Tubewhore (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tubewhore) wrote,@ 2007-10-05 09:52:00 |
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| Entry tags: | airport tation, central station, tsing yi station, tubewhore goes east |
Tubewhore in the Far East
Left Heathrow mid-afternoon on Monday and arrive in Hong Kong at 7am local time Tuesday after an 11 hour flight taking us 8 hours into the future. The difficult part from the point of view of our body clocks is that the eight hours we lost going out was the part of the day usually spent asleep, so we are deposited in a strange city with that feeling of dislocation and hyper-reality of jet lag and culture shock. One of the main shocks is just how smoothly the arrival and transit through customs/baggage control turns out to be - beautifully efficient - and we stumble through to the MTR where smiling staff sell us a four day tourist pass that gives unlimited use of the MTR network. This pentrates my fogged brain and makes me very happy.
How sad is it, that here I am in one of the most exciting cities in the world and I want to spend my limited time here playing on a new Underground. As we ride in to town on the airport express I study my new map. I find myself referring to 'the Central Line' and the 'District Line' instead of the Tseun Wan Line or the Kwun Tong Line due to the red and green colourings, but it helps me to grasp something I recognise.
The train goes above ground, and outside is dazzling sunshine as we pull through stunning scenes of verdant tropical islands lush with vegetation and sparkling water. Sleep deprivation gives everything a hyper-real glow beyond the natural gorgeousness already out there. The line crosses onto an island, where we change at Tsing Yi to pick up the Tung Chung Line to Hong Kong station. (I'll edit in pictures later as they haven't been uploaded yet)
This proves to be a slight cock-up as that involves rather a long walk between Hong Kong station and Central where we are to met our host, Sarah at 8am so she can get us back to the flat before she goes to work. But hell, we're in bloody Hong Kong, HONG KONG!!! And brain-fogged as we are, here we are working it out...I am most pleased at our derring-do attitude. 'Met us at the airport? No fear, we're intelligent adults, we'll work it out'. And we do.
We realise just how big Central station is, and the multiple choice of exits, and a slight hysteria follows as we have no idea where Sarah might be in the steadily increasing tide of morning commuters. I find that one way to comprehend the situation is to compare it to getting lost in the Bank-Monument complex. Understanding through analogy.Grabbing at anything recognisable we are astounded to find a Pret a Manger in the station. Ah, the horrors of globalisation; why travel when everything here, you have back home. But it gives us a landmark, and thankfully B finds Sarah's mobile number on his laptop and we manage to find a payphone and after the hilarity of there being two Pret a Mangers in Central, eventually a familiar blonde figure approaches and whisks us out of the aircondtioned cool into the craziness of a Hong Kong rush hour, and a tramride to Happy Valley.
I'm trying to listen as Sarah points out important landmarks, such as her office for meeting her later, but brain is too excited, too overwrought. Walking out into Hong Kong is staggering - not least the heat which is like opening the oven door when roasting pork, steamy and tantalising. Everything swims in unreality and overloaded with the differences, the colour, the energy. And the whole of this wonderful newness edged with the peculiar exagerration and feeling of being in motion when still that jetlag coats your senses with.
...time for a nap and a shower, and to process that we really have made it, and as an aside have knocked out three stations already.
