So today I flew out of Sydney with Qantas to Hong Kong. I was lucky enough to once again be granted an upgrade to business class. Unfortunately, I think that after this upgrade it is going to be hard travelling any other way.
Why? Well, firstly business class has an express check in which means I was all booked in about 5 minutes rather than waiting the normal 30 mins with economy. Secondly, this time my seat was on the upper deck of the Boeing 747-400! Let me tell you that the business class seats up there are even better than those on the main deck. Why? There are less of them so you get more attention, there are more bathrooms per capita and finally you get some extra storage bays just under the windows. Even better for me there was no one in the seat next to me as well. Like I said, the ONLY way to fly.
The flight was quiet bumpy at times (clear weather turbulence so we were told). Even though the flight took about nine hours it didn’t seem as long as that and I was able to catch up with some movies. Let me just say that you shouldn’t watch Knight and Day (with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz) while on a flight as the initial part of the movie starts with a plane crash! (which you’ll see on the clip that is on the web site) Hmmmm…not good when you also have major turbulence outside the plane your on as well!
However, I arrived in good order and proceeded through immigration and customs quickly. Interestingly, customs simply required walking a ‘nothing to declare’ gate and letting a dog sniff your luggage. Pretty casual I must say. I was now out in the airport proper but at the wrong exit gate, so after a quick check of an airport map I made my way to the right location and found the contact for the airport transfer in a matter of moments.
As I waited for other transfer passengers to clear customs I snapped the following shot of the terminal interior. The weather was misty but very humid, temperature even this late in the day was at 27 degree C and sticky.
Soon we were on a bus for the 45 minute trip to our downtown hotels. Along the way our Tour East contact gave us a brief introduction to Hong Kong which was nice. So fat the Tour East people have been great, confirming with us the pick up details as well. High marks.
Travelling from the airport to the city centre reminded me a little of travelling along the Westlink Freeway in Melbourne with the view of the wharves through the big suspension bridge.
Once we hit the city our bus driver had to do plenty of traffic contortions to get the bus outside the drop off points but he managed without too much issue (clearly done it many times before).
I checked in at my hotel (the Novotel Nathan Road). The receptionist was very helpful and provided me with all the information I needed and even a street map with the hotel’s location marked for my reference. Once again, high marks.
I headed up to my room on the tenth floor and gotta say that I’m pretty stoked with what I’ve been given. It is the room at the front of hotel, almost overlooking the main drag (Nathan Road), any further back and I would only see apartment buildings.
Here’s some shots from inside:
and from the window
Another thing that I noticed as we approached the hotel in the bus was the proximity of a Starbucks, so I headed down to street level to grab a coffee and something light to eat. Always a good place to head as a tourist.
Here’s what street level looks like looking down Nathan Road towards the harbour.
With all that done I retired to my room and secured high speed broadband access for 7 days for HK$300 (about AUD$40) which isn’t too bad as the connection here is 3Mb download speed.
So tomorrow I’m off to find the Hong Kong Big Bus, which is pretty touristy I know but I reckon it’s a great way to get a good overview of everything. From what I can work out there should be a stop just across Nathan Road from my hotel.
