I pigged out at the free breakfast buffet and finished off the City of Joy before venturing out. I went to the post office and posted a few cards & a book home. I also received a letter from Mam. Sean's going to live with Wilko and Roo in Newcastle. Wonders will never cease. I wandered around HK Central & found some really good bookshops and a big picture book by Paul Theroux that describes and accompanies his travel books. I'll have to put that on my list to Santa.
I went to the pictures again, this time to see Alien 3. Brian Glover played Brian Glover. I then managed to hunt out a cheap watch to replace my seized up watch. Just as I was giving up hope. I then wandered around the busy, brightly lit streets for a while. It's a shame I haven't got another week here because there are lots of places I haven't had the chance to see yet. I didn't even go to any of the museums.
I went across to the HK island and caught the peak tram up to the top of Victoria Peak. The view was amazing and very photogenic. I then walked up Mt Austin Rd and looked over the other side of the island. Back down to Des Voeux Rd Central and I picked up my plane ticket and then booked a return trip to Macau on the Far East Jetfoil. As ever, it was all easy and efficient.
I went back to Kowloon and just managed to pick up my passport before the China Travel Service closed. Good job I got there as I need the passport to get to Macau. It was the last day for my credit cards so I used them to phone Christy before consigning them to the bin. After that I went swimming at the Kowloon Park swimming complex, along with several thousand HK Chinese. It was a bit crowded, to say the least, and I only managed 1/2 mile. I'm so out of shape that that was quite enough. I filled up at Pizza Hut & went back.
2012 Out of shape was an understatement. I wasn't really aware how much weight I'd lost over the last few months but you can see from the photos how much weight I'd lost.
Macau was handed to China by the Portuguese in Dec 1999, quite a few years after this. In the late 90s when I was working in Asia I would have to go to Macau as a staging point to get between Taiwan and China as direct flights were not allowed. Nowadays I think it's just the Chinese version of Las Vegas.
Found Access Travel and my documents were all present & correct. Efficiency is a bit of a shock after India. They couldn't help me with flights home though. I then went to HK Island and visited Poste Restante. Tom Jones had written and he said I can have my job back starting Sept 1st. We'll have to see. I then went to Thomas Cook and they were very helpful & got me a cheap flight from Stockholm to Gatwick on July 20th.
I then went back across to Kowloon and applied for a China visa. After all my organisational efforts I decided to have a rest and went to see Lethal Weapon 3. I enjoyed it but I bet Oz would have disapproved.
The plane left at 1:00am and arrived at Bangkok 3 1/2 hours later. During that time I was made to suffer breakfast, had a glass of orange spilt over me and failed to sleep. I had a 3-hour wait in Bangkok during which time I phoned Christy & she told me she'd quit. By this time I was feeling very tired. On the flight to Hong Kong I had two spare seats next to me and kept curling up to grab 40 winks.
Unfortunately the turbulence was very bad and the stewardesses kept waking me up to put my seat belt on. In fact the worst bit of turbulence was on the first flight when it really did feel as if we were on a rollercoaster. The whole plane was oohing and aahing in unison.
At Hong Kong my luggage turned up. As it had been checked through to HK by Indians I was a bit worried. I caught the A1 bus and then the MTR and easily found the YMCA International. I relieved my bowels for the umpteenth time in the last 24 hours. India wouldn't let me go without leaving it's legacy. Then I crashed out for a few hours. I'd been awake over 26 hours.
I went out, found McDonalds and then wandered around for a while. Once it started pouring down I gave up and caught the MTR back.
