October 9, 2012

Breakfast at the hotel and then we walked down to the Star Ferry.  We took the ferry to Hong Kong Island and walked to the Victoria Peak Tram.  Lots of skyscrapers today.  Everything is clean, efficient, and well-signed.  We rode the tram up to Victoria Peak (about 1200') and wandered around there for a while, looked at the views and had a snack.  The weather was warm and quite foggy.  A pretty lazy day.  We then took the bus back to the IFC mall to catch the train to the airport. 

 

It has been easy to find our way around.  All the signs are in both Chinese and English, and most people speak English.  There are many of the same fast food places, shops, and brand names that we have in North America.  I have found it to be an interesting combination of Chinese/English, modern/old, etc.

We were back to the airport by about 2 and had an uneventful flight to Kathmandu via Doka, Bangladesh.  I found it physically harder although a much shorter flight than to Hong Kong.  Maybe because I had my feet down the whole way; makes a difference.  

We landed in Kathmandu about 10:30pm.  We couldn't see much coming in as the lights seemed to be more dispersed than in a North American city.  The airport was quite large but we got through quickly.  We changed some money, cleared immigration, picked up our bags and cleared customs.  We already had our visa so that made immigration easy.  Liba was missing both her bags.  But - they were located easily.  They had come through yesterday and were locked up for safe keeping.  It looked like mass confusion for "customs" but we were directed right through and no one looked at anything.  The airport was shockingly busy for that time of night once outside the building.  Crowds of faces pressed up against a big window on the right side.  Roadway and parking lot ahead - people and cars everywhere!  Apparently no one is allowed inside the terminal unless they have a ticket.  So - we went outside and somehow Liba found Sangye.  Squeezed 4 of us, all our luggage + Sangye, helper and driver into a small van and headed to our hotel.  The hotel was closed up by the time we got there so we had to wait for someone to open a door.  As we checked in, porters materialized to carry our bags.  In my case - up four flights of stairs.  My room was basic and small, but clean enough and it had everything I needed.  We can't use the tap water even to clean teeth, so I got a pitcher of water from containers in the hall that have "boiled and filtered" water.  I was asleep in no time (with earplugs) and had a great, if somewhat brief, sleep.