Hong Kong Day 0
Alright, after getting some sleep I am feeling a lot better. I am writing this at 6:36 AM local time.
Claire and I got to the Portland airport at something like 7 AM, fog everywhere. Had some coffee. Not too bad of a start.
Got to Vancouver around noon, nice little flight. Passed right near Mt. St Helends.
At the Vancouver airport, Claire and I had lunch. A lot of interesting people there. There was a pretty awesome aquarium there with what appeared to be tropical fish.
Left at around 2 PM, the real flight begins. The one to hong Kong. Everyone on the plane closes their windows. Cant see anything for 14 hours.
We fly up the west coast of Canada, over the Aleutian islands, across the international dateline, down over Japan, along the east coast of China and finally land on Hong Kong. I know this because I watched the map the whole time, dazed and confused.
Landed just after sunset, and proceeded down a series of walkways and paths to get to a terminal train that would take us to the rest of the airport. This was a smooth ride with a bunch of random people. There were very few chairs on the train, standing room only.
Made it through immigration with no fuss. No fancy stamp though, they stapled some piece of paper to my passport. I was a little dissapointed in that.
Customs was even easier, I thought I was going to have to declare my cell phone or something but they just waved us through.
Next began our MTR adventure. We didn’t get Octopus cards right away because we didn’t have any cash (almost all of the octopus machines take cash only) and instead got two group tickets leaving the Hong Kong airport for $16.00 USD. We ended up only needing one so I’ll use the other when we leave.
Got to the Hong Kong island terminal, and after messing around on the wrong floor for a while we made it to the Island Line area, where we couldn’t get tickets because the machine only took cash. Some employee helped us purchase Octopus cards and sent us on our way. The people here are pretty nice.
Rode the island line all the way down to Chai Wan, it was pretty crowded. The train was huge, like 9 or 10 cars, and you could walk from one end of it to the other.
I was a little dissapointed the second line we were on (the island line) was mostly underground. The first line was overland though and it was awesome. There are these huge apartment buildings everywhere.
After messing around for a bit (got lost in some kind of money-sieve mall at the end of the train station) we made it up to our apartment.
Notes:
- Everyone here is pretty stylish
- The trains are fast
- Huge buildsings everywhere
- Humid
- No facial hair anywhere
- When we got out of the airport, it was all people my age or so.
