Trains, Planes and Taxis

Wednesday 08 Apr Overcast in Hong Kong 18C - Sunny in London 14C

It was an early start to a long day, up before 5 and in a taxi en route to Hong Kong Station at 0530! We had settled our bill the night before so checking out was almost instant from the Cosmopolitan. The streets of the city were deserted and the taxi whisked us down to the station in less than 15 minutes. At the station we discovered that we could check our luggage in at the station. What a great idea! It certainly made life easier at the airport end as we just had our cabin baggage to lug around. The journey between Hong Kong Station and the Airport takes 23 minutes and there are only 2 stops, one in Kowloon and the other somewhere on the outskirts of Mong Kok. This airport express train is most expensive than other options at $HK100 per head, but it is very quick and efficient.

Whilst other people arriving at the airport were queuing to check in, we strolled straight through to passport control and security, both of which were really quiet. Our plan was to get some breakfast at the airport and at first we began to think our choice was Burger King or Chinese breakfast consisting of congee, a sort of sticky rice gruel - mmmmh nice at 0630 in the morning. Luckily, we found an American Chain sportsbar place, Champions, which served fairly normal western-style breakfast. The only minor hitch being we had to wait until 7 for it to open.

Airport shopping reflected the shopping malls of Hong Kong with all the usual designer names, Cartier, Chanel, Bally, Dunhill and very expensive. The choice for realistic purchases was very limited. We even decided that SD memory cards for cameras were cheaper to buy in UK than at the airport. The airport building is very impressive though and absolutely massive.

Our flight, NZ39, left on time at 0830 with us sitting in the two back seats in economy, a window and an aisle seat all to ourselves. The flight was fairly full, but not completely so.

Our 13 hour flight route took us over China, around the east and then north of Tibet and the Himalayas, across Mongolia and into the 'Stans. Kyrgistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Into Russian, we flew over Chelyabinsk and Kazan before heading into the Moscow area. From there, west out to Lithuania and Latvia and into the Baltic. Crossing southern Sweden, we then flew just south of Copenhagen, across Denmark into Northern Germany before crossing the North Sea. The UK coast was crossed at Clacton and then straight down to London and smoothly into Heathrow, a journey of just over 10,000km and we arrived at exactly 1430 after a flight of just over 12 and a half hours.

Although we had quite a bit of cloud at first, once we were round to the north of the Himalayas, we started to see mountain tops sticking out of the clouds. The the deserts of northern China and Mongolia were huge and very desolate. Russia, on the whole was still very snowy and lots of the rivers still quite frozen.

We managed to escape from the airport quite quickly and took a taxi to the Travelodge on Bath Rad for an overnight stop.