Hong Kong Thu 14 – Zealand Publishing House

June 2005 · Middle East Trip

David & Noel Coory's Journey to Hong Kong

A travel diary documenting the first leg of an epic Middle East adventure —Frankfurt to Hong Kong.

Today Thursday 14th July

First Look

Overall Impressions of Hong Kong

Teeming crowds of people.
Many malnourished, over-thin and bow legged.
Many people with malformed teeth.
Lack of Calcium in diet perhaps?
Most of the elderly frail and shrunken with sparse hair.
Very little grey hair however on older people.
Hardly any children and we saw no babies
Lovely, clear complexions on the young.
Numerous very tall apartments and hotels, and no houses.
Noisy buses and clanking trams.

Locals speak in a clucking-like language, Cantonese.
Smell of drying fish in the streets and many other unusual smells.
Hot streets, especially in the open sun, cooler near the sea.
Thousands of shops.
About 1/3rd of the people wear glasses.
Optician shops everywhere.
Intelligent and highly efficient people.
No hardware or car accessory shops.
Very few furniture shops.
Every conceivable food, much of it unrecognisable to us.

A SLOW START

Recovering After A Day Of Exploration

We both wake up later than normal this morning. We have been 11 hours in bed, despite our hard mattresses and a noisy air conditioning blowing all night. Must have been our long walk yesterday.

Noel had trouble going to sleep, but we both feel OK today. We have to pay for a very basic breakfast, HK$30 between us, about NZ$6. Toast, orange juice and cereal.

“We have been 11 hours in bed, despite our hard mattresses and a noisy air conditioning blowing all night.”

RIDING THE TRAMS

A Journey Through The City's Daily Rhythm

We walk out of the hotel into a warmer morning than yesterday, over 30° already. We walk to the optician and pick up my glasses. I am amazed how light they are, just a fraction of the old heavy glass lens ones. The new lenses are a hard, scratch-resistant plastic.

And ready in less than a day, top marks for Asian efficiency. We decide to ride one of the clanking double decker trams down to East Hong Kong. NZ35 cents for a ride anywhere. We clamber up to the top to get the best view. There is a sign inside the tram saying ‘No Spitting’. As we move off it is very noisy with the clanking and traffic noise coming through the open windows.

Noel’s cell phone rings. It is for me. Yesterday we noticed many Lexus LS430 cars here in Hong Kong, used as luxury cabs. All right hand drive and in excellent condition. So this morning I asked the hotel to find me an export dealer. It was the dealer phoning me. He chose the worst possible time. It was hard to understand him due to the background noise and his strong Chinese accent. However he manages to inform me that the cars here in Hong Kong are extremely expensive due to high taxes, and that it is just not economical to import them into New Zealand. Better to obtain them from Singapore he tells me. Nearly all Lexus models in NZ are from Singapore.

As we clank onward, we get a good view from the tram of a city preparing for the new day. After disembarking the tram in East Hong Kong we explore a large, elegant indoor shopping mall. Spotlessly clean.

In one of the shops is a really cool little electronic machine, with an upright pendulum that swings rapidly back and forth and paints red words in mid air. We also see more unusual apartments.

“As we clank onward, we get a good view from the tram of a city preparing for the new day.”

THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

A Panorama Of Towers, Harbour And Hills

We then walk up a hill to The Peak cable car. This cable car will take us to the top of The Peak, the highest point on Singapore Island. Tickets are NZ$5 each return. As we go steeply upward, the apartments on the hillside seem to tilt at an odd angle. Uncanny.

There is a terrific view from the top, not only of Hong Kong, but also across the harbour to the equally large Chinese city of Kowloon. Tall apartments as far as the eye can see.

“There is a terrific view from the top, not only of Hong Kong, but also across the harbour to the equally large Chinese city of Kowloon.”

AMONG THE STARS

A Visit To The Peak's Wax Museum

There is a waxworks museum at the top here, so we decide to buy a ticket and have a look around. It is unexpectedly good. I am impressed. Some of the figures are very well done indeed. Noel takes my picture with body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger for my son Alec who is a fan of his.

Noel also takes a photo of me below with the royal family for Mum. Here is an 8 foot tall basketball player that dwarfs Noel’s 6ft height.

“Some of the figures are very well done indeed.”

THE JOURNEY HOME BEGINS

A Final Morning Before Departure

This is our last day in Hong Kong and we fly out for Auckland later this afternoon.

It takes us longer than we expect to get back down in the cable car again. Time is beginning to run short. So we hire a red and white taxi to take us back to our hotel. Costs NZ$4.50 for about 5 kms. The taxis here are nearly all Toyota Crown Comforts, a Corona in New Zealand.

We are hot when we get back to the hotel, so we have a cool shower. Actually we have no choice, it takes about ten minutes for the showers to heat up. Yet the hand basins warm up straight away.

“This is our last day in Hong Kong and we fly out for Auckland later this afternoon.”

A WORLD-CLASS GATEWAY

One Final Look Before The Flight Home

We are picked up by the airport bus as arranged. Back through the tunnel to the mainland and then across the bridges to the airport again. The only vehicles we see on the road seem to be taxis, vans and trucks.

Hong Kong airport has been voted the world’s best airport. It certainly seems the most impressive we have seen on our trip. The terminal has white fluted ceilings and mostly floor to roof windows for walls. Very light and airy with green marble tile floors.

The terminal is absolutely massive, with 48 different boarding gates (or corridors) of enormous length leading out to the planes. You would not want to be running late. It is one of the largest enclosed spaces in the world, 570,000 square meters and is said to have cost NZ$43 billion (that’s NZ$43,000,000,000) to build.

“Hong Kong airport has been voted the world’s best airport.”

HEADING HOME

The Long Flight Back To New Zealand

One of the long corridor wings of the airport that we had to walk along to get to our boarding gate was 1.3 kms long. In the centre of these long corridors are moving walk ways for those who don’t want to walk the huge distances. Other airports have these also. Noel and I enjoy walking on them. When you walk in the same direction that they are moving, you feel the air streaming past your head as if you are running and your strides make rapid progress.

While we wait for our plane, Noel buys his daughter Lisa some perfume at the duty free shop. We have now used up all but $6 of the Hong Kong $1500 we drew out accidentally yesterday.

We also buy a thick milkshake which has an enormously wide straw. You could probably fit the point of your index finger down it. But it does the job very well and is a big improvement over the thin straws normally given with thick shakes which you have to suck like the devil to get anything up.

It is a comforting sight to look out the window of the terminal and see a Air New Zealand plane parked outside. We are looking forward to coming back home. As we board our first Air New Zealand plane in three weeks we hear the sound of New Zealand accents again. It is a wonderful sound to our ears.

It feels so good to be going home, even though the flight is a huge 10 hours 17 minutes long. We have been able to obtain front compartment seats, which means there are no seats in front of us and a lot more leg room. However the front TV is at a squashed angle for Noel to watch. I don’t normally bother watching.

We have a tastier than normal dinner of fish, rice and vegetables and tomato juice to drink. We also get a bun, a cheese cracker and real yellow butter for the first time since leaving New Zealand. The overseas butter has always been white or cream in colour. We also get a hard, apple crumble cake and a little custard.

The plane feels rather cold. Probably preparing the passengers for the New Zealand winter we are coming home to.

“It feels so good to be going home, even though the flight is a huge 10 hours 17 minutes long.”

David & Noel Coory · Middle East Trip

June 2005 · Tauranga, New Zealand to Singapore and beyond Redesigned with care · Original travel diary preserved

Zealand Publishing House

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