This was my second time in Chek Lap Kok airport, the first was 3 weeks ago Hokkaido-bound. The last time I visited HK, Kai Tak was still the airport, i.e. quite a long time ago. I was therefore curious about what HK was like now, and also intended to undergo some retail and food therapy after Hokkaido.
HK International Airport is very impressive and efficient, and you can read all about it from the links, but I'll continue with my trip. As soon as I walked out of the terminal, the humidity hit me. Mercifully the temperature was around 26C, down from the 30s a few weeks ago. On the bus I overheard a Cantonese couple bantering and a group of American girls chatting in their nasal accents. You notice when your mind tries to make sense of overheard sentences, which it couldn't do in Japan, so it just relaxed.
The airport bus dropped me in Mongkok about ½ hour later. You notice right away that even though it's night, it's as bright as day due to the artificial light of hundreds of advertising signs and shop lights. And even though it's around 2200, the streets were thronged with a mass of humanity walking, talking, looking, working, nattering away into their mobiles, or texting.
It took a little time to find the entrance to the building for the hostel because the street signs are non-existent or hard to find; the locals just know what street they are on. The hostel rooms are actually rooms within apartments. Thus a hostel may span many apartments within the high-rise. Down near the harbour, in Tsim Sha Tsui, is Chungking Mansions, synonymous in the backpacker dictionary with cheap to tolerable dives. I had picked Mongkok to be closer to the shopping action. The room's just under twice the width of the bed, but has air-conditioning and an attached bathroom/toilet so small that when I shower the spray wets the seat.
You don't want to look too closely at the back streets and other dark corners of HK or you will get sanitary revulsion. That's the price of the extreme population density of HK.
Except for the bilingual signs, HK airport transit could be in any modern airport in the world. As we had landed around 0505, the terminals were fairly deserted and the people there were waiting for transfers. The shops were not open. There are still temperature sensing cameras at the gateways, a reminder of the SARS epidemic and later the avian flu alerts that gripped HK. HK airport has free WiFi and I used it to pass some time.
The Cathay Pacific planes were quite new and there is even a power socket at each seat where you can charge your computer or MP3 player. However the air conditioning was set too cold on the leg to HK and too warm on the leg to Sapporo. It was very hot and humid outside HK airport, I think it was 34C and I could see the haze in the air. I could feel the blast through the gaps in the airbridge as I alighted. I felt sorry for anybody who had to be outside. Unfortunately that might be me in 3 weeks' time.
Sapporo Airport is spotless, you could have a meal on the floor. An interesting piece of trivia is that many of the signs in the international terminal have Russian and Korean which says something about the visitors they get. The first order of business was to get some cash from an ATM. It took a while to locate the machines. But they wouldn't give me any money. Finally I figured out that I must be asking above my daily limit so I dropped the number a bit and the cash came. Not obvious from the error message. What a waste of time. But whew!
I also noticed that one of the languages the ATM knew was Portuguese. What's with that? Perhaps for the Brazilian Japanese visiting?
Since Japan has near complete literacy, writing is prominent in public, more so than in the west. This can lead to a feeling of information overload when you can't figure out what the ads are selling. The ticket machines were equally confusing. Fortunately there is usually an English option and I recognised the characters for Sapporo anyway so I got the train without problems.
Japanese train stations are also shopping centres since many people have to pass through it. There were many colourful things for sale but I didn't recognise all of them.
I'll continue the story after arriving in Sapporo in another post or it will be too long.
