Arrival in Hong Kong

Some baggage rearrangement was necessary, but we had no security traumas at Sydney airport: the only notable event was that Camilla bought an Olympus 770SW camera (waterproof to 10 metres). There were lots of spare seats on the flight, so I lay down at one point. Otherwise I dozed and read.

The Virgin v:port inflight entertainment system had an appallingly bad user interface and lousy maps, but it did offer a huge range of films, and I watched the first half of Letters from Iwo Jima. At one point I managed to crash my system hard, and it took fifteen minutes to come back after the cabin attendant rebooted it.

There was a short delay at immigration but no customs check. We bought "tourist octopus" cards that included a return express to the city and three days free MTR travel, then the train whisked us into Hong Kong station in half an hour; from there we walked through the connecting mall to Central, where we caught the MTR to Wan Chai. It was approaching midnight, but it was still very hot and muggy when we emerged.

Walking from Wan Chai MTR to our hotel, the Wharney Guang Dong, we discovered that it was right on the edge of a Red Light district (of Suzy Wong fame); we walked past clubs outside which women in short-shorts and stiletto boots were sitting on stools. Camilla was not impressed, but it didn't seem at all dangerous. (The photo here is from the following night.)

A much bigger annoyance to me was that the shower in our room didn't work properly — we had to manually hold the tap/shower toggle down, until we kludged a fix with some masking tape. We got to bed around 12.45am.

Next: Central Hong Kong
Up: Hong Kong