Easy morning - it was raining. Hard! A T1 typhoon, so the littlest rating but still seriously heavy rain and apparently very unusual in October. August is normally the month that they stop, but it was fine as we had sone the majority of our sight seeing. Obviously there is still a lot to do in Hong Kong, but we had hit the main sights, including Lonely Planets number one… the HSBC building. An obvious highlight which is not to be missed. Well, I’m not saying that it was my highlight but if you like cutting edge architecture then worth a visit and to be honest you can’t miss it anyway.
I headed to Causeway Bay mall using the tram. This turned out to be a small mistake - not because the tram isn’t fun, but simply because the windows had leaked and every available seat had a small puddle of water on them. Note to self - in heavy rain, use the metro!
NJ had managed to get some time off for lunch, so I met him, and Grace again, for a bite to eat. It was really lovely to see both of them, and very odd to think tat the last timeI saw them it was January in Mendoza. NJ took us to a Shanghai style restaurant, as he is from Shanghai, and ordered a variety of different dishes which were really tasty. I’m still not a lover of stinky tofu though!
After a brief stop to replace my zip-off walking trousers which had walked their way out of my laundry in Khiva - a little pricey but hard to come by on the road and comparable with the UK. I just can’t work the same discounts in Hong Kong! I headed back to Anja’s flat, and we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking coffee, avoiding the weather and chatting before saying a sad goodbye to Anja and making the most of a break int eh weather to head out to the metro. It was time to leave Hong Kong and make our way back to the heat and humidity of Bangkok.
It didn’t take us long to negotiate our way through the metro - we’d had a bit of practice by this point! We helped out a guy with some change and he pointed us in the right direction for the airport express ticket booths. We made good time to the airport, got checked in and had a bite to eat, before going through security. Our gate number was finally posted and we headed out to gate 207 - Hong Kong airport really is huge! Everything appeared to be on time, until five minutes before boarding when they announced the flights would be delayed by half an hour. It turned out to be more like an hour, so we found ourselves landing in Bangkok after midnight. Even though we had been passing through Hong Kong on our second passports, I had trouble using it to get back in to Thailand as they had my name registered against my other passport. Fortunately I had my landing slip for Hong Kong showing that I was travelling on that passport, so they verified my passport and let me in. I’m glad I changed my passport when entering Hong Kong and didn’t wait until I had re-entered Thailand or we would have more trouble with our Myanmar visa applications. Euan was after me, and having just dealt with me they apparently couldn’t be bothered to waster another ten minutes doing the same with his passport and so just stamped him in! We finally got to our hotel at 2am, a bit of a marathon!