![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hong Kong
HKG airport was fast and efficient; we breezed through passport control, bought ourselves Octopus cards (like Oyster, but also accepted by many vending machines and convenience stores) and headed down to the bus stop. The bus to Tsuen Wan cost HK$17.8 (about GBP1.50) for a 50 minute journey; we then had to find our hotel. The Nina Tower is the largest of the skyscrapers in that part of HK and a quite distinctive asymmetric twin-tower design - straightforward to look for when you've seen it once! - but we had to drag our cases farther than needed as we'd incorrectly stayed on the bus until the terminus.
We were quite tired; thankfully they were able to let us have the room early. We were on the 67th floor (of eighty); the city view from the floor-to-ceiling window is mind-boggling, if a bit restricted by the haze while we were there, and complemented by the views in other directions from the sky lobby on the 41st floor. (You take the express lift from the lobby up to the sky-lobby on 41F, then have to get in the correct lift for your destination floor. The lifts are fast; it only took about three minutes to get between our room and the lobby.)
The hotel is the full 5* luxury experience with excellent fittings, wonderful bathroom with bath and shower, swanky minimalist lobby, connected by walkway to the Mass Transit Railway. And the price? We got a promo room-only rate of just HK$800 (about GBP 64) per night, well worth it.
Having freshened up we went out in search of lunch in the local area. There are several shopping malls joined by above-ground walkways, but the great problem is the language: finding food that we were interested in eating was quite a challenge as we found English wording on many menus to be cryptic or entirely missing. I ended up eating at McDonalds while C found an enjoyable vegetarian risotto in a shopping mall food court. Indeed, walking about here we felt mostly illiterate: while the street names and most signage is bilingual, shops' own posters are frequently only in Chinese.
We trundled back to the hotel and collapsed. We were in bed by 1730 - only 2230 by NZ time, but following a poor night's sleep on the plane and beset by aftershocks the previous night, we needed it.
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm grateful for the existence of McDonalds!
HKG airport was fast and efficient; we breezed through passport control, bought ourselves Octopus cards (like Oyster, but also accepted by many vending machines and convenience stores) and headed down to the bus stop. The bus to Tsuen Wan cost HK$17.8 (about GBP1.50) for a 50 minute journey; we then had to find our hotel. The Nina Tower is the largest of the skyscrapers in that part of HK and a quite distinctive asymmetric twin-tower design - straightforward to look for when you've seen it once! - but we had to drag our cases farther than needed as we'd incorrectly stayed on the bus until the terminus. The hotel is the full 5* luxury experience with excellent fittings, wonderful bathroom with bath and shower, swanky minimalist lobby, connected by walkway to the Mass Transit Railway. And the price? We got a promo room-only rate of just HK$800 (about GBP 64) per night, well worth it.
We trundled back to the hotel and collapsed. We were in bed by 1730 - only 2230 by NZ time, but following a poor night's sleep on the plane and beset by aftershocks the previous night, we needed it.