We left SF about 1-30 am. I’d already changed my watch to Hong Kong time, which was 4-30pm. The problem with flying across the Pacific is not just the long flight but that your biological clock gets thrown out of whack as well. Given it was another 2 hours to Houston time from SF this means I’m 11 hours out when I land. Unlike the trip the other way where you tend to stay up as long as possible then go to sleep, on the way back you try and sleep as much as possible. It will be 6am when we land, so the 1-30 to 6am “by the clock” night is about 13 ½ hours long.
Fortunately Cathay has installed the new business class sleepers on this plane and I was again in the upstairs cabin. Each “seat” is more or less a J-shape and the seat folds back to horizontal. A bit better than the Qantas capsules. I was able to get about 8 hours sleep and then and other 2 or 3 where I was lying down with my eyes closed, hopefully getting a few naps in. I still feel like crap and, amazing but true, couldn’t even eat all my breakfast. I have had a mild but persistent headache, which doesn’t help. Unlike Qantas, they didn’t supply us with PJs and it was too hot with my jeans on so I took them off. There was no one up on my occasional trips to the loo and my T shirt was fairly long anyway.
The seat has a quite large LCD screen – the biggest individual screen I’ve seen on any plane so far. It’s about the same size as this laptop, which is 15.4”. It seems a shame not to have watched more movies, although I did watch a couple of TV show episodes over breakfast. They are calling us to turn of laptops now.
We landed on time and there was virtually no queue at passport control. However for some reason the guy checking mine called his supervisor to check something. It was OK in the end but it took a few minutes for the process. My bags were off in the first couple of dozen and were put through the X ray machine by security. I didn’t see whether they were doing it for all westerners or random people but some other passengers had walked straight through.
This is my first time in the new airport and it is very clean modern and efficient. I took the MTR train to town, which is very smooth and fast. They even have a row of lights in the arch over the passageway showing you your progress. The sun was just coming up and there was mist on the hills. The new airport is on a different Island and we passed through several tunnels under the harbour on our journey, which took 24 minutes. They security mess on the windows interferes with taking a good shot unfortunately.
A taxi ride to the hotel cost about $3 and fortunately they were able to check me in early. The room was stifling – nearly 30 degrees and I stripped off and got the aircon working. The room is (shall we say) compact. There’s not much storage space and the bed fill most of the floor space. The bathroom is also a model of efficiency (ie small).
It does have a decent sized TV, with heaps of movies to choose from, with 5-speaker surround sound. I just put the TV on, lay day on the bed and had another 4 hours sleep. It’s now 2 and I have had a shower, called my Mensa contact who will hopefully have an email for me later with details for dinner, checked emails and updated the blog. I suppose I should get out and do some sightseeing, shopping or whatever.
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