Hong Kong

Arrived in HKG 50minutes early just before 0500. The deplaning process was just as quick as the planing process. Quite impressed by the little things dones to optimize the flow of passengers. E.g. separating the boarding pass checkin process to 2 steps, thereby allowing the passenger to walk straight through without stopping until they get to their seat.

 

So I roamed the airport a bit until I found a quiet spot and then tried their WiFi. And it worked! The entire airport is WiFi accessible even the airport express train (but not free there). Caught up on emails and then boarded the Airport Express train. This has got to be the smoothest, and quietest ride I've ever been on. There's just no way of describing a ride on the clouds.

 

As I deboarded at the Hong Kong train terminal, I got into an equally modern looking terminal and proceeded to explore it all before figuring out to get out of this convoluded place. For some reason after about 16hrs of the plane, I totally lost all ability to navigate properly. When I did get out. I started roaming the streets to hopeully hit a couple of sites I saw on a map of the place.

 

ended up at this biological park in the middle of the city with crazy monkeys. Then proceeded up step streets to hopefully hit some type of peak.

 

Met these Philippino house helpers and talked to a bunch of them in the park as they were walking all the dogs of owners. It's very interesting and humbling the type of lives that they lead. More thoughts on this later perhaps. Then met this well-traveled retired highschool physics teacher. I ended up hanging out with him for about 3hrs as we walked to the peak of the city to see the tourist sites. He ended up treating me to a McDonald's breakfast (I had to break my McDonald's boycot; but I think the time that we spent together was well worth it) There is lots to learn from lives of the people that have gone before you. Oh yeah, also met a Nepali security gaurd in HK as well. It's interesting to hear of all the adventures and life lessons from people that have so much life experience.

 

I finally got back to the IFC mall where the train station is and roamed around the harbour trying street food. The craziest system for ordering food.

 

- walking down street full of chinese dried goods, including octopus on street

- go down dark alley where ppl cooking food.

- see somthing i want to eat and order it. told to order with someone different and 2mins later some person who i haven't talked to at all has all my food prepped. had no idea how their system worked, but the food was fantastic. lubriacated esophagus very well with all the oil used.

- crashed at airport

- flight very itneresting meeting a German textiles expert on route to Bangledesh for work.

-fight to KTM uneventful