On my way to Beijing

I took the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong on the 14th November and arrived at HK around 8.30pm (HK time). My journey to Beijing is not alone. Two of my friends travelled with me. There are four of us in the group; one of the guys took another flight and is waiting for us in Beijing.

The flight to HK was great! I must say the services provided by Cathay Pacific is definitely recommended. Friendly service, quality food, and most importantly: AWESOME entertainment! Personal screen for the entertainment, entertainment includes new and classic movies, blockbusters, drama, TV shows, concerts, music channels, games, travel information, information about the airline; and they are in multiple languages (from memory English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, and many more). Just AWESOME! I spent my flight on 3 movies (Ice Age 3, Angel and Demon, The Proposal), 1 concert (Korean girl band- Wonder Girls) and 1 TV show (E! 2009 Top 100 Celebrities). Great entertainment, but warning: very sore back and eyes, LOL.

HK was great! Not too cold, I think it's around 18degrees when we landed, but very cloudy and foggy, never saw one bit of blue sky when I was there. We took the bus to Yuen Long, walked on the street for a bit, found a restaurant that looks decent and had our first non-flight meal. I really love HK culture and Cantonese. Being a Cantonese speaker and raised in a city that speaks Cantonese (Guangzhou) I just can't express how I feel to be back in this environment. The HK cantonese speaking environment is very different to my circle of friends and other environments back in Auckland. HK culture is, in my opinion, very casual but yet everyones moving really fast and efficiently; very easy going; the effort spent on marketing the restaurants' food, haha, i must say, is much much more than Auckland. The restaurant we went to have menus and photos and descriptions and every other thing possible to display their 'prodcuts' and promotions. Really enjoyed a light meal of rice noodles with Chinese pickles with icy cold chamomille and honey tea.

Stayed over at our friend's house. It's just so good to be able to lay on my back instead of sitting on a chair to sleep. Breakfast was at a Yum Cha restaurant. This is a must-tell experience. As soon as we sat down (the three of us, and one of our friend's dad), the three of us started ordering food. In this restaurant (i think it's actually across HK) you look at the menu provided on the table and note down which one you would like to order; then you give the order sheet to the waitresses and they'll place the order for you and deliver the food to your table. So, as soon as we sat down, the three of us started making orders and our list is soon getting quite long.

Our friend's dad then started telling us how HK and NZ yum cha culture differs.

• Yum Cha usually starts very early in the morning (we got there at around 8.30am) whereas in NZ yum cha starts after 10am or even later.


• In HK, people usually brings newspaper and get a pot of tea with maybe one or two dishes, then they will sit there for a LONG time (like the morning) to just read newspapers and talk to people. Of course, this is only referring to the general public. In NZ, however, we order quite a lot of dishes per table and we order it like brunch, well, at least it'll fill us up for breakfast and lunch.

I felt quite bad not knowing this before hand and our bill ended up around 150HKD, which is really only 30NZD (relatively cheap for 4 people), but knowing that my friend's dad usually spend at about 20HKD for 2 people just made me feel worse. I offered my shout for Yum Cha once we all get back to NZ, to thank him for his kind offer for our yum cha in HK, and also taking us around.

So here we go, getting back to the airport and getting ready for our real trip: Beijing.