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Published: January 13th 2008
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So, we now find ourselves wide awake at 4:30 a.m in our clean little cubbyhole on the 16th floor in Chung King mansions in the kowloon area of Hong Kong. It's a lot like a university dorm except smaller-lol! We definitely think that all the talk of "avoid Chung King mansions at all costs" is overblown-lol! After the first half hour or so you don't even notice the smell of curry that initially overwhelmed your senses-and all we have to do if we get a hankering for cheap Indian food is head down a few floors! Anyway, after our initial early a.m flight from Ottawa was canceled due to heavy fog, we got on an afternoon flight to Vancouver and had to stay the night there as we had missed our connection to HK. We bussed it downtown( Travel made remarkably easy as the airline had"mis-placed" our bikes!!) to the Samesun backpacker's hostel on Granville, plunked down our bags, and proceeded to sample the pizza at three different $1 slice places on our block! Our inquiries after the whereabouts of our bikes back at the airport the next a.m seemed to stump Air Canada so we headed to the duty free shops for a 20min. frenzied shopping spree for snacks and entertainment(books/magazines) before our flight after realizing that we had coverage for it from our travel ins. due to our delay! Damn, if we had known the night before we could have taken a limo to a nice hotel, had a fancy meal and still had $ left over. Rather than the publc bus, $25 hostel and $1 pizza slices-lol! Oh well, the maple syrup cashews, shortbread cookies, and chocolate covered almond bits on a stick have stood us in good stead! The novel we picked up isn't half bad either! We had a smooth flight with 3 meals:
1. Vegetable biryani with quinoa salad, a whitebread roll and fruit salad-sounds decent right? NOT-was one of the worst airline meals we'd ever had!
2. See above-yes, they served us exactly the same meal again!
3. A mystery tofu-ish(?) breakfast burger that let's just say should have come with a warning label advising drinking a ratio of min. 1L of water/burger!
Oh well, at least we were seated together-no thanks to Air Canada as they had us several rows apart on both flights-lol! Luckily G had a bulkhead row seat which helped us to convince one of my neighbours that they'd be much happier with all of the extra legroom that a bulkhead seat provides. After ensuring that the ground staff in the very clean and orderly HK airport had our address so that they can deliver our bikes when they arrive, we piled into a small cab with three of our neighbours from the flight, and all five people's bags spilling out over the trunk held down precariously with a bungee. G was the "spotter" to keep an eye on the luggage as she was squished into a position that allowed her a good view. We parted ways with our friends who cont'd on to the Park hotel, negotiating our way through the maze that is the lobby area of the Chung King mansions, and the many touts extoling the virtues of their guesthouses while explaining that your hotel whichever it may be was full. We figured out which block of elevators we should queue up for as well as which queue went to the even numbered floors and which went to the odd and made it up to our guesthouse!! So again, here we are wide awake(it's a little later now-hey I'm not the quickest thumboard typist!) and ready to go out and explore HK!! Stay tuned..........
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