It's hot in Hong Kong too

Mad dogs spring to mind

From the Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong.

The trip from Rome to Hong Kong was long and tortuous (and tortuous too).

We had a late checkout in Rome, but even noon left us with a long time to fill until our 8pm flight.

It was a short walk to the railway station, Termini, trundling our suitcases behind us.

It’s a wonderful innovation all around the world that you can just tag on and off public transport using a credit card.

Apparently a lot of people haven’t caught on, as ticket machines still tend to be crowded with confused travellers trying to figure out what they want and how to get it.

We had a clear run to Fiumicino airport and although we were very early, we managed to check in and get rid of our bags at about 1pm without having to line up.

It’s a funny thing that airlines are allowing larger and larger bags to be taken into the cabin of the plane, where inevitably they don’t have room for them.

What happens then is that at the gate they appeal for people to have their bags checked in free, or if that fails, they just grab bags off people to be checked in.

A sideline effect is that when people like us appear with just small packs, we get told to stow them under our feet. When you’re faced with a 12-hour flight, with not enough room to start with, that’s the last thing you want.

As we checked in, the man behind the desk wanted to tag our packs with an under-the-seat label. We protested and he put different labels on them, allowing them to be stowed overhead.

We have tiny handbags with all we need for the flight to be stored under the seat and we wouldn’t have packs at all except for clothes to change in or out of at the airport and electronic stuff, which has to be carried on.

So it goes.

Rome airport is one of the busiest in the world - well within the top ten - so there were somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 passing through that day.

With all that time to fill, we were desperate to find a quiet place where we could sit and read.

It was a long day, having a coffee here, then moving on. A beer here, then moving on again.

After a long day, we boarded our flight to Zurich. Officially, we had ten minutes from landing until boarding began for our flight to Hong Kong, so we were a little nervous when we took off nearly half an hour late.

It all ended well. The view from the window was spectacular, as the sun was setting behind impressive storm clouds and when we arrived, it was cool and raining - that was a surprise.

In stark contrast to Rome, Zurich airport was nearly deserted. We raced through long lonely halls and found our departure gate easily. Although boarding had started, we had heaps of time.

Different flights, different amounts of leg room. On the flight to Zurich, we were entrusted with the emergency exit and had so much legroom we couldn’t reach the seats in front of us. We could easily have stowed our packs in front of us, but that wasn’t allowed by the emergency doors.

On the flight to Hong Kong, we could barely squeeze in and to make matters worse, the seat has all sorts of supports and infrastructure beneath. We barely had room for our shoes and handbags, let alone the packs (which were stowed safely above us).

We didn’t sleep on the plane, except for two or three bursts of 30 minutes or so. We’ve got much worse at handling that business. The space was tight when the seats in front of us went back, so my nose was not much more than 200mm from the screen on which I watched some movies.

I got through three. The Pelican Lessons, with Steve Coogan was charming. Lee, the biopic of war correspondent and photographer Lee Miller, starring Kate Winslet, was brutal and a bit forced.

Unexpectedly, The Great Lillian Hall was wonderful. A story about a Broadway actor dealing with dementia struck many chords. Jessica Lange plays the actor, who is preparing to perform in Checkov’s play The Cherry Orchard.

Her denial about the onset of dementia, both to her family and friends and to the theatre world, seemed very believable and to people like me of a certain age, very scary.

I watched the movie almost to the moment where we had to get off the plane and it was hard to come back to reality.

But back to the flight.

The food on Swiss Air was great. After breakfast, we landed at what would have been 10am in Rome, but was after 4pm in Hong Kong.

We dallied about the airport in the usual way, doing passport, immigration, baggage and eventually getting out into the light of day.

We negotiated the MTR, Hong Kong’s underground. To Hung Hom station.

Somewhere in here, to the right of those tennis courts.

Google maps told us it would be a 15-minute walk to our hotel.

Google maps doesn’t really work in Hong Kong, as I’d found six years ago during a stopover.

It was after 6pm, the temperature was above 30 and the humidity above 70.

The footpaths don’t follow the streets, they go up and down, though malls, in fact in the photo above you can see the roof of an elevated walkway going across a highway.

We went round in circles for 20 minutes or so and realised we had no idea how to get beyond the point we arrived at.

Lathered in sweat, we decided to get a taxi, but how and where?

Cathie finally hit on the idea of Uber and we called a taxi, which arrived soon after, getting us to our obscure little hotel at about 7pm.

As we settled into our microscopic room, the phone rang. It was reception, telling us that breakfast would be provided between 8am and 11am. Since we hadn’t booked breakfast, that was a welcome surprise.

We crashed and slept for 12 hours.

All that was yesterday. If you’ve come this far, you deserve a break - I only meant this to be a short summary before I went on with today - take a break.

A soothing and restful ad break.

By the time we awoke, breakfast should have been well underway, but to our surprise the dining room was empty. It seems very folksy, possibly with permanent residents like students. The two fridges were filled with personal items. There was no evidence or other transitory guests having their breakfast supplied.

The smiling host from yesterday came in and told us about the coffee machine, returning a few minutes late with cardboard breakfast trays.

Eggs, tomatoes, hash brown things, spinach, salmon - it was great.

We disposed of everything in the bin, except for the coffee cups, which we carefully washed. It was like staying with someone you know - but not very well.

We should have known better, but we decided to walk to the Star ferry, which travels across the harbour from Kowloon and which is very famous, although I’m not sure why.

Once again, we got gloriously lost.

I think jet lag was striking me, as I couldn’t keep up with my young wife and at one stage had to sit down and let the sweat dry in the harbour breeze.

Before we made it to the ferry, we took refuge in the shelter of the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

School groups - they were everywhere.

It was absolutely packed with kids, very few of whom seemed very interested in the displays, unless there were buttons to press.

We took in about four floors. There was something different on each - calligraphy, Chinese art, snuff boxes. Ways to appreciate art in different forms was a well thought out display in an interesting variety of rooms.

Stimulated and cooled down, we went in search of food.

We had a wonderful lunch. Following the trend of electronic ordering we found in Japan last year, we had to scan a bar code, which brought up the number of our table, then order from the two-course meals.

It all seemed a bit unnecessary, but we had wonderful food.

My starter was interesting.

I also had a lovely pasta dish with truffles and mushrooms, while Cathie had a mushroom soup, followed by a salad of pickled walnuts and beetroot. The lunch bill was HK$280 - just under NZ$60. We were very happy with that after Italy prices.

Finally we made it on to the ferry.

As we approached the other side, we sighted a MTR logo.

An elevated, covered walkway led us to the station and we negotiated a couple of different routes, going on one stop past Hung Hom.

We were thinking ahead to when we leave, the day after tomorrow. Once we fixed on one of the many exits from the station, we found ourselves on another elevated walkway (in fact, the very one in the photo higher up on the page. Within three minutes we were at our hotel - how easy was that.

A shower, a siesta and we’re ready to go in search of dinner.

I’m worn out from all that writing - you should subscribe so you don’t miss the next thrilling episode.