Well, how does one express the excitement of leaving home for holidays... or in this case, getting out from under parental supervision! We (my brother and I) made it to Sydney International Airport at 8pm after a trip through heavy rain approaching the Harbour Tunnel and dinner at "Time for Thai" at Kingsford. See my Facebook for the pix, but it's a reasonable place to nom.
Check-in had been done electronically the night before, but we needed to drop in our baggage too. Two boxes of mangoes destined for our relatives accompanied an oversized bag stuffed complete with minimal clothes and all the bits of shopping Mum wasn't able to pack during her departure last month. Now, we knew that Qantas has a 23kg limit per person, and we suspected that we were close to the limit... but...
Firstly, the check in lady was rather reluctant to accept our bag, and ended up checking with her supervisor regarding a >23 kg bag. Turns out there's a rule for US-bound baggage is restricted to 23kg max... And ours weighed in at 32kg, at the UPPER limit of baggage weights. Phew! Just made it!
Secondly... Our mangoes weighed in at 15kg for the two, bringing us to a total of 47kgs...oops! Luckily, the lady was generous and let it slide without saying anything, except to tell us to bring them over to the 'Oversized Baggage Counter' near the row A. The boxes were a tad fragile and unlikely to be treated nicely if they went down the chute with all the other standard baggage.
Anyways, there wasn't much further to do: farewell-to-Daddy and we entered the district of Immigration and Customs. This time, I stopped off at Customs to fill out a Form B263, registering my camera and laptop as Australian-bought items. I don't want to come home in January with a whole bunch of electronics and camera stuff, only to be asked to pay tax on my gear if I could't prove that they were already mine. The rest of Customs went by smoothly, and shortly we were outside Gate 31. This next half hour was an experience: we got here earlyish and grabbed a powerpoint, and observed as within 5 minutes, two more Asians and an American made their way over until all 5 powerpoints were in use. The next 20 minutes brought 4 more people wandering over, plugs in hand whilst futilely searching for an available powerpoint. In the meantime, my time was productively wasted chatting away on MSN, saying final farewells to my closest friends.
Over the next 9 hours, my butt was cramped into an Economy class window seat whilst I tried meditating my way through a faster-than-normal flight. The pilot took advantage of a (turbulent) Central Australian jetstream and shaved the flight time to under 9 hours. Outside, little clusters of lights passed by below whilst a 3/4 moon hung above in the night sky, with a sprinkling of stars keeping her company.
Check-in had been done electronically the night before, but we needed to drop in our baggage too. Two boxes of mangoes destined for our relatives accompanied an oversized bag stuffed complete with minimal clothes and all the bits of shopping Mum wasn't able to pack during her departure last month. Now, we knew that Qantas has a 23kg limit per person, and we suspected that we were close to the limit... but...
Firstly, the check in lady was rather reluctant to accept our bag, and ended up checking with her supervisor regarding a >23 kg bag. Turns out there's a rule for US-bound baggage is restricted to 23kg max... And ours weighed in at 32kg, at the UPPER limit of baggage weights. Phew! Just made it!
Secondly... Our mangoes weighed in at 15kg for the two, bringing us to a total of 47kgs...oops! Luckily, the lady was generous and let it slide without saying anything, except to tell us to bring them over to the 'Oversized Baggage Counter' near the row A. The boxes were a tad fragile and unlikely to be treated nicely if they went down the chute with all the other standard baggage.
Anyways, there wasn't much further to do: farewell-to-Daddy and we entered the district of Immigration and Customs. This time, I stopped off at Customs to fill out a Form B263, registering my camera and laptop as Australian-bought items. I don't want to come home in January with a whole bunch of electronics and camera stuff, only to be asked to pay tax on my gear if I could't prove that they were already mine. The rest of Customs went by smoothly, and shortly we were outside Gate 31. This next half hour was an experience: we got here earlyish and grabbed a powerpoint, and observed as within 5 minutes, two more Asians and an American made their way over until all 5 powerpoints were in use. The next 20 minutes brought 4 more people wandering over, plugs in hand whilst futilely searching for an available powerpoint. In the meantime, my time was productively wasted chatting away on MSN, saying final farewells to my closest friends.
Over the next 9 hours, my butt was cramped into an Economy class window seat whilst I tried meditating my way through a faster-than-normal flight. The pilot took advantage of a (turbulent) Central Australian jetstream and shaved the flight time to under 9 hours. Outside, little clusters of lights passed by below whilst a 3/4 moon hung above in the night sky, with a sprinkling of stars keeping her company.
Qantas food is miserable. Mum's warning was right: the gravy is thick, gloopy and full of MSG: I barely touched my dinner and breakfast, and their filtered coffee was functional but foul. Likewise, the choice of 'on demand' movies and audio weren't to my tastes: "Friends with Benefits" kept me company until 1.30am Sydney time, before intermittently napping and waking during the following hours. With my earplugs in, I tried skim reading through my PC magazines whilst my N97 mini softly blaring out my favorite tunes, but it neither kept me awake nor asleep as I faded in and out of consciousness. Finally, I dug out my camera to keep myself entertained...
Landing in Hong Kong was REALLY uneventful: the faster flight meant that we arrived HKG at 4.30am local, rather than 5am as we normally do. Walking towards Immigrations, my brother noticed 'new' (well, compared to 2009, it was) Recharging Stations... so we camped there for a half hour with his iPhone plugged in. (Given how he had been abusing the iPod function on that thing, I strongly suspected that he had nearly no power left.) So then after the usual administrative exercises of passing Immigration & collecting our overweight baggage and mangoes, we entered the Arrivals Hall, patiently exploring (to recharge our Octopus transport-and-other-use value-cards) using the free WiFi and waiting until 5.30am when the Airport eateries opened for business.
Landing in Hong Kong was REALLY uneventful: the faster flight meant that we arrived HKG at 4.30am local, rather than 5am as we normally do. Walking towards Immigrations, my brother noticed 'new' (well, compared to 2009, it was) Recharging Stations... so we camped there for a half hour with his iPhone plugged in. (Given how he had been abusing the iPod function on that thing, I strongly suspected that he had nearly no power left.) So then after the usual administrative exercises of passing Immigration & collecting our overweight baggage and mangoes, we entered the Arrivals Hall, patiently exploring (to recharge our Octopus transport-and-other-use value-cards) using the free WiFi and waiting until 5.30am when the Airport eateries opened for business.
The next four hours went by with a few highlights: after camping for coffee at Delifrance (and my brother ate his first round of breakfast), we took the A11 Airbus service into Fortress Hill as directed by Mum and Uncle... albeit, the instructions were incomplete, and we got off one stop too early. So there we were, hauling 47kgs on luggage along a bumpy road, walking towards the next stop... before my brother spotted Mum and Uncle waiting confusedly by the bus stop, wondering why we didn't alight there. Anyhows, we ascended rapidly to Uncle's place, before heading back down to a little cafe for brekkie - now by brother's second course in HK. Afterwards, back to Uncle's for the Big Unpack: us delivery boys pulled out almost every bit of shopping whilst Mum allocated them into piles for gifting. An hour later, we were ready to play Santa: all piles and foodstuffs and mangoes sorted, and thus we left to Wan Chai - firstly to Mum's place to drop off everything, then to my other aunt, then another uncle's place to give the first two batches of goodies.
Now for us Muslims, eating 'halal' food is a mandate, and finding decent Hong Kong food that is Halal is few and far between. For us, the Islamic Canteen within the Oi Kwan Road Mosque is a familiar place for wedding banquets, Friday lunches, major celebratory dinners, etc. So it was no surprise that Mum had gathered the available relatives for a small lunch, and let everyone know that us kids had arrived. Photos for the various yum cha dimsims are below...feast your eyes!
After lunch, Auntie had offered to take us shopping. Despite my fatigue, I was willing to take part, knowing that I had to hunt for a decent backpack for my camera when travelling to KL and Singapore in a few days - that black bag of mine isn't really up to it. Anyhows, we walked through Espirit, G2000 and a few camera shops at Times Square, other parts of Causeway Bay, and also over at Tai Koo Shing. My brother seems to love shopping, getting two new pullovers at G2000 immediately. But we needed to head home: to meet up with Mum before going out to dinner hosted by my 4th-Uncle (on my Dad's side).
I'll probably be picking on my brother a fair bit in this blog. Lunch at the Canteen was his 3rd meal, with his 4th being at a dessert shop near Times Square. I haven't been to MeetFresh, but it's along those lines... things there cost less than HKD30 ($4) a bowl.
I'll probably be picking on my brother a fair bit in this blog. Lunch at the Canteen was his 3rd meal, with his 4th being at a dessert shop near Times Square. I haven't been to MeetFresh, but it's along those lines... things there cost less than HKD30 ($4) a bowl.
After a fair amount of walking and shopping, his 5th meal came at dinnertime over at Tsim Sha Tsui: a Beijing-cuisine banquet of I-can't-remember-how-many-courses-with-Peking-Duck at Hon King Lau. During dinner, I met for the first time the new babies: 16 month old (my cousin-nephew), and my cousin-niece (cuz Donald's daughter) who just turned one month old! We'll be seeing a lot more of then next week as we head over to Sha Tin for family functions at the end of the month... let's just say that Jayden's a little cheeky, was shy but warmed up to my bribe of gadgety entertainment of my N97 mini =P
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