After quite a trek, here I am at last, in Asia. I arrived at the Hong Kong International airport, which has been lauded as one of the best in the world, at 7:30pm. The flight was not bad, considering being over 15 hours long. I remained mostly entertained and successfully avoided DVT…which may be more than can be said for my seat partner, who did not get up for the entire flight. Seriously. 15 hours, no movement whatsoever.
I’m staying on Hong Kong Island, the most famous, urban namesake of the region. I’m crashing with two UPenn grads who are teaching in the city, who have been kind enough to let me steal their couch for two days. I navigated the Hong Kong metro, or MTR, to their apartment without a hitch, largely because it could literally put the NYC Subway to shame. Imagine: impeccably clean, rodent-and-urine-free, touch your finger on the map to the stop you want to go to buy a ticket. So user-friendly, which is exactly what I needed after the hours on the plane. Went for my first dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks away (decided to forgo the exotic “Spaghetti Kitchen” across the street), and am ready to go to sleep, since there are big plans for the next two days. It’s Mid-Autumn Festival here, which means that everyone has the day off work Thursday so that they can celebrate tomorrow night.
Some numbers:
Flight time: 15 hours and 50 minutes
Miles: 8,050 (the 9th longest non-stop flight, according to Wikipedia)
In-flight movie choices: 197
In-flight meals: 3 (best part–personal-size container of Haagen Dazs)
Time difference: 12 hours ahead of EST
Exchange rate: $7 HK to $1 USD
Population: about 7 million (one of the most densely populated areas in the world)
Compared to: around 6.8 million in all of Laos (one of the least densely populated areas in the region)
yay so glad you are blogging again:)