Hong Kong Holiday: Day One

As a part of our crazy visa stuff, I needed to be out of the UK on the 30th Jan. So instead of coming straight back to Australia, we decided I would stay for a week in Hong Kong with El Husbando, who is currently working from there. So I had a chilled day on Wednesday getting ready, leaving the house spotless, and hanging out with Katya before I left. I was flying out of Terminal 5 at Heathrow which I had never done before, but with my boarding pass on my phone it was a super fast process and I was through security with a full 2 hours before my flight. I grabbed a Pret and a couple HP souvenirs (they have a Harry Potter shop there!) before getting the transit train to the C gates where I was due to depart from.

The flight itself was a bit disappointing, actually. After flying Qantas last time London - Perth, on a brand new plane, flying BA was a bit of a let down. The food wasn’t great (and there was no menu, leading me to choose pasta when the chicken looked much nicer - but the only choice we were given was “chicken” or “pasta”), the screen was tiny so I didn’t use it, and the plane itself was freezing the whole time! I did at least sleep pretty much the whole time between meals though, so that was something.

I landed in HK about 2:30pm, and easily made my way to the transit train to central (QR code ticket - so convenient). It was there I got very, very, VERY confused. I was supposed to be walking to Richard’s work to meet him (at the Hong Kong Club Building), which was only supposed to be 15 minutes away... But there were exits A through F, plus multiple malls, and when I got outside I couldn’t work out how to get where I needed to go! There are a lot of raised walkways above the road, it turns out, that I should have taken, but I only knew that after the fact. So I took one exit, then went back in, then out again, then back in, then found a helpful exit, then missed the pedestrian subway, then found it, then took the least convenient exit, then overshot the building by a block, then finally got to the right place! And all of this in humid 22 degrees in a sweater and long leggings... Fun.

Richard gave me the hotel key and directions - oh, it’s just up that road. Great - only that road is super uphill, and I have about 20kgs of stuff! I had to stop about 6 times and was extremely sweaty by the time I arrived at the hotel at 5pm. I unpacked a little, chilled (literally), and got ready to head back into Central to meet Richard for dinner. Downhill is much better than up. And by the time I got back outside it was perfectly pleasant and I was appropriately dressed which made everything much better.

I met Richard and we went for a wander around the quay area. HK is really pretty at night, lighting everywhere and a rabbit warren of paths and small staircases. We wandered around a while, just catching up, before walking past a place Richard had looked at online, called Wah Fung. They specialised in roast meat (pork and duck in particular), and was very reasonably priced so we headed in. We had a platter of pork and duck, some stir fry veg and bbq pork with noodles, all of which was super delicious and cost us just under 300hkd!

Then we wandered back to the hotel the long way (through the staircases and botanical gardens), where Richard was supposed to have a 10:30pm phone meeting, which luckily got cancelled so we could go straight to bed.