Hong Kong

First look at Hong Kong airport was quite interesting. First thing I saw when we walked into the airport was the “Temperature police” (Let me explain). The first thing we saw as we walked into the airport was a woman dressed like a police officer but instead of a gun, she had a thermometer gun. We observed her conduct a couple of random temperature checks. Lol I guess she picks on people that appear to be “ill”. I saw her call a bald guy over and checked his temperature. Behind her was a kiosk that read “temperature kiosk” and then “Alert personnel or wear a surgical mask if you think you may be ill or have symptoms of the avian flu”. Wow! (Now it makes sense why almost half of Asians wear surgical masks on daily like it’s a trend) I had never seen anything like that before. They take this avian flu thing way too serious. Lindy and I were trying so hard not to get called for our temperatures by avoiding eye contact, almost like how you avoid eye contact with a teacher so you do not get called to answer the question that you do not have an answer to.

Lindy and I ended up waiting in the airport for 2 hours before Chloe arrived. It was now time to find transport to our hotel. We had hotel reservations at JW Marriott in downtown Hong Kong. We considered taking the bus to save on money but we had too many baggages and were not familiar with the area so we ended up in the taxi line. Prior to heading to the taxi line, we saw the prices of a taxi fare to downtown which was 120 HKD (about $16). There are different taxis that service different parts of Hong Kong. So our unlucky self ended up with an asshole as a cabdriver. We are not sure if he really did not speak English or he was pretending not to speak English. He was very rude when the taxi conductor told him where we were headed. He gave us a very dirty look and appeared pissed about having to take us. (Not sure why) He ushered us into the cab with that “get out of my face gesture”. We assumed it was not personal so we got into the taxi. The drive to downtown was about 45 minutes. We went through 3 tolls booths before arriving. Each time we passed a toll, the driver would enter some numbers into the meter. I kept thinking to myself, “how are we supposed to know whether he was entering the right numbers?”. Forty-five minutes later, he said we had arrived and our fare was 300 HKD. We were like “wtf?”. We attempted several times to ask him why that price when it was supposed to be 120 HKD but each time, he pointed to the meter and said 300 HKD as if he didn’t understand anything we were saying. I wanted to fight it but Chloe and Lindy didn’t so we paid the price he told us. After we paid, he tried kicking us out of the taxi without even helping to get our bags out of the trunk. Lindy does not play that nonsense so she cursed him out real good even though he “didn’t” understand English. I am sure he could read her body language. He took off so fast after we removed our bags as if he was being chased. There was no sign for our hotel. Apparently he had dropped us off in the back of the building.

After getting lost in this huge building several times, we were finally able to get to the hotel for check-in. Chloe went to check in because the hotel was in her name. Thirty minutes later, she was still at the check-in counter. What was taking so long? Lindy went to check. Apparently, the reservation that Chloe had booked was not valid. Chloe had a Marriot employee book the hotel for us using his friends and family discount. Chloe had the paperwork and everything to verify the booking but the attendants kept saying it was not valid. Chloe then asked if she could start another reservation with them. The attendant that she was working with her told her the price would be 3x more than the previous one. At this point, we were tired, hungry and very annoyed so we didn’t care whether it was 3x more than the previous booking. As soon as she started working on the new reservation, her supervisor came by and said something to her in mandarin. She then told Chloe that she was advised not to start a new reservation for us. “WTF?” She could not give us any good reason for that. It was now 8:00 pm. Our phones were dead and we were hungry. We asked if we could store our bags with them while we go eat in one of the hotel restaurants. They said we had to be guests. So we asked if we could use their outlet to charge our phones so we could find another hotel. They again said we had to be guests. OMG! What kind of treatment is this? These people did not want to help us with anything. Oh how we missed Dandy Hotel at this point! We went downstairs to the bell boy table and explained our situation to them. Surprisingly, they were very sympathetic and offered to store our bags until we were done eating. On our way to the restaurant which was located upstairs, we met an American man on the elevator. We asked him about nearby hotels. He gave us a few recommendations and started hitting on us. We were not pleased especially after what we had been through. Luckily for us, the servers at the restaurant were nicer than the hotel attendants. They were able to charge our phones for us while we devoured their buffet. The food was not that great especially at the price but we did not have any other choice so we ate like we had not eaten for days. With a little battery juice on our phone, we got on Priceline.com in search for a hotel. We found a great deal and booked the harbor plaza hotel in Kowloon part of Hong Kong. Priceline usually have discounted hotels after 5:00 pm due to people who fail to check-in for their hotel reservations past the check-in time. Priceline is a good resource for last minute hotels.

Our cab driver to the hotel was very nice and totally different from the previous one. He spoke very good English so we engaged him in our conversation. We told him about our experience with the previous driver. He was very nice and gave us advice on “taking a cab”. Some of his pointers were, don’t pay the taxi fare until you and all your belongings are out of the taxi, and always confirm the fare by asking a local when you arrive at your location. Where had this cab driver been all our lives? We arrived at our hotel 20 minutes later. The night view of the hotel was decent and the inside looked nice as well. Check-in was painless. Our room was decent looking. It was a Standard size for a hotel room. It was now around 10 pm. We were hammered! It was a complete waste of a day. We showered and went to bed. We planned to start our day very early the next day since we were not able to do anything. More to come!

#HongKong #China #Asia