fredag 27. februar 2009

Hong Kong



Just before I got on the plane from Stavanger to Oslo I read about the tragic crash with the Turkish Airlines at Schipol in Amsterdam (somtimes we just shouldn't read newspapers before a 12 hours journey by plane). In one of the articles it was said that the plane did not start to burn because it had a soft landing. Well... I am not a fanatic into preventing health risks, but I prefer the landings to be slightly softer even. And so far the pilots of SAS, Finnair and Malaysian Air haven't disappointed me in so respect.

I arrived Hong Kong on time and went straight to the hotel, jet lagged and tired about 12 hours after my departure from Oslo. My room wasn't ready so I still had to wait some hours before I could get some sleep ( I never manage to sleep so much on a plane).

So what is to say about Hong Kong? I had two days with fair weather, not too hot and cloudy. Quite foggy to at times. My hotel was in Sham Shui Po on the Kowloon side, so after a nap I took a trip by the MTR to the island. A little later I took a walk along the harbour at the Kowloon side as you can see from some of the pictures. Hong Kong looks like I expected it to look like.

The next day I took a walk in the Kowloon park together with a cs'er from the Philippines working as a nanny in Hong Kong and the little girl she is a nanny for. We also met later for dinner on the island in the Wan Chai area. Not much night life though as I had to get up at 5 am to get to the airport for my flight to Kuala Lumpur. 

Before dinner I went to Lantau for the spectacular cable car up to the Ngong Ping village, where there is a big Buddha on top of one of the hills and also a buddhist monastery. You feel airborne at times in that cable car, a little scary when the wind make it swing a bit, and at one place the fog was so tight we could not see the ground and nothing else either for that matter. 

Before you have a look at the pics... I just have to tell you that I have never before had an SLR camera, just small, simple compact cameras. And since I have never been good as a photographer I bought a Nikon D40 which is supposed to be a SLR camera for dummies. So any complaints about the pics will be forwarded directly to Nikon. 

onsdag 25. februar 2009

Tomorrow I leave Norway for a while. First stop is Hong Kong, via Helsinki. Just a short visit in Hong Kong, 1st of march I go on to Kuala Lumpur and will stay in Malaysia in about a month. Then I go on to the Philippines for 14 days, then a short trip back to Kuala Lumpur, train to Singapore and boat to Batam in Indonesia. I will stay some days in Jakarta before I go to Bangkok for about a week. I return to Norway from Bangkok 30th of april.

Today reminds me of something I said 28 years ago, after coming back from a 6 months trip in Latin-America. "This is not the last time I will do a trip like this". It's time to keep my promise!