Moving on - Melbourne

Funny thing, long distance air travel. Not just the jet lagged, can't get comfortable endless hours pretending to be asleep funny; it's also that strange disconnect between perception and reality in terms of distance travelled.

So we take the plane from  Hong Kong to Melbourne, via Auckland (don't ask, we don't know). The flight itself is notable for not much - we get seated amongst a group of mostly elderly Chinese tourists, and the gentleman seated in our aisle decides the best way to while away the long night hours is by singing, out loud. This does at least give Sian a last chance to use her mandarin, leaning across to politely ask him to shut the f**k up....anyway! eleven hours later there we are in Auckland, so far from home that if we went any further we'd start coming back. But it's hard to feel it when everything seems so disconcertingly familiar - wandering around an airside mall of tasteful coffee shops and outdoor-boundy kind of places as might be encountered at a retail outlet somewhere deep in the Cotswolds,with the small excepting fact that everyone employed seems to be a kiwi.

This disorientatingly comforting (or comfortingly disorientating) sensation continues after landing in Melbourne - a weird mash-up of mid-west USA and home-counties England, liberally sprinkled with influences from countless other parts of Europe (170 different languages spoken in this city, so we are told). One thing for sure, it isn't Hong Kong. For a start it's way quieter and slower paced, belying its 4.5 million population ( getting on for 20% of Australia's total). People are also incredibly friendly and helpful, bending over backwards to give help and assistance (contrasting with the terse yes or, more often, no, which is all you can often expect in HK). All in all it's a very easy place to be, somewhere you could very easily feel at home in - even when home, in all probability, is a very very long way away.

Sian lived here for a year too (absolutely the last port of call on our trip where this applies) so a fair bit of the stay is taken up revisiting old haunts and meeting up with old friends. Great to see Our Meens again (a mere 19 years since we last met and 33 years since we shared a house here in South Melbourne!). We also shared brunch with Pete and Luisa who I had a hand in bringing together (nowhere married 30 years). Pete and I met at the Melbourne Cup 33 years this week (big annual event here). As a fellow Pom, he quickly became part of our Pommie tut family and through that met Luisa, a friend of Our Sue's. He's been here ever since......

Halfway there - Hong Kong

Our first post proper so bear with us. Been here in HK since Saturday, one more day since we fly on to Melbourne the long way round via Auckland courtesy of our travel agent who obviously thought we'd enjoy extra time in the air...anyway, here we are in the city that never sleeps (or is that just me with the jet-lag, which is proving harder to shift than I'd hoped...)

Sian has been here before of course, living in HK for nearly three years from 1986. No surprise a lot has changed in that time - the shanty towns which used to sprawl from the shores of settlements such as Aberdeen now largely gone, replaced by more and more of the high-rise blocks which dominate the horizon every which way. More surprising maybe is what hasn't changed, in particular since HK returned to Chinese ownership a decade or more back. The place still has a distinctly colonial, in places ex-pat feel, and many of the HK Chinese seem western in their dress and outlook. If China is imposing itself, it's being done in a very subtle way.

So what can we tell you? It's hot - humid hot - pretty much all the time and days are generally cloudy and muggy from the go. Today was the first sight of blue sky so we took the tram all the way up to the Peak which sits offers fantastic views (in clear weather) across the whole city. It was also a good way to get away from the heat and, once we were clear of the tram station, the crowds - something we managed the day before by taking a ferry to Lamma, one of the off-shore islands. Speaking of ferries, the day we arrived more than a hundred people travelling from Macau on the mainland were injured when their ferry collided with an unknown object in HK harbour. Such accidents are apparently unfortunately far from rare.

Now, Sian has just pointed out that my naturally sardonic turn of phrase means that it sounds like we haven't been enjoying our stay. Far from it - actually HK is a very exciting place to spend a few days, easy to get around on the excellent metro system (or, if you have more time, the lovely old trams that still cross-cross the city) and a practically unlimited choice of good, cheap places to eat. Chinese food is obviously on offer pretty much everywhere, but, as befits a city that looks and feels truly multicultural, just about everything else you might want can be found as well.

We will now attempt to post some photos, fingers crossed...

Still fumbling

Here's an attempt to insert an image that has absolutely nothing to do with our trip. Well, not this one anyway. Well that was suspiciously easy. All plain sailing now then.  (Picture chosen at random is of our downstairs lounge in Cyprus, in case anyone's interested)

One week, one day, twelve hours, and counting.