Asia again

Back in Asia. Wow, culture shock again! When I arrived at the Auckland airport for my flight to Hong Kong, I discovered that the flight had been bumped back two hours, so I now had five hours to kill in the airport. I'm sure some of you have had those days. Cathay Pacific graciously gave us a $10 meal voucher for the airport, so I treated myself to a tray of sushi and people watched for a while. Once I finally got on the flight, I realized that it was much longer than I had thought - 11 hours. For some reason, I was thinking it would only be 4 or 5. But Cathay Pacific was a really nice airline. They had an amazing entertainment center with a ton of movies and TV shows and games etc, so it wasn't hard to fill the hours. That and two fun airline meals made the time pass. I love airplane meals. Am I the only one who finds these little individually packaged surprises delightful? Ok, so sometimes the food isn't all that great, but it's so much fun! And it didn't taste too bad. A couple of other nice little touches I appreciated about CP was that they had little hooks beside the TV screens so you could hang up your jacket. Also, not that I used it, but a plug in at every seat for your laptop etc. Maybe it is a little weird that I get so excited about flying, still. So I watched The Blind Side and Fantastic Mr. Fox and some Project Runway and America's Next Top Model. Yeah, lots of TV. Doesn't help that planes are so incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on. I think I did doze off for a little bit.

We arrived in Hong Kong around 2 am...which was the equivalent of 6 am NZ time. I still had to work out the bus system and find my hostel, which expected me at 10 and so I was hoping it wouldn't be closed and I'd be forced to sleep on the street. I met a Dutch girl who was traveling the same direction as me. I did have directions from the hostel on the bus to take and where to get off, but the bus driver was incredibly unhelpful and seemed to know nothing about the route he drove (or perhaps just no English) as he responded to my questions about where my stop was with "I don't know! I don't know!" with increasing agitation. I gave up and found a nice local lady who helped us out by translating to the bus driver our request and also giving us all kinds of tips on where to visit and how to get there.

I found my hostel, which is in Chungking Mansions. Now, this sounds kinda hoity toity, but don't be mistaken. Chungking Mansions is a huge multistory building with shops and restaurants (of a sort - sketchy looking east Indian food) on the lower floor and a maze of hostels and guesthouses on the upper floors. I actually ran across it on a "what to do in Hong Kong" website which describes it as "one of Hong Kong's most iconic buildings both derided and loved; immortalized in Hong Kong movies, home to some of the best ethnic cuisine in the city as well as the cheapest accomadation in Hong Kong...originally, Chungking was the accomodation block of choice for new arrivals from India, Pakistan and Africa....famed, wrongly or rightly, as a rat-infested haven for criminals of every stripe, Chungking has cleaned up its act considerably." Eek. I'm glad I didn't read this before I arrived at 3 in the morning.

The dorm room is teeny-tiny and the bathroom is tinier, but it seems clean, and the guys in the other two beds were patient enough as I tripped over all their stuff and tried to find my bed in the dark last night. I survived the night and am meeting up with aforementioned Dutch girl (Nicole) to explore some of the city today. More on Hong Kong later :)