Hong Kong Blog Day 1

Day 1.  The Eagle Has Landed:  Oh Wait--Houston, I Think We Have a Problem

The packing was done, documents were sorted and resorted, the schedule was packed tight with meetings and events.  All that was left was the flight to Hong Kong.  Left home at 4:30 a.m. for the airport.  The first flight was from Raleigh-Durham airport to Chicago’s O’Hare.  Luckily, I didn’t have to change terminals, only move a few gates down the line.  The waiting room at O’Hare for the flight was packed—with Chinese.  The adventure had already started.

The flight was 14+ hours from Chicago to Hong Kong, flying in an arc from Chicago over the Artic Sea north of Alaska.  It was daylight most of the way, with the sun glinting off of the sea ice in the most amazing way.  This was the first time I had seen the Artic, albeit from 35,000 feet.  It was an amazing landscape unlike anything I had ever seen before.

We came into Asia by way of Siberia, Mongolia and Northern China.  Finally, we saw ground free of snowpack and, a few hours later, in late afternoon, we came in over Hong Kong.  The landing by sea was quite impressive.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was one of the clearest days I would encounter and I could see outlying islands, Hong Kong Island with relative clarity as we landed.

After touchdown was the business of immigration, baggage claim and setting up airport transport.  It was now more than 24 hours since I had awoke at home the previous day.  My mind wasn’t too sharp (hard to sleep in that tiny seat in economy), but I managed to get to Airport Express and show them which hotel I was staying at.  After a delay of around 45 min, the bus came and off we went..

Let’s just say, I had no idea how spread out Hong Kong is.  The guidebooks make you think it is pretty compact.  That is totally misleading.  I had been on the airport bus for over an hour and 45 min when we finally came to a hotel with the words “Royal” emblazoned on the front and attached to a new shopping mall.  Surely this was the Royal Plaza Hotel!  So, when we stopped, I got off the bus, collected my luggage and went inside to check-in.

Imagine my surprise when I was told by reception that I was at the wrong hotel—I was standing in the lobby of the Royal Park Hotel in the New Territories, not the Royal Plaza Hotel in Mongkok.  It was 7 p.m., and I was supposed to meet three people for dinner at my hotel lobby in one hour.  My brain was so fried I wasn’t sure quite what to do.  Fortunately, the desk clerk turned me over to the capable hands of the concierge.  He called Airport Express, but they weren’t coming back for me.  I envisioned having to take a cab to the correct hotel.  But, in the end, I received my first act of kindness in Hong Kong from the staff of the hotel.  It turns out that the reason that the two hotels have such similar names and look similar is because they are owned by the same company.  I was most definitely in luck.  At 7:30, the shuttle bus would arrive from the Royal Park Hotel to take me, free of charge to the Royal Plaza Hotel.  I might still make that dinner date!

I finished my check-in at the hotel at 7:55.  That meant I had exactly 5 minutes to get ready for my first meeting with Leslie fans in Hong Kong.  I opened my suitcases and basically flung the contents on the bed and the couch, looking for clean clothes, my toothbrush, a comb, etc., knowing I had about 5 minutes to transform myself from weary, jet-lagged airline passenger into a freshly minted tourist and Leslie fan.

I didn’t quite make it.  The phone rang at 8:05, while I was still looking for that toothbrush and toothpaste, and it was a call from Tracy Chan, the Leslie fan who had put this dinner meeting together.  I pleaded for another 10 minutes, saying I had just checked in.  Fortunately, she humored me and I finished my toilet.

Tracy was in the lobby, along with Molle Parr from Australiam whom I knew from AnD and Facebook.  They had someone I didn’t know with them, Leslie Ho, a Hong Kong actor by way of London.

My hotel is connected to Grand Century Place, which is Mongkok’s ritziest new shopping mall (if that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it isn’t; it seems there are plans for a little “urban renewal” in MK, and Grand Century Place and the Grand Plaza Hotel are the first step).  We found a simple little restaurant serving Chinese food and proceeded to get to know one another.  Perhaps because we are all fans of Leslie Cheung, we were soon talking like old friends, my extreme fatigue notwithstanding.

After some nourishing and well-prepared food (sorry, no pics), we left for a little tour of Mongkok on foot..  I have visited a few urban centers that pride themselves on their nightlife and streetlife, but none holds a candle to Mongkok after 10 p.m. any night of the week.  First they took me to the Mongkok MTR Station by way of an elevated, covered walkway that I ended up walking many, many times during my stay in Hong Kong.  Then they showed me the Neway Karaoke place where we would be meeting again on Wednesday night for a little fun and we also did a bit of shopping at the Wide Sight around the corner, where Molle bought one of Leslie’s old ATV series.

At this point, it was around 12:30 a.m. and I had been up for a total of around 32 hours straight and I could tell I was beginning to talk nonsense.  Wisely, my hosts got me back to my hotel, where I tried to make a phone call on my so-called “Global Phone” that Verizon has provided me with for my trip.  I will spare you the details, let’s just say it took 45 minutes trying to reach customer service before I could figure out how to place a call home or make any calls in Hong Kong.  Being routed to the Sprint Business Class service in Memphis was not very helpful, nor was talking to Verizon Global Phone help the first two times I called.  If there was one headache on this trip, it was consistently my phone.  Next time, I am definitely going to take the advice of  many in HK and just buy a phone and SIM card when I arrive and purchase a plan with minimal minutes and be done with it.  If the folks back home need to talk to me, they can call the hotel.  That is what Mark ended up doing, anyway.

Finally, around 4:30, I dozed off to sleep listening to Leslie’s music on my I-Pod.  I was finally in Hong Kong.  The dream was now truly a reality.