China Family Trip - Back to Hong Kong

Aah, back to Hong Kong and civilization. I'm here on my 7-hour layover before flying home to LAX. Even though it's supposed to be a part of China, Hong Kong is different, at least the airport. Just at the CX lounge, there's non-spicy food, air conditioning, unblocked Internet, and hot showers (more on that later). I can only take so much bad air and rude people before wanting to go home. Speaking of rude, there's an Indian guy in the next lounge "cubicle" playing some sitar music out loud... oh well.

I'm parked in my usual corner at the Cathay lounge near Gate 3. Unlike other trips, it's actually bright and sunny outside and the sun won't go down for awhile. I really want to take a trip into town and go up on Victoria Peak. However, I heard that the temperature outside is 33°C and probably 100% humidity so I'm hiding out in the lounge. Maybe next trip in November. I also missed an awesome photo opportunity coming in from Chengdu. I usually sit in an aisle seat but this time I sat in seat A which is the left window seat. The flight path into Hong Kong took us around Hong Kong and Kowloon and you could see all the crazy tall buildings. I blew it though by taking my camera out too early and getting busted by a stewardess (cute one though). If I had waited until they all sat down, I would have got some good shots. :(


"Put the camera away." At least she remembered that I don't speak Cantonese.

Anyway, the Chengdu portion of the trip was mostly work. My parents and I arrived in Chengdu on Tuesday (9/1) night on our delayed Air China flight (on a borrowed Macau Airlines plane). Since it was late, we took separate taxis. It was hot and humid and the taxi line was crazy long. In any kind of line in China, there's always people trying to cut in and this was no different. There was one couple that ignored about 20 people telling them there was a line and jumped into a waiting taxi. Sigh...

The only sightseeing I did in Chengdu was when my sister and Rebecca came to Chengdu after their Tibet trip. We spent a couple of hours in the Giant Panda Research Station just outside of town near the Chengdu zoo. It was pretty cool since we got to see three pandas playfighting for about 30 minutes. The rest of the time we stayed near their hotel on Chunxi Road. They're in Guilin now and will head out to Hong Kong in a few days.