Tag Archives: Hong Kong

Farewell Hong Kong

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On Tuesday night Hong Kong airport was shut down by authorities again. There were many, many, many unhappy people who had been rebooked onto flights from Monday that now had their flights cancelled for the second time.

For us it meant another night sleeping at the airport. There was no ability to leave the airport because that meant being escorted by Cathay staff (one of the four trying to rebook thousands of stranded people) back through the security area and then having the uncertainty of not being able to get back in again.

For us the critical time was Wednesday morning at 9am when we hopefully started our dog-leg trip to Rome via London. Helping us was the fact that the airport authorities realised that cancelling flights was causing chaos and it was better to let half empty planes fly than to have increasing numbers of people trapped in the airport. So even on Tuesday night when all flights were “cancelled”, some of the high volume flights were leaving.

So with a long night ahead and no chance of getting out of the airport we sought accommodation other than “the third bench from the left at Gate 42” and discovered the only pay as you go lounge we could find – the Plaza Premium First lounge. I don’t think they often have people booking for 24 hours so we negotiated a good rate and settled in. The ability to shower, eat and drink without having to queue up for hours was a God send.

The lounge wasn’t set up for sleeping but with a bit of ingenuity people made up beds from chairs, loungers, couches – whatever was to hand.

Finally on Wednesday morning we flew out to London and dog-legged back to Rome arriving late on Wednesday night exhausted – ready for our holiday to begin.

Every blue blanket is another sleeping body

Welcome to Hong Kong

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Cancellation board in Hong Kong – credit:Vincent Thian


The first we knew there was going to be a problem was when we checked the transfers board at Hong Kong airport just after we arrived on Monday evening.

Every single flight had been cancelled. Gradually we (and about 2,000 of our travelling companions) pieced together what had happened. There had been protests at the airport during the day and a decision was made by the Airport Authority to cancel all flights as a result.

This posed a bit of a problem for us – partly because of the travel disruption and partly because none of the airport staff seemed to have any clue about what was going on.

So we did what we normally do when our travel doesn’t go to plan –  we called our wonderful travel agent Petra from House of Travel. We woke her at 3am (sorry, sorry, sorry) but as usual she was on the case immediately.

When we rang her we were in the queue from hell – one that snaked around the airport, doubled back on itself and disappeared into the distance. This was the re-ticketing queue. We were in this queue for about 4 hours.

That was more than enough time for Petra  – working with Cathay Pacific to change our original flight to Rome for a flight that went to London and then a connecting flight to Rome, the long flight having the extra leg room we like and a better than average chance of our bags making it to Rome as well. She also had back-up bookings in place just in case things got worse for us.

So that’s two lessons I’ve learned today – using a travel agent makes excellent sense particularly if the unexpected occurs, and travel insurance is a sound investment as they will be paying for all the costs incurred in re-booking our first day or so in Italy – hotels, trains, rental cars, the list goes on.

So here we are, sitting in Hong Kong airport waiting to catch our flight to London tomorrow morning. We have set up camp in one of the pay-as-you-go airport lounges for a day which has made things slightly brighter, cleaner and more bearable for us both.

If there are a few typos in this post I apologise. Let’s blame it on the many hours we’ve both been awake since leaving Wellington.

Who says the romance of travel is dead?

 

 

I’ve always wanted a Leica camera

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LeicaI’ve been an SLR camera guy for as long as I can remember. Ever since I bought my first camera back and lens – a Ricoh KR10 with a 50mm lense – I’ve relied on the control and quality a good SLR provides. The downside of an SLR is the bulk of the camera and various lenses – my current camera bag weighs around 6kgs. There is nothing subtle about taking the camera out for the evening and nothing subtle about using it.

I’ve always wanted a compact camera that could go anywhere, which still took great pictures, and which gave me the ability to control things like depth of field and shutter speed.

I’ve also always wanted a Leica camera but have always been put off by the prices – particularly in New Zealand.

The opportunity to get both came my way when we stopped to browse at the Leica shop at Hong Kong airport. Leica’s range of compact cameras have always got good reviews and their latest mid range compact – the D-Lux 6 – has been no exception. And there sitting in the display cabinet was one calling my name.

Now the geeks among my readers will know that the D-Lux 6 is essentially the same camera as the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7. There are some minor cosmetic changes – like the addition of the round red Leica logo – but the cameras are one in the same. Leica have been working with Panasonic for years, using Panasonic’s hardware but then writing their own software to control image capture and processing.

This is where the two camera’s differ and the results are impressive. In fact it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between a shot taken on the Leica and a shot taken on my Nikon DSLR.

The Leica version of this camera carries a price premium but it seems worth it – for the added image quality as well as that small red circle on the front.