The Long Journey To Hong Kong

Shortly after waking up on Thursday morning I tried to check-in for my flight and received an error message saying online check-in was not available and I would need to check-in at the airport.  I didn’t really think much of this until I checked the Perth Airport departure list an hour before we planned to leave for the airport and my flight wasn’t listed, that’s when I started to completely freak out. I tried again to check-in online and now received an error message saying my booking could not be found.  My stress level immediately skyrocketed. I called Jet Star and their automated system told me that my flight had left the day before. Now I was stressed and pissed off. I waited online for a real person for what felt like forever before being told they were experience some technical difficulties and I had not missed my flight but they could not explain why my flight wasn’t showing up on the departure list at the airport, they did however assure me the flight did exist and I was booked onto it. This did little to calm my nerves and I was a giant ball of stress the whole way to the airport.

The drive to the airport was much shorter than the drive from the airport as there were no fires in the area so at least I didn’t have the added stress of thinking I might miss my flight, if it even existed. There was a bit of a detour thanks to some construction but we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Luckily the departures board at the airport had accurate information (unlike the online version) and a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I checked in, dropped my bags, and sighed in relief, but the hard part wasn’t over yet, I still had to say goodbye to Jesse. We sat down in a café and chatted for a bit in attempt to delay the inevitable but eventually the time came and with tears in my eyes I gave him the biggest hug ever and said goodbye. Hopefully it won’t be our last goodbye and we can continue to visit each other in years to come.

I made it through security and immigration with no problems. I was on a streak! 5 trips through airport security without being randomly selected for additional screening! I normally always get picked for the weird residue check they do to see if you’ve been manufacturing drugs or bombs, I guess I just have one of those faces. Things went slightly downhill from here. I need to stop booking budget airlines to save a few dollars. Especially if it means taking an overnight flight on the most uncomfortable plane ever and being in transit for way longer than I needed to be. I’m getting too old for that shit!

The first leg of my journey was a 5-hour flight to Singapore with no meals and no in-flight entertainment. All of this would have been fine if I had been able to get some sleep but no luck there. I was actually falling asleep during taxi and a flight attendant woke me and told me I needed to move my pillow. Stupid jerk! After that I just couldn’t get comfortable. The plane was so ghetto it didn’t even have an adjustable headrest, which would have been super helpful. I spent the rest of that flight wishing I was a dolphin because they sleep in 30 second bursts through the day and somehow manage to function. However since I am not a dolphin I wanted to cry by the time I arrived at Singapore airport.

Singapore airport is meant to be one of the coolest airports around. It even has a butterfly conservatory! I had a 4-hour layover and before boarding the plan I was hoping to get enough sleep to be able to go exploring during that time but it just wasn’t in the cards. I found a row of chairs with no arm rests and curled up in a ball while spooning my backpack. It was magical. I got about two hours of sleep. I did wake up a fair few times during that two hours but it was still a million times better than the sleep I got on the plane.

The next leg of the journey was pretty amazing even though it was still a crappy, uncomfortable plane. The reason it was so amazing, I had a whole row to myself! I almost screamed in delight when they closed the door and I knew for sure no one was sitting with me. As soon as the seatbelt sign got turned off I stretched out over the three seats and drifted off to sleep for about 3 hours. I woke up feeling refreshed but thirsty and since I wasn’t paying stupid amounts of money to buy a drink on the stupid plane that feeling lasted a while.

Getting from the airport to the hostel was surprisingly easy. I was expecting this to be the most challenging part of the journey but it wasn’t at all. The line up for immigration moved quickly and there was essentially no line at customs as long as you had nothing to declare. I collected my bag, grabbed some money from the ATM and made my way to the bus stop outside. The bus displayed which stop was coming up next, making me very happy. I’m always nervous about taking buses because if you don’t know where you are it is very easy to miss your stop so I usually try to take trains instead. I did have the option of taking a train but the bus was way cheaper so I was glad I didn’t end up regretting this decision. From the bus it was a two-minute walk and I was at the hostel. Fantastic because I was still pretty exhausted.

I made my way to the 14^th floor and rung the bell of the hostel. The receptionist let me and told me to put my bags down and have a seat in the lounge and he would be with me in a minute he just needed to get someone else checked in first. 20 minutes later I was still sat in the lounge waiting and growing impatient. I went back to reception and asked if he was ready for me yet and he admitted that he had completely forgotten about me. I was not overly surprised by this news but I was surprised when he offered me a free bottle of water as an apology. Thanks homie.

The rest of the night was pretty low-key and consisted of dinner and sleep. I had originally planned to spend my first full day in Hong Kong at Disney Land but I started to rethink that once I got here. It is the smallest Disney Park in the world and it is still pretty expensive. I didn’t want to go over budget like I did in Fiji and Australia so I decided to give it a miss.

It was raining when I woke up so I wasn’t in a real hurry to go anywhere. I grabbed some breakfast and started wandering aimlessly.  I ended up at the Avenue Of Stars, Hong Kong’s version of the Walk Of Fame. I didn’t see a single name I recognized, there were a lot of Asian tourists going pretty crazy over the whole thing though. From there I continued to walk along the waterfront until I got to the ferry port. I slowly made my way back to the hostel poking my head into any interesting looking shops I passed along the way.

 I had a bit of a nap when I got back to the hostel and when I woke up the rain had stopped. I checked the forecast and the next few days were not looking very promising as far as sunshine was concerned so I decided to start doing stuff I had been putting off due to the weather and made my way to Victoria Peak. This was a horrible plan. While things had started to clear up at sea level they weren’t so lovely up a mountain. Between the clouds and the pollution I couldn’t see a single thing and was pretty pissed at myself for wasting money.

I was not very happy with myself at this point and decided to take a walk through Hong Kong Park to try to cheer myself up a bit. The park was quite pretty but I ended up getting pretty lost.  I kept wandering and eventually ended up at a metro station, not the one I was looking for but I was able to get home from there so I was still happy to find it.

Later in the evening I made my way to the night markets on Temple Street. I love going to markets even though I never buy anything so I was pretty stoked to check this out. I was pretty disappointed when I got there though. No one was selling anything homemade or even unique really, and there was no real street food. Everyone was selling phone cases and chargers, or belts and bags. I always expect to see some of these stalls but usually the handmade stuff makes it worth it. There were quite a few fortunetellers around the outskirts of the market and I was tempted to have my fortune told but I decided letting a gypsy know that I was travelling solo probably wasn’t in my best interest. Plus while I don’t think they would have given me accurate information about my life if they told me anything negative it probably would have stressed me out and I’m trying to keep things light these days.

I tried to find some yummy dinner but Hong Kong is obsessed with seafood and I live on the very opposite end of that spectrum. If it came from the ocean I don’t want anything to do with it. A few restaurants had there seafood in buckets on the street, doesn’t that scream health code violation to you? So I ended up grabbing something at a grocery store and made my way back to the hostel for the night.

This post got long fast so I think I will wrap things up now and leave my adventures from today for my next post. Peace out boys and girls J

Adelaide to WA

Sorry folks, just as I was getting caught up I dropped the ball and fell even further behind. In my defence the whole reason I went back to Australia was to catch up with old friends so it’s probably a good thing I was spending time with them and being too cool to update my blog. I will try to do a better job moving forwards but things are probably going to be pretty crazy over the next month so no promises.

It feels like months have past since my last update but in reality it has only been a week or two but it has been pretty action packed! On my first night in Adelaide I had made loose plans to go for dinner with three English guys from my bus tour but I was impatient and starving so I wandered off on my own in search of food and never saw them again. Whoops my bad.

The following day I caught up with my friends Tasha and Preece who I used to work with back in Blackpool. We didn’t get up to a whole lot, we are all on tight budgets and it was a scorcher of a day so we went for a bit of a wander around the city, grabbed some lunch, and hung out at my hostel for a bit. While it wasn’t an overly exciting day it was kind of nice to have a relaxing day after all the hiking and climbing I did the day before and it was awesome to catch up with my former coworkers.

The following day I hopped on a plane to Perth to meet up with Jesse who you may remember from my road trip around Australia and adventures in New Zealand. In my mind this was meant to be the easiest part of this trip but I was wrong. I spent a little over a week with Jesse and his family and the whole thing was a roller-coaster ride.

My flight was delayed and I was so annoyed, I just wanted to get “home” and relax but the universe had other plans. Once I finally arrived at the airport and gave Jesse a massive hug we hopped in his truck and started the drive home. The drive to Jesse’s house from the airport should take about 2 hours; maybe 3 if you hit rush-hour traffic, if there happens to be a bush fire like there was on this particular day then that’s a whole other story. The highway was closed due to heavy smoke and we, along with a million other people were forced to follow a detour route. The roads we were redirected to were not built to carry the amount of traffic that the highway normally would and we were stuck in the biggest traffic jam I have ever seen. It took us close to 8 hours to drive less than 200km. I was completely shattered by the time we finally got home and I wasn’t even the one driving, I felt so bad for Jesse.

The following day was Jesse’s birthday but unfortunately for him before we could celebrate we had a million errands to run. We spent a good chunk of the day crossing items off our to-do lists and I felt a bit bad because it didn’t feel like much of a birthday at all but Jesse said he was fine with it. We did manage to celebrate at dinner though. We went out for Italian with a good chunk of Jesse’s family. The food was good and I had a nice catch up with the family members I hadn’t seen yet.

The next day we woke up bright and early to start the drive to Bremer Bay where we would spend the next several days. One of Jesse’s brothers owns a whale watching company and they started doing a new Killer Whale tour this summer in Bremer Bay so we decided to go check it out, along with several other family members. We drove down in a 5-car caravan and we were lucky enough to a have a hyper 5 year old in the backseat to keep things interesting during the 5-hour drive. Shortly before pulling into Bremer Bay we received word that the boat had broken down and our tour was cancelled, pretty gutting news since I had been looking forward to this trip for quite some time.

The day we were supposed to be on the boat was rainy and cold so we were trapped inside. Did I mention that the house we were staying at had no TV and we had a 5 year old and a 7 year old with us? I would have killed for a TV on that particular day! Later in the day we found out the boat would be fixed and we could go out the following day though this meant we would have to extend our stay by a night but we all decided it would be worth it after a very short conversation.

Now if you have read my blog before you probably know that boats are not my friend as I get seasick but I was hoping this time would be different. I took some (expired) Gravol an hour or two before getting on the boat and hoped for the best. Well I guess I didn’t cross my fingers tight enough because about 10 minutes in I started to puke my guts out. I’ve never gotten sick so quickly before. Or so many times for that matter. After about two hours of puking, dry heaving, and crying, we finally arrived at the area where the whales like to hang out. I managed to find the strength to stand up and do some serious whale watching for a solid 2 minutes before curling up in a ball and going to sleep. Luckily I managed to convince someone to take pictures with my camera before I dozed off.

I was so disappointed at the way the day had turned out. I had figured that even if I did get sick I’d be able to push through it to actually watch the whales but I was so drained by that point it wasn’t even an option. And since I fell asleep in the sun I ended up with a face that looked like a tomato. Not my idea of a good time. I’m glad I got to see a killer whale, actually I saw two or three, but it will be a long time before I ever get on a boat again!

The next day we made our way back to Bunbury (after another drama or two) where I had a nice warm shower and a wonderful sleep in a nice comfy bed. It was glorious. I was not a huge fan of Bremer Bay even before getting sick so I was oh so very happy to be home. The quiet was nice too. After living alone for the last 6 months being in a house with 8 other people for 3 nights was pretty full on.

Jesse and I spent the next few days relaxing, catching up with his family, and getting ready for the next stage of my trip. I am so happy to have Jesse and his family in my life and it was wonderful to spend time with them, even with all the ups and downs and I hope to see them all again some day.

I’m currently sitting in a hostel room in Hong Kong but the story of how I got here will be left for another day. For now I need to get to bed so I’m well rested for my trip to Disney Land tomorrow.