Getting soaked in the city

Leaving the hotel without an umbrella - very unwise.

The plane landed in Hong Kong in the early morning, so early that the inter-airport train to take the passengers from the terminal to the baggage area hadn't yet started running. On the dot at 6am, the train arrived. After a bit of head-scratching, I found the bus to take me to the hotel and was soon in my room, 18 floors up. I'd treated myself to a posh room seeing as I was by myself, having left Fred to explore New Zealand further. I gazed out of the window at the haze. Hmmm... not a good day to explore the high places so no cable cars for me today. Instead, I ventured out to the underground. I felt lucky that I'm used to city life as buying tickets and dealing with crowds was just second-nature. I found navigating Hong Kong much easier than I expected - it felt British in its order of things. One dislike I had when wandering around was the number of sleazy blokes who were salesmen - one after another would sidle up to me as I walked and try to sell me stuff. After mistakenly being polite to the first one, I gave my best London cold shoulder to the others.

I walked through Kowloon Park, watching the Tai Chi folk. Then wandered down to the harbour where I had a cake and caught a Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island. It started to teem down with rain. Waiting for a break in the rain (it never came), I snapped these folk crossing the road in the financial district. I envied their umbrellas. I'd left mine in the hotel and had only a raincoat. I couldn't find any umbrellas for sale anywhere. Oh well. I found a lovely restaurant and had a cream cheese and tomato curry with the most amazing jasmine tea. I then walked to the zoo and then the aviary where I got more wet. The birds were also drenched. It was just me and the birds - no one else was mad enough to visit the aviary in the rain. The tea museum was dry, but I couldn't partake of the tea because I hadn't booked. Grrr.

I went back to the hotel, dried off and watched telly with a massive coffee and a huge bag of sweet pretzels.