Sunday 4th December, 2005
A lazy morning. Our check out time was midday and we just stayed around the room, catching up on packing and diaries until it was time to vacate the room.
We piled our bags into the concierge’s lock-up and walked to and around The Ladies Market, just a few streets from the hotel.
If its possible, there were even more Chinese people on the street today. It was like a football (or rugby) crowd as far as you could see in every direction … presumably, because its Sunday.
We made a sortie back to the hotel mid afternoon in order to drop off all Anne’s purchases and to get a bite to eat. We stashed more with the concierge and then went out again at about 4; just locally, but the crowds are unbelievable; ordered, but just incredible in scale, certainly not the place to be claustrophobic but made slightly better by being taller than many of the people there.
Having seen a mass of Chinese people now several thoughts strike me;
For a nation which is increasing in size exponentially, I only saw four pregnant women during our whole time here (from a sample size of thousands!).
The dress is entirely western … but no belly buttons or bared midriffs.
There are lots and lots of smokers.
The Chinese must be getting taller as a race; the older folk are tiny, I dread to thing how many little old ladies I elbowed in the head as we walked around, but they are all at that height and, I’m not particularly tall. My impression is that they are bigger … but perhaps they aren’t Chinese perhaps there’s Filipinos, and other Asians mixed in,
We re-packed everything in the hotel lobby... causing a little bit of angst with an Indian woman, who was moaning about us taking up two seats and we caught the transfer bus out to Hong Kong airport , about 40 minutes from the hotel at 7pm.
Check in was simple and smooth – because we were quite early and then we shopped – or at least window-shopped around the airport, getting lost on several occasions.
We finally settled on a café for a bowl of hummus and Turkish bread and a beer, which was largely paid for by a wad of dollars I’d found lost on the floor of the airport.
We boarded at about 11 and took off just before midnight. Good seats at the back of the front compartment which meant that we had no one behind us pulling on the seats and generally being a nuisance and we were able to sleep quite well after a couple of gins and a bottle of wine.