Sun 17/10

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Sun 17/10

It's been a long day.

From our sleep in 'til 05:00am (MEL) we moved quickly to complete the essentials and leave Greensborough by 05:40 as we were ordering the taxi for a 06:15 am transit at Pascoe Vale. Timing is everything as we met the taxi on time and then at the airport 06:30 as scheduled to meet the rest of the Melbourne part of the group.

Airlines do require an early check-in but then it's a 2 hr wait to try and catch up with a rest.

Departure from MEL was on time with a long 9 hour flight into Hong Kong. Rebecca was able to test the stamina she had built up from watching the many episodes of her Korean soap opera end to end back home and see 3 movies en-route

In HKK the temperature was said to be 30deg C but with an air con factor resulting is some series thought about wearing a jacket.

Hong Kong terminal is some-what busy as our Dragon Air flight made an announcement at or scheduled departure time of 16:45 that it had been delayed due to air traffic and that no new time was yet available. At around 16:55 we were advised that our departure was to be at 17:11as we started to taxi out. AS we arrived at the end of the run way 4 other aircrafts were clearly visible for quick take off. Spot on 17:11 we we full thrust and away.

Arriving a foreign terminal and city is always interesting but none as interesting as Changsha. Meeting our agent and bus was easy, but there was that one bag from our group of 14 that just did not make it all the way with us. That will be following and trying to catch up with us as we move on tomorrow. And then it was the bus ride that should have taken us to our hotel within the hour but 'got lost' (more correctly turned the wrong turn at the first corner. We headed down a narrow 2 way road that was undergoing reconstruction with half the road blocked off, resulting in a traffic management process that allowed one direction to pass at a time - except that motor bikes don't understand the concept of one way traffic management and competed head on with buses and trucks. The interesting engineering note here is that the ½ road was being constructed in concrete and the guys were troweling off under a single light globe, and that the temporary traffic barrier was a line of approx 300mm high red cones at 3m spacing with bunting strung between them - very basic.

En-route we were able to have our re-sheduled dinner as we appeared to be holding the staff up to serve only us at this hour with the surrounding lights going out

We eventually made a U turn on this narrow road and the further delayed as we awaited the reverse flow and made it onto the 4 lane road (with 5 or 6 lanes of traffic) into Changsha.. Arriving at the Crowne Plaza at around 10:00pm local (01:00* am MEL)

Traffic here is busy. Looking out of our 18th floor window down the main street I see 2 or 3 lanes of traffic continuous for about 1 ½ to 2 km heading this way with a constant stream heading out - and it's 23:00

A long day 1 of our holiday that was about just getting here. The sight seeing starts tomorrow.

NC 17/10

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