Homeward Bound

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We woke this morning feeling really excited because today we headed for New Zealand. Before we took the bus to the airport in the late afternoon we had our last opportunity to visit more of Hong Kong. The typhoon warnings had been lifted and the city seemed to have got back to normal. The streets were full of people and the market stalls were up and running. We decided to join the masses.
Today the masses were bigger than normal. We soon found out that 1st October is China’s National Day and is celebrated in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. Everywhere we went there were crowds. After doing some serious bargaining with the street traders we decided to revisit the shopping centre at Kowloon Tong which meant a train trip.
The shopping centre seemed to be a magnet for families enjoying their public holiday. By the time we had finished our last minute shopping finding a space in a cafe was becoming quite hard. One thing we have found during our stay is the willingness of the locals to help the tourists, whether it’s getting the right train, finding their way, or making room in a crowded cafe. Coffees over, it was time to return to the hotel on the MTR. What an experience. The crowds waiting for a train were unreal. The only people missing were the people pushers you might find on the Tokyo subways. After one transfer we made it safely at our destination.
With our bags we made our way to the nearest bus stop for our trip to the airport. It was a slow trip through the retail part of the city made even slower by a large organised demonstration against the Chinese Communist Party. This caused big bottlenecks at intersections and we started to wonder whether we had left our trip rather late. Our worries were over when we cleared the inner city and the “Stirling Moss” driver made up for lost time. All went smoothly through check-in but emigration was oh so slow. Why is it so slow to get rid of people from your country? The time we had set aside to prepare for this flight was soon gobbled up and we were sitting in our allocated seat for the flight to Auckland.
The pre-flight announcement from the captain gave us information that had us on a flight path away from the next typhoon and with a tail wind we would be in Auckland ahead of schedule. The good news was we would not be on the plane for as long as we expected. The bad news, our welcoming team might be late. So we settled down for our homeward bound flight.

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