Day 2 - Arrived in Hong Kong

I've arrived safely in Hong Kong, after a trouble-free journey. It only took fifty minutes to get to the airport, compared with five hours at Christmas. The flight took off on time and even landed a little ahead of schedule. I was met at the airport and whisked straight to the hotel, which is comfortable and well situated. So far, everything is going worrying well - and that's on top of a very successful kitchen installation. The planets must be well-aligned for me, at present.

In fact, the flight was pretty full, so Quantas must doing well as a result of the BA problems.

I'd been looking forward to watching The Hurt Locker, following its success at the Oscars, and I settled down to watch it after a rather good dinner and some excellent wine (an Australian Grenache). As it happened, I was rather disappointed with the movie. It started off quite well, with a very atmospheric tratment of defusing an IED, but for me it didn't really go anywhere after that. Lots more rather boring action, but very little else. Maybe it had a grandstand finish, but I'm afraid I fell asleep for the last fifteen minutes so I missed it! Nothing new there.

Today I've just had a walk round the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. It is something of a shopper's paradise, although the street hustlers selling watches or trying to tempt you to have a suit made are a bit of a nuisance. But at least, unlike other places, they're not too persistent and don't chase after you if you ignore them or say you're not interested.

Funnily enough, you still see a lot of peple wearing face masks, to protect themselves against swine flu. According to my taxi driver, there is no swine flu here anymore and people are just being ultra cautious, doubtless mindful of the SARS outbreak a few years ago.

My hotel is off Nathan Road (the Golden Mile) and is near the YMCA, where brother Bill said I should go for Dim Sum. Well I did go, but they don't do Dim Sum any more. Either that or Bill was talking about a different YMCA.

Tomorrow I'm taking a tour of Hong Kong island, which looks quite interesting. On Wednesday, I may go to the Ocean Park, supposedly Asia's premier sea life and animal theme park.