Last Day in Hongkers - Attack of the Zombie Sleeping Patterns...

I did it again. I woke up at 3am (after going to sleep at midnight the previous night)... I was feeling rather sh##ful and thought perhaps the best solution would be to read the travel guide to send me to sleep - but alas it didn't work.

I finally managed to get to sleep about 5ish and was woken up at 8:30 when someone knocked on my front door (I hadn't left the Do Not Disturb sign on the front door - there are first times for everything).

It took a little while to pack my stuff. I had bought an extra bag with me so I could bring back two checked bags into Australia with lots of shopping - so this morning was a little bit like a bag explosion. The TV in the hotel was pretty dodgy - there was only about 2 channels - both of which were playing the Super Bowl (Gridiron. Slowest. Game. Ever.) Perhaps they were trying to be conservative with their half-time entertainment choice - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers... Imagine if there was another wardrobe malfunction with Tom Petty... ewww gross.

I head downstairs to the "Worlds. Best. Breakfast" (cough!) - the Evergreen Hotel's breakfast but the room was absolutely chockers. The women attendants marked off my room card (saying that I had had breakfast) - and were going to plonk me on some stranger's table (no free tables). Given the quality of the food here - and the cheapness of food elsewhere - I decide to bail and head outside - find a noodle shop - and have a a Wonton Noodle Soup and tea - which put my faith back into Hong Kong food. I just find it funny though that they always seem to put singles at the most depressing tables (I was situtated behind the cashier facing some boxes). Out of sight - out of mind.

I get back to the hotel and finish my bag explosion packing and take full advantage of the relatively late midday checkout. Before checking out - I quickly check my bank account details on the free internet - wanting to find out whether or not I've paid for the hotel or not. I had used Hotelclub.net to book the room and their website was confusing as all hell as to whether I had paid or not. After about 15 minutes of manic searching - I found out that I have been charged for the room under some dodgy non-related name in my credit card statement...

So I check out - get my $100HK deposit back from them (oohh retro - deposits at hotels) - leave my bags there and head down to the Space Museum (I was getting desperate for activities!) only to find that I was too early for a Monday (they don't open until 1pm). So just to get my shopping out of my system - I go down to Ocean Terminal and buy a couple of DVDs.

Back to the Space Museum - I buy admission (for a cheap $10HK - less than $2AUD peoples) and just to do something really tacky - I buy a $35HK ($5AUD) ticket to their Planetarium show - Exploring the Black Hole. No - it wasn't a dodgy gay porno but a movie about the space black holes.

Since my session didn't start till 2pmish - I checked out the Space Museum first. Now space museums aren't normally my sort of thing. I remember Ant dragging me around the Smithsonian Space Museum in D.C - probably the bee's-knees of space museums - and me getting fairly bored. The HK museum was no different than the Smithsonian (in terms of me getting bored) - it was a fairly tired old museum with a lot of the hands on stuff either broken or non-functional. It was a little busier than the Art Gallery - but most people seemed to think it was all a bit lame. There was a "congo-line of suck hole" exhibit on the Chinese Space Program which was boring. I was a bit pishy because I was too tall to do the moonwalk (not the Michael Jackson variety - but the HK Space Museum "strapped into a harness and pretend to moon walk" variety) and the virtual hang glider simulator (not sure what hanggliding has to do with space exploration?).

I rocked up to the Planetarium theatre (everytime I say "Planetarium" - I do so without pronouncing the "t" - just like the South Park episode... "You liikkke the Plane-arium!" - I sat down in my designated rich beetch seat (I had forked out for the good seats - not the nosebleed section seats). All the chairs are in a reclined fashion - so you are looking at the ceiling. Becaue the show was in Cantonese - there are a pair of headphones where you can choose the appropriate language track (either English, Japanese or Mandarin (i think!)) - so it was a bit like attending a UN summit with everyone wearing headphones. The show itself was kinda impressive in a "IMAX" sort of way - a mix of computer graphics and movies were projected upon the roof of the Plane-arium and it was quite prrudy. Although the movie got rather bogged down in explaining the physics of black holes - especially when it started to flash up large and complicated equations (eg: r = GM over c-squared when G is the formula for general relatively and c is the circumfernce of the black hole... don't quote me on any of this stuff).

After my plane-arium experience - I wandered around HK's Galaxy of Stars Parade - think Hollywood Boulevard but with HK and Chinese stars as opposed to Hollywood ones. Despite having a couple of HK films in my video-ezy sized DVD collection - I hadn't heard of most of these people - although most of the crowds were surrounding the star-signs of the popular "Western" stars including Bruce Lee, Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li and Jacky Chan. It wasn't at all surprising to see no handprints for Bruce Lee.

I head over to the eastern side of Nathan Road and find another cheap - but classier noodle place and get a Canton-style soup for $18HK. Although this was the first place I've been to where they don't serve you chinese tea - it was pretty good.

I had a bit of HK$ left to spend and head back to the cool mall that I had been to the previous night in an attempt to buy a cool t-shirt with "bling shark teeth" that I had liked. When I got there - I tried it on - and it didn't pass the "I can see your nipples thru the t-shirt test" - so I passed on buying the shirt and just headed back to the hotel and collected my bags.

Although it was about 5ish - the MRT to Tsing Yi was nowhere near as busy as I thought it would be (as the train is heading outbounds - and I thought all the commuter traffic would be heading in the same direction).

Tsing Yi train station is a little bit like a multistory labyrinth - but as this was about the 6th time I've visited it - I'm starting to get used to it. I managed to get a couple of seats all to myself on the Airport Express - where they were flogging the recently opened HK Disney Land - where "Mickey is going all Chinese crazy with the Chinese New Year of the Rat".

I was a little worried that I'd have a repeat performance of my Heathrow/Venice airport experiences (eg: arrive way too early to check in) - but there were check-in's open and the nice lady at the Qantas Club line gave me an exit row + aisle (my dream seat).

After going thru security - I still had $300HK left (about $45ishAUD). I found that the price for Bombay Saphire was fairly cheap here ($18AUD as compared with $25AUD on Qantas Duty-Free) - so I grab a bottle and take it to the counter - where the woman demanded to see my boarding pass. I pull out both my boarding passes (one to Brisbane and one to Canberra) - she sees the Canberra one and goes "you are not allowed to transfer with duty free bottles". I didn't see what the big deal was and said back to her "but I'm only transferring within Australia - this is my last international flight!". But she wouldn't hear it - so I stormed off - and immediately picked up another bottle off the shelf and proceeded to another check in counter - this time only armed with my Brisbane boarding pass. The woman ask me - "Are you transferring?" - and I reply no and I then buy the bottle... I buy a CD that I didn't really want (French Electro House CD) but it was the only other thing I could think of that I might possibly want at the airport. Everything here is more expensive than back in town (the CD was $130HK - when you can pick them up in town for about $100HK) but the bottle of gin was cheap so I can't complain - plus I got rid of all my money.