27 July 2011

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All had ourr lat breakfast together in Hong Kong. Overnight there had been plently of activity and angst!

Apparently Tux realised last the previous night that he had mislaid his new mobile phone. Eventually concluded that he had left it at the Chinese restaurant. Despite attempts last night he was unable to find out if they had it. Renewed efforts this morning, with the help of the concierge desk at YMCA eventually resulted in Tux getting his phone back from the restaurant.

After breakfast all bar Stephanie and Tux went to Pinniisula next door and walked round the amazing shops and in the entrance hallway of the hotel. Different class!

Eventually got all our bags packed, including additional hand luggage we had bought over there. Pre arranged limos did not arive on time, but after some phone calls by the concierge desk they eventally turned up 30 minutes late. Fortunately we had plenty of time.

Like Terminal 5 at Heathrow we found Terminal 1 at the new Hong Kong Airport equally as quite and a relaxing process. Had a bit of lunch before boarding on time around 6.30 for a 7pm flight. But then the fun started! Sitting on the tarmac it was very hot, particularly at the back where we were sittting. Around the time we were due to taake off we were told that there was a problem with the cargo door - it wouldn't shut automatically and the manually back up method had also failed. An engineer had been called and we hope to get it fixed shortly. This went on for 2 hours with a few people getting increasingly annoyed and talking about wanting to get off. They then annouced that due to the time it was taking to fix and the hot conditions onboard that they were going to start disembarking people so they could have a meal etc while problem was fixed.

This obviously had the desired effect because only a few minutes later they announced the problem had been fixed and we didn't need to get off. What we didn't know then was that they had already let the First and Business passengers off. It then took a further 2 hours to get everyone back on board. So in the end we toook off 4 hours late. I'll write later about our final arrival in Melbourne.

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