Hongkong highlights
17th Left half poisoned for a 30 hour 'challenge Anneka style', shop as my friend BME calls it, in Hong Kong verdict: successful mission, stayed in (the real) Kowloon, same place as 3 years ago The Empire hotel so knew exactly how to get everywhere in double quick time which was great and got the subway to the mainland Mong Kok area (aka camera shop central). Last time we used star ferry but OMG the subway is so brilliant and air conditioned and so cheap about 54p for 4 stops, London Underground could really learn a thing or two from these guys. Had no actual Chinese food though, us bad, lunch in Irish bar Delaney's only cause we knew they had veggie burgers, coffee in Starbucks (where I was bullied (me too tired to argue) out of a seat by a gay south American, grrrr) & dinner in Indian Koh-i-noor on the Mody Rd. very good (up a floor in the shabby looking Peninsula apts. which seems totally normal once you have been to HK once) and after noon coffee & cheese cake at the hotel before we left.
Arrived in Sydney at 6am on 20th where I proceeded into work at 9am after no sleep!
So we have completed a 25,421 mile round trip this month, 4 continents, 3 weeks, many beers....... To fly to Syd-SF/LA-Boston and back or Syd-Singa-Dublin and back cost about $500 less than flying Sydney-SF-Boston-Philadelphia-Shannon-Dublin-Frankfurt-Hong Kong-Singapore-Sydney on a round the world ticket with 'Star Alliance'. So we basically we circumnavigated the globe until we were back to square one.
All the Star Alliance partners we used this time were pretty average even old fashioned, bar Singapore Air, the United Airlines & US Airways were all bad attitude & brutal communal tv/sound systems with stupid PG movies and the internal UA one charged $5 for crappy headphones, plus charged for any food or drink. Lufthansa has no leg room & more communal tv's and seemed like the air-stewarts were on a work-to-rule basis but Singapore Air were the most modern with the individual tv's and nice staff. But all them think lacto-ovo (the airline term for vegetarian but not vegan) means Healthy, as in no muffins, toblerones, cheese or chocolate brownies (which they give the carnivores)! As it happens was no harm as I think the Guinness alone in Ireland has accounted for 3kg extra on me! But no one hit us for 14kg extra luggage which was awesome (as they say here and I annoyingly cannot stop saying), seems as long as no bag is over 23kg they don't care nowadays.
So films were
Flight 1 with awful awful earphones (UA):
Be kind Rewind (Jack Black) which was quite enjoyable,
2 with Little Miss Sunshine Abigail Breslin 'Nims Island' ok-ish & 'Definitely Maybe' yawn,
Fools Gold (McConaughey/Hudson) which I fell asleep for the end, I wonder what happened (not),
some other fraggle rock meets Narnia thing,
Married Life with a girlfriend stealing Pierce Brosnan which was good
Flight 2 (UA): Was $5 for same crap earphones! So I passed on a Demi Moore film which I am sure will be a classic....
Flight 3 (US): None.
Flight 4 (US): 21 which I fell asleep for.
Flight 5: (Lufth) None
Flight 6: (Lufth) Kung Fu Panda (more Jack Black) v.g. and a mediocre 20 something Chinese film 'L is love, L is for Lies.'
Flight 7: (SIA) Deception (Jackman/McGregor) good 'nuf
Flight 8: (SIA) 88 (Pacino) disappointing, 21 (which I saw all of this time) v.g. and Leatherheads (Clooney) ok-ish but the flight finished before the end.
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