We're Here!

Woohoo! This will be a short post as we're only in the room to shower (ahhh...fabulous water pressure) and then we're meeting M and P to get some lunch and explore (the less time spent in the room, the less temptation to fall asleep!)

But, we have arrived! And so far it's going great. The Cathay Pacific flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong was freakishly empty, and for the first time in my life I got an entire row of four seats to stretch out in, happily doped up on Ambien and snuggled under some blankets that had come hermetically sealed in plastic, to my great satisfaction. Bizaarely, 15 and a half hours passed very quickly, since we were probably sleeping for more than half of it, and the rest of the time I flipped channels on our individual seat tellies and read trashy mags. Oh, I had a bit of culture: I finally read the Annie Proulx novella "Brokeback Mountain," something I've wanted to do since seeing the amazing movie. And then David and I watched "March of the Penguins" on his laptop, and I call this culture because it was made by two Frenchmen with very cute accents and they lived a full year of lonely privation in order to film these "enchanting" birds.

Hong Kong seems to be an almost scarily polite city. Everyone from the Airport Visitor information gal to the the free shuttle driver to the hotel bell hop can't do enough for us, or in a shorter amount of time. There also seem to be an amazingly large number of uniformed personnel just standing around in various stations for the sole purpose of waving a welcoming hand towards confused tourists. And this would be more understandable if we'd been someplace that actually seemed to have tourists: we have seen the airport, the train, the train station, the shuttle and the hotel lobby, and we seem to be the only ones here. So much for giving up our personal space in China! I guess that will come later. In the mean time, this is clearly a cosmopolitan, chic city with a lot to look at, and look we will this afternoon, with a smidge of shopping thrown in now that we know our baggage is not overweight!

Oh, one last note: I'm feeling really proud of myself for suggesting we take public transportation from the airport to the hotel--we saved the cab fare and it went without a hitch!

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