Travelling

I arrived at Kathmandu at a little after 9 pm local time, capping off 33 hours of travel. My flights took me from Seattle to Vancouver and then Vancouver to Hong Kong where I had a ten hour layover. The layover turned out to be a bit of a bonus because I was able to leave the airport and take a train into downtown Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a bustling city tucked between the ocean and a series of steep hills. One of the recomended trips that the tourist information person gave me was to take the tram to the top of highest peak above the city, but unfortunately my ATM card was not working and the tram ticket counter only accepted cash. So I contented myself with wandering around the downtown.

When I first left the train station, I was frustrated by the seeming lack of cross walks and sidewalks. "What a pedestrian-unfriendly city this is", I thought to myself. That is until I bothered to look up and noticed that system of elevated, open-air walkways that run between the buildings. It is really a nice system because it gets you above the traffic (of which there is a ton).

From the train station, I wandered up hill towards the city parks. I made my way through the botanical gardens and the aviary and explored some of the historic buildings. Signs of British Colonial period are very evident in the architecture of the older buildings including St. Johns Cathedral (a small Gothic cathedral) and the former governor's house that is now the Tea Ware Museum (sadly closed the day I was there). The new buildings in Hong Kong include some of the most impressive sky scrapers I have ever seen. I'm sad that my return trip doesn't have another long layover in Hong Kong because there are many other things I would like to see there, but I guess that will have to wait for another trip.

It was interesting to see how seriously the Chinese are taking the swine flu. Probably half of the airline attendants on the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong were wearing face masks and all of them were wearing gloves when handling trash and food. Nearly everyone working in the Hong Kong airport was wearing a face mask. And Americans are among the prime suspects for carrying swine flu given our proximity to the initial outbreak.

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