Sunday, May 21, 2006

JFK-HKG The Flight to Hong Kong

This departure day, the day we leave for Hong Kong. We catch the 10:30 bus to the airport. Not sure how long the bus will take. I wanted to take the 11:00 bus but there was not one. The next bus was a noon. Our plan was to leave at 3pm or so we thought. It was really scheduled to leave at 3:45.

We arrived at JFK 11:15 the check in didn’t even open till 11:45. The seats in the lobby were not very comfortable. After we checked in and moved to the departure hall I ate at JFK’s Antonios. I had spaghetti and green beans. Rhonda had a tuna sandwich from the 7th ave Deli. Sam had something from target="new" McDonalds.

We boarded our Cathay Pacific flight CX831 at the scheduled 3:45PM. We were in the middle row of 4 seats with the entire row. Thanks to the person at the check in. She said that if she moved one of us to the other isle seat no one would pick the middle seat. It worked.

The flight was a long one 16 hours! I watched the ending of Match Point probably 4 times. Never did see the beginning of the movie. It was Woody Allen’s movie with Scarlett Johansson. We watched a little of Mr. Bean 6 and some of Fun with Dick and Jane. I finished my book Untangling My Chopsticks A culinary Sojourn in Kyoto . I started on a book that I bought in NYC Malaria Dreams . It is the story of two people that drive a Toyota Land Cruiser across a tortuous route from the Central African Republic to Europe via Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Mali and Algeria.

We emerged from the plane at 8PM local time 8am Florida time. After we went through emigration and departed the arrival gate we looked around for Doug. We did not see him for a few minutes, but he appeared in about 5 minutes shorts and all sauntering over toward us. We bought a train ticket to the city for 210 HK for the 3 of us. The train ride on the Airport Express train was a short one. When we exited the station it was raining. Outside the station was one of the tallest buildings in Hong Kong Two International Finance Centre it was quiet a sight disappearing in to the clouds at night. We put our stuff in Doug’s car and went to a shopping mall to a grocery store. It was a City Market. They advertise them selves as “city'super is a 'Mega Lifestyle Specialty Store' that offers true 'one-stop-shopping' to today's busy urban professionals”. It was the fanciest food market I ever seen.

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We made our way to Doug’s apartment on the 10th floor of a 12 story building on the grounds of Hong Kong Adventist Hospital . One of the first thing Doug did when we arrived was pull out the Durian from the freezer, he insisted that we try it. He said that he did not care for it but tat Jeri liked it. It has a horrific smell but I did not think that it tasted all that bad sort of like over ripe mango. Rhonda did not care for it at all; she could not get over the smell. We went to bed that night at 11pm. I slept fairly well till 5:30AM.