The J Word

That over used phrase. I won’t use it, promise.

We’ve taken the first giant step after 6 months of planning. There were plenty of times I didn’t think we’d get this far. For anyone else thinking of going through this, here is my advice. Sit back, relax and have faith that it’ll all fall into place.

First leg of the trip was Manchester Airport. This comprised of a dodgy death wish taxi to Huddersfield station and a first class trip on the TransPennine express. Whilst we waited at the station my parents popped over to wave goodbye and make sure we left 🙂

We were joined by my wife’s parents at the airport, albeit slightly later then expected due to their unplanned trip to casualty. After breakfast we said our goodbyes and headed to departures. We performed the obligatory Facebook checkin so the world knew of our forthcoming trip.

Just a tiny hop over Europe, Russia and Asia and we’d be eating noodles and drinking rice wine in Hong Kong. Ideally, we would have slept through most of the hop. However, this being a day time flight it just didn’t happen 😦

For those plane buffs out there we flew on a Cathay Pacific Airbus A350 900 🙂 We took off from Manchester at 12:15 BST and landed in Hong Kong at 07:12 HKT (11 hours 57 minute fight time). The aircraft tail number was B-LRI

Customs and baggage reclaim were surprising quick although getting to security involved a 10 minute walk followed by a 5 minute train ride. We then paid 220HKD for a family ticket to Hong Kong central on the Airport Express. I’d always recommend this train as it’s super modern and fast, beating all the rush our traffic. The last leg involved a standard 5 minute taxi ride to the my sister in law and her family’s apartment in Wan Chai.

Since we didn’t get any sleep on the plane, we decided upon a quick two hour power nap before hitting the streets. Four hours later we awoke (after sleeping through our alarms!) and went for afternoon coffee at Passion

Something that I sort of expected to be different was the weather. I knew it was hot and I thought the past month or so in the UK would prepare us for it. However, I’ve experienced summer in the tropics and I can say its nothing like our little British heatwave. It’s more like walking into a steam room. The humidity here is off the scale. We found ourselves darting between one air conditioned shop to another desperately trying to keep cool.

Over all it was a great jour.. sorry trip!!! Putting the almost 12 hour flight aside it didn’t really take that long 🙂 It’s been great to catch up with our Hong Kong family and see how much the kids have grown. Tomorrow we are heading out into the Kowloon area for some shopping. There’s a few things we need to get before crossing the border to China next week.

Signing out…