Saturday, March 27, 1999 – Leaving Fort Wayne
Well, fortunately we did great with getting ready and packing early, so we got up and leisurely putzed around until about 10am when Erica came to take us to the airport. She and Elaine and her mother, Caroline are looking after our 2 dogs, cat and fish while we are gone so we feel better about leaving them. About 3 weeks ago we went to an aikido seminar in Chicago and left the dogs at the kennel. King, the older dog had been there before and isn’t happy about it, but copes. But Koshi, our puppy, had never been and it was terribly traumatic for her, us and the kennel owners. She promptly tore to shreds her blanket when she got there. She couldn’t figure out that she was supposed to go out the doggie-door to go potty and she kept going in her little tiny room and then laying in it. She barked so much (it was about 3 days) that when she tried to bark when we picked her up, all she could do was make a really quiet "aaakkk" sound. Normally she bounces around in the car but all she did when we picked her up was put her head on my lap and immediately fall asleep. We were panicking about having to take them to the kennel for 3 weeks while we were gone and Erica and her family all chipped in to help us. Erica used to housesit for us but she got a new house and job and had quit doing it, but they felt sorry for the dogs too and did us a favor. So we left not having to worry that the pets or house would not be taken care of.
The Fort Wayne airport is always a pleasure to start a trip from. Check-in is quick and easy. Then a short flight to Chicago, a brief layover and a flight straight to Hong Kong. We were grounded in the plane on takeoff for an hour in Chicago due to an engine check and then having to get another approved window of time from Russia to fly through their air space near the Bering Straits. A tip on traveling by air… Bring some snacks and water with you in your carry-ons. Especially for long flights or layovers, you never know when you might be sitting in the plane for a while before you get something to eat or drink and some snacks and water tastes pretty good. I brought some beef jerky, packets of cheeze-n-crackers and peanut butter and crackers, power bars, breakfast bars, candy and water.
Once airborne, the flight was about 17 ½ hours. We got settled and had dinner. Sean and I both ordered special meals. I had the chef salad and Sean had the Indian Vegetarian. His was so-so, but the halvah dessert was delicious! But high in fat, so I got to eat it. My chef salad was unusual – lettuce, feta cheese and carrots and radishes. I also got hummus and pita bread and a snackwell cookie (which I traded to Sean for his halvah). I liked my meal a lot. It was fresh, light and good. I’ll definitely get it again. Actually we got 2 of the same meal on the flight. For special meals when you get 2 meals on a flight (long flights), they don’t have a way to order something different for each meal. Oh well, at least it was good so I didn’t mind. I think Sean would have preferred something different though. Good thing we had snacks with us. He also accidentally ate what looked like a green bean but turned out to be a very hot pepper and the beverage card hadn’t come yet. That wasn’t a lot of fun either.
We were on a 747-4000B, which has 3-4-3 seating arrangement in coach. We each got a seat on the aisle across from each other. Sean was in the 3-seat row and had 2 people next to him. I was at the end of the 4-seat aisle with someone at the other end of the row and 2 seats between us so I had an extra seat to stretch out on. Next time we may get aisle seats on each end of the middle row and hope no one takes the 2 in the middle (those are usually last to go). Then we’d have the whole row to ourselves. Also, it appears that they filled the plane from front to back so asking for back seats may be safer for having free seats next to you.
They showed 3 movies – Rush Hour, Elizabeth and Pleasantville. All great movies but I slept through most of them. I smoke so going for 17+ hours is a challenge and it is really good when I can sleep on the plane to pass the time. It was pretty decent flight, all in all.
Hong Kong Airport
The Hong Kong airport is brand new and very nice. We breezed through it without any problems, no lines at baggage claims or customs. We managed to get on a bush shuttle to the hotel (they had some extra room and only charged us $100HK (about $12) each which was great. We weren’t sure exactly how we were going to get to the hotel so that worked out super. Also, the Hong Kong airport has free luggage carts which is always a joy at an airport, especially since we had a ton of luggage.
The trip to the Regent Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon took about 45 minutes. The airport is on an island and you cross a huge beautiful bridge, all lit up and looking like a huge Golden Gate bridge. It was a pleasant drive and we got to the hotel about 8:30 or 9pm. We could handle all check-in and embarkation paperwork in the lobby where they had tables especially for HAL cruise people so that was quick and easy too.
The Regent Hotel
The Regent is a beautiful (and expensive!) hotel right on the waterfront with a large, several-storied glass wall all along the waterfront side so you could look out and see the harbor. The room had a nice bed, couch, etc. and the bathroom was very luxurious. The best part of the whole hotel room was the huge, deep bathtub that filled up in like 1 minute. It was so big you could stretch out and be in water up to your neck. We want that tub! The Regent itself though was very pricey. I think it cost us over $400US for 1 night. And we barely spent any time there. The only advantage was that it included transfers to the ship. Normally, if the ship was docked in the Ocean Terminal right there Kowloon, you could have gotten to the ship easily from any hotel around there. But they decided to dock at the new port instead which was a looong way away and seemed to be more for container ships and the like. We got there just fine since we had transfers, but some of the people had a difficult time of it.
Also, if they would have docked at the regular docks, it was an easy walk to everywhere from the ship. Being out in Timbuktu, they had to run shuttles to Hong Kong that took 35-45 minutes to get there. It was really not the best arrangement and was a poor decision on HALs part to dock there. I hope they change it. Many other cruise ships were docked at the good port. I think we were the only cruise ship at the new port (China Merchants Container Terminal). Bad move, HAL. Anyway, when we got to the hotel we decided to go out exploring.
Hong Kong (the city that never sleeps)
We left about 9:30 or so from our hotel. A short walk took us to Nathan Street, which is a busy and interesting street full of electronics outlets and you-name-it. Tons of places were open until very late at night and clearly there were lots more shops (mostly designer clothes shops) open during the day. This seemed to be the electronics/designer clothes street. I found good prices on videocameras (I was sort of looking for a new Sharp ViewCam) but didn’t get one. I was sorry later on the trip when our camcorder bit the dust and we didn’t get any video of Japan at all. We walked up Nathan quite a ways and then turned left and went down 5 streets to Temple Street. About 5 blocks down Temple street was the Night Market. It is a great flea market with all sorts of interest, very cheap stuff and lots of fun hustle and bustle. We got there around 10:30pm and the place was hopping. I heard that cashmere sweaters were a great bargain there. We didn’t get any though, didn’t need them and I’m allergic to cashmere. Luggage is a good buy too but we didn’t have room for more. We did get some great Tin-Tin t-shirts at 3/$100HK (price them in a Tin-Tin store!). I got a neat photographer’s vest for $89HK. They had all sorts of clothes and popular kids' stuff like Pikachu, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, South Park, etc. Also lots of strange but interesting cafes. It was a blast!
We left about 12:30am and there were still lots of stalls open although it looked like some were starting to shut down. We stopped at an Indian Café and got some foot to go and we walked back to the hotel and went to bed.
Next morning we each had a nice luxurious bath (only thing missing was a TV in the bathroom). They did have a phone in the "toilet room" though (a little room off the bath with just the toilet and a phone in it). I just can’t see sitting on the john doing more than one type of business at a time, but who knows… If it was in the main bathroom then maybe you could be shaving or putting on makeup or something while on the phone. But this was just a room with a phone and a toilet. Go figure…
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