About a month ago I started on my Christmas trip home to wintery Scotland; to break up the epic distance, and lessen the jet-lag, I took a two day stop over in the port of Hong Kong.
Normally my standard game plan for such a holiday would be this:
- Wander around a bit
- Get lost
- Look at guide book and decide on something to do/see
- Get lost some more
- Get bored
- Find something else to do
- Repeat until too tired to stand
But since I was feeling tired/lazy and I'd booked the trip through an agent I arrived with pre-planned itineraries.
Phase one was to get my hotel. As with most of my trips the hotel was at least two classes above what I needed, contrast - if you will - the image of a be-shorted, unshaven, Scotsman, carrying a large hiking pack on his back and several other bags in hand; against the rest of the clientèle with their designer suits, expensive cases, and unwillingness to carry anything for themselves; no wonder the staff looked nervous when I walked in.
Day one involved a trip around the harbour areas with some Australians whose accents made every sentence seem like a complaint. This involved going up Victoria Peak via a cable car ride which makes the Wellington one look flat.
From there we went to Aberdeen to look at how poor people live and took a San-Pan ride around the harbour area. After that we went to some jewellers then some market and then some other stuff.
At night I reverted to my stock plan of exploring the city by getting lost in it. Hong Kong looks pretty cool at night especially when half the skyscrapers all have massive Christmas lights on them.
The next day was scheduled to be a trip around one of the more rural islands which on paper sounded like a wasted day of things-I-can't-be-bothered-with. However it turned out to be a pretty top day, possibly because the group I was with was a mix of Scots and Kiwis.
It started out with a gondola ride up to a Buddhist monastery which boasts the biggest statue of Buddha in the world. This was actually a pretty cool place, the area was really nice, the statue was massive, the temples near by were pretty cool, and all the rest of the stuff was good.
Next we went to some fishing village. I'll admit I didn't enjoy this much being vegetarian and all.
Pretty sure did other stuff too but can't really remember much about trip other than being dog tired all the time.
Had to worry about flights home for most of the trip as the flight I was going to get had been cancelled due to snow two days running. In the end I was lucky and the flight left as scheduled. Arrived at heathrow to find massive queues everywhere and cancelled signs up for pretty much every flight. Helpfully the information signs told people to leave the airport and try rebooking which was cock-all use to me.
I joined a check-in queue at random and was lucky hear someone call out for passengers going to Edinburgh. What they'd done is cancelled all flights because of snow but then were going to put on a much bigger plane which somehow made it safer.
Got home to Edinburgh and stepped out into -11 temperatures, pretty cold. Tune in next time for more grammatically poor tedious adventures of Andy.
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