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!