Hong Kong

The adventure continues in the essential coolest city on the planet. Why do I call it the coolest city? Where else in the world can you see blocks of 40 storey skyskrapers lining the water front while lush green mountains are a minutes drive away?

We landed in Hong Kong around 2:30 and encountered the strangest turn of events ever. After standing in line for about 45 minutes to clear immigration and get our awesome NINETY day visitor visa we headed to customs.

For a comparison, no matter who you are when you enter Canada you proceed through immigration and customs to declare your goods and all of that other fun stuff. Same goes for Brunei, you can't enter the country with out going through a rigorous customs check.

When you enter Hong Kong, you have two options:

1. “Something to declare” - this is the area you enter if you have ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms) in your luggage that you want to tell them about.
2. “Nothing to declare” - this is the area you enter if you have nothing to tell them.

We didn't have anything in our luggage that they needed declaration so we went to the “Nothing to declare” option and rounded the corner and to our sudden surprise we found ourselves.... in Hong Kong.

That was it. Nothing to it. Made me feel like trying to smuggle something into the country without having to tell them about it.

Our next line standing adventure continued after we found our hotel transfer desk (which was B2 and not B3 like their own website mentioned.) we paid for our transfer $130 each [but thats in HK dollars = $17 Canadian]. They told us to go over to the sitting area and wait for the bus which was leaving in 25 minutes. We waited.

A fellow in a bright orange shirt came over and got 30 or 40 people and said “'Tention please. 'Tention please. Follow me.” and turned to walk through the mass of people packed into the arrivals terminal to take us to the bus.

Once we reached the other terminal he pointed us towards another set of benchs and said, “Wait here.” Over the next 20 minutes they proceeded to call people by their hotels to a number of buses, about 5 in total. We, naturally were on of the last hotels to be called.

Then the adventure really began. When we first landed in HK I had taken close to 50 pictures the entire trip. Since getting on the bus, I have taken close to 200 pictures, with the promise of even more tomorrow.