Humidity and Häagen-Dazs
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2006
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23
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Trip End
Mar 15, 2007
Hong Kong,
Hong Kong
Thursday, April 6, 2006
Riding the train to Kansai airport I watched my last views of Japan whiz by the window before arriving at the man-made island on which the relatively new airport is built. Due to the routing of the airlines on my round the world ticket the only way to get to Hong Kong from Japan is via Singapore aboard Singapore Airlines.
Singapore Airlines may not have had the range of on board entertainment than that on aboard the Virgin Atlantic flight to Tokyo but the made up for it with their great service and in flight food (anyone who serves Häagen-Dazs for desert gets my thumbs up).
Flying over the Philippines the clear weather gave some amazing views of the many many many islands (over 7000) making up the archipelago with the look of the azure waters lining the white sandy beaches I almost wished for some kind of mid-flight emergency forcing us to land there
Roof top garden
. Since my onward flight to Hong Kong was also with Singapore Airlines I actually looked forward to the flight while sitting in Singapore's very cool airport which boasts free Internet access and a free cinema as well as a roof top garden which I at first thought was in a greenhouse due to the humidity on stepping outside the air conditioned terminal.
Leaving Singapore in a thunderstorm (also very cool) the flight soon passed while watching Syriana on board and we were soon descending over the glowing clouds from the lights of Hong Kong below.
For the second time today I was making my way through an airport built on a man-made island and past a thermal image monitor of all the passengers disembarking checking their body temperature - very cool. Once I had cleared customs and obviously not been the wrong temperature, whatever it may have been, I bought myself an Octopus card which can be used to pay for just about all public transport in Hong Kong as well as in many shops and restaurants (kinda weird really since I was just eating one the other day and now here I am using an octopus to pay for my bus fare).
On arriving in Argyle Street where the hostel was, I immediately noticed the difference between here and Japan's major cities, not just from the heat, but from the noticeable pollution and err...interesting smells, unfortunately magnified by the humidity.
The hostel was a far cry from what I had become accustomed to in Japan and although it was pretty secure the safe bubble which I had been blissfully exploring Japan in was now burst as I fell asleep to the sound of the A/C running as fast as I could make it.
