Hong Kong

Hong Kong

• 2 Oct 2008

When I planned my 5 week holiday, Hong Kong was not on my itinerary. I had used every second of my annual leave and then some, so getting home as quickly as possible was my goal. My travel agent Kurt arranged a creative return route which involved a flight from Lisbon to Barcelona, Barcelona to Helsinki, Helsinki to Hong Kong then Hong Kong to Sydney. There was a tight connection between the arrival of the Finnair flight into Hong Kong and the departure of the Cathay flight to Sydney. What could possibly go wrong?



It all went to plan until the flight from Helsinki was delayed by an hour, resulting in 26 Sydney passengers being offloaded in Hong Kong for 10 hours. Some of the passengers chose to stay in the Premiere Lounge but I couldn't really face the thought of being cooped up in the airport. Even though I was hot, tired and dirty I caught the train downtown to Central.



I think it's 4 years since I last visited Hong Kong but I'd forgotten how busy it is. It was also a Sunday so every-one was around and about shopping or meeting for lunch. It was incredibly smoggy that day so it was hard to get a decent photo of the skyline.




In the end, I only took a couple of photos because I was tired after 3 days without much sleep. I tried to take photos of the Star Ferry but the ferry staff kept waving their hands in front of my camera - I wasn't quite sure what I was doing that was wrong as I've taken photos of the ferry on past trips without any problems. Can any-one help me out here?



Over at the Convention Centre in Kowloon I kept bumping into wedding parties. I hung around long enough to take photos of one of the brides. Obviously "candid" wedding photography is not the norm in Hong Kong. Whilst I snapped the bride having a cooling drink and being fussed over by her friends, her 2 official photographers were cooling their heels.

I caught the Star Ferry back to Central and went back to the Airport to wait for my flight home to Sydney. It's hard to believe I've been back at work for 2 weeks already,

Jillian