Sunday, July 25, 2004

Back already

Oh wow, Hong Kong was fantastic.
It's a change to be back in Moscow after spending a great 15 days in Asia's World City, but a welcome one when considering the climate difference! I'm not exactly the biggest fan of sweltering 33°C days and 90% humidity.

Managed to do so many things while there, and that of course includes adding an impressive and personal record of 15 kgs to my luggage! Ok, so I might have gone a bit mad in the clothes and Sanrio/Hello Kitty shops, but I ain't regretting nothing.

In true Asian fashion, I of course took somewhere in the region of 200 photos while there, however, my FotoGallerie has decided to go on strike for the time being (all it displays is 'Under Construction').

Monday, July 12, 2004

Hong Kong

WOW

All I can say about this place after being here a whole week now.
From the stepping off the plane into the incredible airport to the sheer size of the endless high-rises, this place is just hard to believe.

So, I left Moscow on Sunday evening and boarded yet another Aeroflot plane, although this time a shiny new Boeing 767-300, leather seats and all, although if you ask me, leather seats aren't very comfortable on a nearly 10hr flight! The flight was actually very pleasant, and totally up to international standards, alas the food was a somewhat updated version of the normal Russian inflight cuisine. The choice for dinner being 'Chicken or Meat', I guess chicken ain't no meat in the eyes of my friends in the friendly skies of Aeroflot. But they did do a good job, and this being a night-flight, nearly everybody was asleep, except of course yours truly, who knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep, took a couple of sleeping tablets which of course didn't work, as I think I slept a grand total of 15 minutes during the flight.
The next 10 hours passed by, certainly felt like 10hrs in the end, but flying into Hong Kong wasn't much of a spectacle, mostly cloudy as it was.
Hong Kong International Airport is however, a simple marvel. Absolutely huge, and beautifully designed. And this being Hong Kong, ever so efficient. I finally saw the friendly faces of my homegirls Jay and Esther, and her sister Claire, within 15 minutes of touching down.
I am waiting for the day any other major airport will rival that, if ever!

Then began the trip of this summer (I won't give it the title of 'Trip of the Year', since Turkmenistan is still up there, although I'll happily put it and HK as joint winners of that title).

On my first day (this being the day I arrived in HK in the morning), we managed to visit 4 shopping centres, which really set the tone for every day since then, although we have of course been doing cultural 'stuff' too! The thing about shopping centres is though, that they are an oasis of coolness, considering they are all well air-conditioned, and provide such a good shelter from the stifling temperatures of 'the outside world', and the ever-increasing humidity. Not mentioning of course, that HK has an absolutely endless array of shopping centres, from the small ones attached to every MTR (metro) station to the massive 700 shop ones (the ones so big that you might just get lost in and take you 30mins to find your way out of... yes, been there!). They are simply all over the place.
Oh, and on the first day we of course ate... a big thing here that is, eating.
First we had lunch at a massive dim-sum place in the mall under Jay's appartment tower (I say tower because it ain't no block, being 49 floors high!), then tea/snack at a Taiwanese coffee shop (Saint's Alp Teahouse, all over this place) and finally dinner at the Beijing Noodle House, where lovely Judy joined us. All of those places of course located in different shopping malls.
 
The girls prepared a list of things I 'need' to see while here, and I've added some aswell, like Macau and 'Mainland' China, aswell as an entry called 'More shopping'. 
 
Temples, shopping centres, tourist traps, more shopping centres, karaoke factory (wouldn't say bar because, well, it ain't a bar, as that place had a gazillion rooms for your personal karaoke enjoyment), stupid Mandarin people, even more shopping and loads more have been done in a mere week (ummm... for the record, no stupid Mandarin person has actually been 'done').

I'll be writing more about Asia's World City once I get back to Moscow... far too busy here to be honest la!

Sunday, July 04, 2004

St Petersburg

Decided to take a shirt trip to this wonderful city on Friday morning (that's when I left, not when I decided to go la!). So yea, left my house in Moscow early Friday morning for an Aeroflot flight which also marked my first time on a Tupolev 154. That's an airplane... Made in Russia :) Kinda like a Boeing 727, with all the 3 engines at the back, one each on both sides of the fuselage, and then one on top of it. Anyway, it was a nice and uneventful flight.
Landed at St Petersburg's Pulkovo I Airport exactly an hour after taking off from Moscow and was met by Asgeir, an Icelandic student in Petersburg, who was kind enough to let me stay at his place for the night in his extra bedroom which his flatmate had left a few days earlier.
Basicly the trip was wonderful and I was shown just about everything there is to see in the city by Asgeir and Frol, who were fantastic hosts. That included a boatride around the famous canals, The Hermitage museum, which is just massive and if I hadn't had them to guide me through it I'd probably still be wandering the halls and rooms of that palace today!

Umm... what else could I say.
Well, I'm really glad that I decided to go see the place for myself, as I'd always wanted to go, but somehow always let my habit of procrastinating get in the way (membership in that club is free by the way, and oh so easy to fall into it's habits!), but having finally been is great, as I'd sometimes thought I'd just give it a miss since I wouldn't be missing anything (all Russian cities are the same, innit?!). But St Pete's is VERY different from Moscow. First, the buildings in the centre are much lower, so you can actually enjoy the views and the sun gets to shine on the sidewalks (you could view that as being both negative and positive though, but I found it very nice), and it seems more relaxed, and yes, European in a way, but still Russian (in a nice way though!).
So I definitely recommend going there, and as always, pictures will be posted when I've got time (ie, when I'm back from HongKong la!).