Hong Kong

Vacations are weird things, there’s a period beforehand where they seem way too far and distant and you can’t wait for them to come around. Then before you know it the vacation is upon you and you don’t have enough time to finish off/hand over/or hibernate all the crazy work activities going on.

This trip was no different with both of us working crazy weeks right up to setting off. However you reach a point and you have to turn off work and focus on vacation, what can possibly go wrong with being away from work for a few weeks?

Besides Christmas runs back to the UK this will be our first proper holiday for years. I’m really looking forward to this trip. It’s been 14 years since I’ve been to Hong Kong and even longer since I was in Japan (I was too young to party in Japan).

Planning was ad hoc with us first booking flights from Vancouver to Hong Kong. We then booked flights from HK to Tokyo, Osaka (Kyoto) and back to Hong Kong, and finally the short hop from Seattle to Vancouver. Or put in airport speak we’re going to SEA-YVR-HKG-NRT-KIX-HKG-YVR-SEA. Somewhere in all this we booked in random order a set of hotels.


Waiting at Vancouver airport

For the YVR-HKG flight we left at 1am and arrived 5:30am. Flying time was a good ~13 hours. This gave us plenty of time to get a decent nights sleep and wake up and watch a film or two. I can only say Cathay's AVOD works a lot better than BA's. Their food and wine was also top notch with Krug and caviar, for breakfast we had real scrambled eggs cooked on the plane and fresh toast.


Express from Chek Lap Kok airport to Central Hong Kong

Once we arrived we breezed through immigration, luggage pickup and customs. The excellent express train whisks you directly to Central HK in under 25 minutes.