2018 – A Stop Over in Hong Kong
Wednesday 14th February
In the rain, Sarah, Ben, Torrin and Otter, take us to the station and see us off which felt very special.
We travel by train to Paddington where we have booked a Valentine’s Day night into Hotel Sophia close to the station.Not the most salubrious of places and slightly worrying that the main door to the hotel does not lock!
Anyway it is pouring with rain so we go to a Lebanese cafe opposite where from a table in the window we can watch the Hotel and eat a nice simple meal at the same time.
Our room is very basic but sufficient for our needs – similar to Calcutta !!
Thursday 15th – Friday 16th February
Caught Heathrow express to Terminal 3 and booked in, had breakfast, boarded before 11.00 am and were in the air by 12.00. Cathay Pacific airlines were fine but because of the timing landing in Hong Kong at 7.00 in the morning equivalent to 11.00pm UK time, we annoyingly didn’t manage to sleep.
It was misty as we come in over Hong Kong and was difficult to orientate ourselves as we land. Unfortunately as Janet was filling in the immigration form’ before going through passport control, she mislaid her passport wallet. She realised it was missing when she reached the passport desk. After lots of searching and going back with immigration it was nowhere to be seen.
A lost property report is filed and we find the bus that will take us to our hotel. We make two stops before our hotel so we see a bit of the city which is deserted. None of the shops and offices are open because it is Chinese New Year’s Day. We arrive at the BP Hotel which is an impressive building with a huge reception hall. It is then we see the large portrait of Baden Powell. It is only then that we realise that the BP obviously stands for Baden Powell.
We are in the South Asia headquarters of the Boy Scout movement which has a hotel attached to it. A large hotel with 23 floors and we are on the 17th. There are only two lifts so there is a rather a long wait to get to our room which is situated at the back of the hotel with a wide view over a park and the city skyscrapers.
Most ‘Colonial’!!
Having booked into the hotel we decided to get out for a bit before addressing the issue of the lost wallet.
We walked from the hotel to the waterfront and took the Star Ferry across the water to Hong Kong Island.
It was busy with families celebrating New Year.
We walked up towards the tram stop for Peak Hill passing through underpasses filled with groups of women and children sitting on flattened cardboard boxes playing cards, sewing, smoking, chatting generally relaxing.
Arriving at the tram stop there were hundreds of people waiting, so we abandoned that idea and walked a rather long circuitous route to what was hard to distinguish as the top of Peak Hill but did give views across to the sea on the other side.
We arrive at the Peak Lodge restaurant which although with empty tables is, according to the lady receptionist, fully booked. We go outside where there are empty tables and sit at one. We are served by a pleasant young man who starts to take our order when he is challenged by the receptionist who is not happy but finds us a table at the front of the restaurant and we get served.
We find the direct path down that takes us with a lot of others down the steep ‘proper track’ through a residential area past, the free zoo, the business district with its older colonial buildings and back on the ferry to the hotel.
At the hotel Graham spent a lot of time sorting out with Explore about the Vietnam visa, eventually finding we didn’t need one, phew!
We ate a buffet dinner in the hotel and went out to watch the procession.
It was a disappointment, 1)Janet couldn’t see and 2) it was a bit like Southville’s light show.
The walk back through busy streets was interesting and so we returned to the hotel and went to bed.
The New Years firework display had been cancelled out of respect for a nasty bus crash a few days earlier that had several people dead.
Saturday 17th February
The day starts hot.
The pre-booked Taxi picked us up for the airport at 6.00. The airport was busy, because of New Year but we had time to check at the Lost and Found office for my wallet. No wallet but had record of it being reported. We took some new passport photos that Janet would need to enter Nepal and set off on the next stage of our journey to Vietnam.
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