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Published: November 24th 2011
Yeah that's right, its pretty much as great as it sounds... heh but we'll get to that in good time, shall we? Don't worry, it won't be long. So we checked out of the Ryokan and got on the train back to Osaka (well, briefly the one heading the other way but that was remedied after one stop).
After a moderately confusing series of changeovers, we got
Subtle, no?
Yes even the signs don't stuff around here... beware of the car for it shall eff ye up!to the Airport with an hour or so til check in, feeling a bit emotional that we'd soon be departing Japan, albeit for Hong Kong, the next stage of our exciting adventure. So we get to the Airport and were slightly puzzled to find that the only airlines listed were JAL and a couple of others...and it did seem a little on the small side.....There was a brief conversation with a woman wearing a uniform who looked puzzled when we asked her where all the other airlines were...
Sooooo it was the wrong airport. Not really a problem we Canberrans are used to dealing with of course. Further conversation revealed that the airport we wanted was over an hour away on the bus, coincidentally the time we would be supposed to be checking in. With Aisha quietly swearing a wide blue streak about his navigational skills, we threw cost to the winds (although we weren't to know then exactly how much Cost would soon be entering the stratosphere) and jumped a taxi to take us to the CORRECT airport. All credit where credit is due - for an old fella, the taxi driver hammered it like a
man possessed by the ghost of Ayrton Senna. We've never seen a Nissan accelerate so quickly, however, much to our collective horror, neither have we seen a fare meter accelerate so quickly. After an hour and exactly 17,900 Yen (Go on kiddies - do the currency conversion. You'll laugh. Oh how you'll laugh), we finally reached the CORRECT airport. NB. That one taxi ride of FIFTY KILOMETRES (did you DO the currency conversion???) equalled basically our entire transport costs for the rest of Japan, so here's two free tips folks: TAKE THE TRAIN and GO TO THE RIGHT AIRPORT.
While Tess explained in one word sentences with the help of the phrasebook that we had no cash (Japan is a cash economy and using cards to pay for stuff like taxis is unheard of) Aisha bolted into the terminal in search of an ATM. To entertain him, Tess continued her 'conversation' with the driver (all one word sentences with big pauses in between while looking up the next word),
Tess: Late!
Driver: Oh, yes, okay.
T: Wrong airport! (impressed? Two word sentence!)
D:
Greenery!
There's not much, but you can find a little bit of it around! What? Wrong airport?
T:
T: Late...chekku-innu...now.
D: Time? When?
T: Ummm...ichi...ichi, ni, san...um....ichi...
D:
**awkward silence**
**awkward silence**
**Where the hell is Aisha**
*awkward silence**
D: Here!
T: Thank you very much!
**awkward silence*
FIN.
Eventually Aisha arrived back with our life savings and we paid the cab driver, who with his gift of lollies makes him the second stranger to profer unsolicited (but delicious) sweeties in Japan (the other being a lady who offered help, unasked, when we looked a bit confused on a train station platform. Once she helped us find the right train, she gave us lollies!). Dragging our sweaty, stressed selves into the terminal, we checked in and collapsed into a collective heap. Not quite the departure in style we'd hoped for, but a departure nonetheless! Of course we'd belatedly realised that Hong Kong Express Airways is in fact a
Neon Chaos
And yet somehow this picture fails to do it justice... division of Air China, which in Aisha's unhumble opinion is a mere two steps up the foodchain from Aeroflot (with the slight bonus that someone, somewhere probably gets executed if you crash). So with bated breath (mainly on Aisha's part, Tess tends to have an unwavering, misguided optimism that everything will be alright) we took off for Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of CHINOOOOOORRR!
****We interrupt this overly verbose blog entry to bring you a Health and Wellbeing Announcement and suggest now might be a good time to stand up, stretch your legs, make a cup of tea, finish that cross stitch you've had in the cupboard since '93, etc. Microsleeps can kill, and that includes when reading blog entries.***
Barely four and a half hours later we touched down in one piece of decidedly unflaming aircraft. Before we'd even made it out of the Airport, it was clear that Japan this wasn't. If the lone policeman trotting through the Airport toting a slung MP5 submachine gun at port arms wasn't enough of a giveaway, no automatic toilets (WAT!!! Tess is outraged), no super automated train shuttles to terminal and on stepping outside, and
Condemned?
There's definitely a combination of insanely new, and decayed old stuff here. dense fug of warm air wrapping itself around your tongue like microwaved seaweed. So we jumped on a bus (no helpful automated announcements and display screens here) and headed in towards Kowloon. As the bus headed over the bridges and causeways, Hong Kong unfolded itself around the hills and coves, with spiked bright towers pushing pinpoints of multicoloured light towards the sky. As we got closer the glamour ebbed, tenements jammed with tiny apartments windows, the facades cracked and decayed, looking as if they should have been condemned years ago and are seconds away from crumbling to the ground. Down past Mong Kok to Nathan Road and into Tsim Sha Tsui, where the touts surging towards the open bus doors, leaning in and shoving cards and shouted invitations for accomodation towards any passengers within reach. The bus disgorged us a stop past Chungking Mansions and we trolled back towards Ashley Road through a chaotic jumble of neon light spewing down from billboards, building facades and anything in between. Tess thinks it feels like Tokyo's Vegas - you can see they are vaguely related, but Hong Kong is the tacky, dirty, noisy, impolite, chaotic, NEON version.
We were pleasantly surprised
O yes...
A government sanctioned APPROVED CANINE FECAL EXCRETION AREA! to find our hotel room is very spacious, the largest space we've stayed in since starting the trip (excludingthe ryokan). So already starting to mentally stretch out and barely knowing what to expect from the next day we ate a hasty dinner, washed our dirty clothes in the sink and passed out at about 1am.
Waking up to a dim brown light oozing between the curtains (mmm, pollution) we made a slow start of it, barely getting out of the hotel before 11am and heading up the street to find something resembling breakfast. Turns out that meant fruit juice and Won-Ton. Tess had a fresh starfruit juice! Whee! Hong Kong does free admission to various museums on Wednesdays, so lucky us, an afternoon of education was at hand at the Hong Kong Museum of History. Plotting a course we decided to try and nail some of Tess's family history down as well, starting up Nathan Road through the throngs of people and honking cars, impatient loud chaos is definitely the name of the game here.
Club de Recreio was our first port of call, the members-only recreation club of the Portuguese community in Hong Kong, of which Tess's
Club De Recreio
Seemingly just as it has been since built... grandfather was a member. The white stucco facade and dark timber finishings are unchanged from the time when the club was built over one hundred years ago. After letting ourselves in, we convinced a very nice young lady to show us around after we dropped Tess's family connections. The grounds are beautiful and very well kept, while the indoor badminton room looked more like a ballroom with a badminton net in the middle. The room containing historical photographs was currently hosting a bridge tournament and no one was allowed in to interrupt, so our new friend Virginia said we could return on Saturday to see them. Even looking at a few old trophies in the foyer, the names were very familiar...Noronha, Remedios, Barros, Da Silva, Ribeiro...We then trundled off down the street with Tess feeling a little more emotional than previous (but still as sweaty).
Walking straight into another reminder of the strangeness that is Hong Kong, we crossed the road and glanced through a chainlink fence to see a PLA base with at least four fully armed Type 92 Infantry Fighting Vehicles driving around inside, smack in the centre of a mid-city block. Say WHAT? We would have
Rosary Church
Tess getting in touch with her roots! taken photos, but who knows what would happen to us for taking photos of a military installation! Down the road from the military depot we visited Rosary Church, where Tess's grandparents were married and next to it, St Mary's Canossian College, where Tess's grandmother went to school. The college may have seen better days - judging by the small amounts of shrubbery growing out of the roof - but still seems intact.
Crossing yet another road (we keep going on about crossing the road, but around here it feels like quite a triumph! Probably a good intro to India as HK roads are definitely insanity and a life-and-death experience) we made it intact to the Hong Kong Museum of History. Free admission for the tight-ass win (we saved a whole 10 HK dollars each - we'll let you look that up and laugh) and so we wandered into the exhibit on the history of Hong Kong, right from the Paleolithic to the present day. It was fantastic, with full credit going to the effort taken to preserve and showcase the past. It really served to flesh out the historical narrative and of course give some context to our trip
Strike a pose, they say...
Apparently there's a resemblence? and Tess's family connections. So we wandered till closing time, particularly enjoying the section on the Opium Wars and subsequent colonisation, as well as the period during and following World War II. Being reluctantly ushered out at closing, we wandered down the road in search of food and the Hong Kong Space Museum, in that order. Sushi was found, and then the Space Museum. Oh the Space Museum. It deserves special credit for capturing the brave enterprising spirit of Hong Kong's involvment in the grand push of humankind to the heavens.... wait, what? Hold that. It was like Questacon transported from the 80s and made slightly more odd and low budget. And no, we still don't know what Hong Kong's connection with space is, apart from that its flag has been taken into orbit and back.
We retired to the hotel for a quick rest and regroup before dinner. Washing and chores were done (washing waits for no man or woman, even on holiday and especially when that man or woman only has three pairs of socks). We stumbled the 20 metres down the street to a restaurant called Hing Fat, which turned out to do a fairly kick-ass
And this...
Is what happens when you use colour select to pick out red... wok fried szechuan prawns and some amazing fresh fish. Fed and watered, Tess sprung the concept of a cheap massage - between the two of us, the aches and pains of this trip (yes, we are only a week in!) have been many and varied. Feeling the need for some tender yet anonymous manhandling (hold that imagery people), Aisha agreed and so we strolled up to Nathan Road again to Tai Pan Reflexology Beauty and Foot Spa, which despite the poisonous name does a great line in cheap and awesome massage (and has also apparently honed the concept of 'service with a burp and a yawn' as an alternative to service with a smile). Um. $238HKD. For both of us. That's like $15AUD each. And it was HAMAZING. We are going again before we leave. Almost an hour later and decidedly more Zen, we stumbled out to find that the city does shut down at night (or at least drops down one gear) during the week, but only reluctantly and sometime around 11pm. So there we are.
Much love to our homies!
Aisha & Tess
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Very unfortunate about mistaking the two airports.
It's very unfortunate that you went to the wrong airport. The international hub is Kansai International Airport (KIX) representing the whole Kansai region, whereas Osaka Airport is a local domestic only airport. The two are around 50kms apart, correct, and the journey by taxi in Japan is really that expensive, correct also (that includes the payable expressway - the 4km bridge that connects KIX island and Honshu alone costs 800 yen). There are frequent buses between the two airports, so you might have taken the bus instead, or asked for help from the airport staff in English to be informed of the fastest and the cheapest way to get to KIX... At KIX, if you check in 40 minutes before international departure you'd be safe. In any case, I'm glad that you made it in time. I hope your memories of Japan won't be a bad one because of this incident...