Day six dawned with us waking before the alarm – again, a novelty, but handy as we had to finish packing and get checked out. We finished with 45 minutes to spare and twiddled our thumbs and watched the rain until our pickup. We then ended up with even more time to spare as Cairns’ international terminal is fairly small and we had completed the formalities within 30 minutes and got to look rather hard at the duty free. Looking was all we managed however given we were down to our last AU1.25 and Hong Kong was only 8 hours away. Finally our boarding call came up and we got to experience Australian Airlines. It’s a Qantas subsidiary with better food, worse entertainment and no frequent flyer points. But the aeroplanes look nice and they gave us timtams – what more could you want?
Seven hours later we landed in Hong Kong. Customs in the SAR is fantastic – there’s almost nothing involved. We were then guided to our bus, past a hopeful jumper (he didn’t look to be high enough to do anything other than cause himself serious pain but was keeping the police busy), and off we went into Hong Kong. We were to be staying at the Harbour Plaza in North Point, which turned out to be lovely and the room even had a view of Victoria Harbour. The downside is North Point is a little way out of the central city and hence most shops only deal in Cantonese. A free shuttle bus service runs into the central city though, as well as the hotel being very near a MTR (underground) station. They also only supplied two teabags in the room, which wasn’t too spiffing of them.
Hong Kong seems to be surviving the Chinese quite well. There’s heaps of new development and the new airport is superb. What the world’s favourite communists haven’t sorted out is the heat – we arrived in 33 degree temperatures, a lovely damp heat that sucks your will to move outside air conditioned areas. Luckily our room is extremely well air-conditioned which should make sleep very pleasant, although Polly isn’t too chuffed with the firm (and gigantic) bed. No doubt she’ll pass final judgement tomorrow.
