorts" and got through with minimal fuss. I retrieved my bags, which was amusing since one of them has a Priority Handling tag from my frequent flyer status and the other one doesn't. Given that I'd arrived at the airport early in Newark, my non-priority bag was the first one on the plane... and stuck at the very back. So I got one bag right off the bat and had to wait for the other.
Exchanged a little money at the airport and walked out, where my sister found me immediately just outside Customs. She had arrived two days before from a stopover in Vancouver. My sister's name is Sheree. You may want to write down a map because I'm going to start referencing a lot of names. She recounted that she had pegged me for what I was going to wear ("I told mom that you'd be wearing a plaid shirt, t-shirt, and jeans.") Mom was further down the hall waiting at the end of the barricade outside Customs in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has a brand new airport, opened sometime within the last 5-10 years, 1998, I think, but I couldn't be arsed to look up the actual date. It's large, airy, and a true pleasure to transit. It's also connected way out in the middle of nowhere, built on reclaimed waterfront (i.e.: landfill) north of Lantau Island. It is linked to the rest of Hong Kong via numerous airport buses (public transit, not airport shuttles) and the Airport Express, which is linked in with the MTR (subway). We took the A41 bus back to Sha Tin, which is a "suburb" of Hong Kong.
The trip back to Grandmother's took more than an hour by bus, due in part to rush hour traffic; I landed after 5 p.m. locally. My grandmother lives with my cousins, Gar-Ho and Gar-Ming, though the latter spends most of his time in the univeristy dorms. Aunt #6 and her husband live four floors below. Due to the number of people, Gar-Ho was relocated downstairs with his parents for the duration of our stay and Gar-Ming stayed at the dorms. My sister and my mom stayed in the bunk bed where my cousins slept. Aunt #3 stayed in Grandmother's room on an extra cot. I got the futon in the living room, which meant I was the last one to bed and the second one up.
This was all done in an apartment that was only slightly larger than my first studio in Manhattan. It's hard to give a visual reference, but if you can think of a place that wasn't much more than 400 sq. feet, you're getting pretty close. And this is considered good for an apartment in Hong Kong. Value your space in North America.
The night was pretty much filled with settling in, eating a big homemade dinner, and catching up with family a bit. Given that my sleep schedule was quite screwed up, I was more than happy to drop into bed by 10 p.m.
Posted by KinCross at March 30, 2002 11:58 PM