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So we arrived at the Hong Kong Airport Tuesday afternoon on time about 4:30pm. We hurriedly called the Victoria II Branch, trying to find out if we could get Sacrament before leaving for our flight but had no luck reaching the senior missionaries who run the branch. After passing through customs and collecting our luggage, we sat down in the airport for an hour or so to make phone calls, check email, and update our blogs. We hadn’t had internet for almost three days so I felt a little behind on things. DragonAir’s copies of the Asian Wall Street Journal and Financial Times helped out, but is always nice to let everyone back home know you are doing well.
After taking the Airport Express into town we caught a free bus from the station to the Peninsula Hotel (one of HK’s finest) and walked across the street to our more humble accommodations at the Salisbury YMCA. We beds in dormitory rooms which put us a couple of rooms down the hall from each other but my room was empty besides myself so Mackenzie spent most of her time there except for sleeping. Just before 8pm we walked out the door and across the street to the Tsim Tsa Tsui waterfront to watch the new lights show HK’s Tourism Authority had started a couple years ago. They arranged to have 30 buildings (big skyscrapers and a few smaller ones) on both sides of Victoria Harbor put on lights that were coordinated with music and each other. It is a nice sight to watch, but really impressive when you contemplate the work that went into it. Setting up the lights (on multiple 50+ story buildings), music, and making them synchronize is a really impressive feat. Following the show’s conclusion we started walking east to Hung Hom in search of our night’s dinner destination, PizzaHut. I knew the general direction to head, but had never spent much time in the area during my mission so we were basically winging it. The walk turned into an hour ordeal as we definitely did not take the most direct route. However, the pizza was delicious as we had hoped. After twenty minutes of walking back, being forced to backtrack out of a big resort, and grabbing dessert at McDonalds, we decided to grab a cab. It was a wonderful decision as he had us pack at the YMCA in 5 minutes for less than $3US..JPG)
The next morning I woke up early to do our laundry as we had a pinched schedule with the laundry room opening at 7am, needing to check our bags about 9am , and then hurry to the Temple to do some work, before catching lunch and Church services in the afternoon. However, everything changed with an email Mackenzie opened around 8:30am. She made a few phone calls, received some urging from her father, and told me she needed to fly home ASAP. Her grandparents’ mission call had been changed from August and New York City, to June 11th and Brazil. This meant she would miss them if she stayed for the whole trip so she decided to leave HK early and fly back to New York. By noon she had changed her flight (the CathayPacific ticketing office was in the office tower above the Peninsula Hotel, very nice coincidence) and we went to the in-town check-in to put our bags on different planes. In-town check in is a service I believe unique to HK. You can go up to 24 hours before your flight and check-in, grab your boarding pass, and send your bags away. “In-town” refers to the fact that the airport is on a man-made island 30+ minutes away from downtown and all the hotels. It works great for us as we can check out of our hotel in the morning, check-in for our flight and leave our bags (they magically show up in our next city), all while never having to leave downtown HK and enjoy the day touristing, going to the Temple or whatever.
We arrived at Church a few minutes after 1pm and joined the combined Relief Society / Priesthood lesson. Afterwards we chatted with the Branch President for a while and he dropped into a Jersey accent after hearing Mackenzie was from there. I don’t know if it was good/bad, but it was entertaining. Sadly, Sacrament meeting was the last hour so we had to depart before that opportunity. We stepped out of the building and hailed a taxi which took us to the Airport Express train station. At the airport we grabbed BurgerKing and waited as long as we could before heading for our gates. Thankfully, they were #1 and #4 so we didn’t have far to walk and I could walk Mackenzie to her gate (male urge to make sure she arrived on the plane safely). What has happened to her in the last 48+ hours, I have no idea?.JPG)
While neither Mackenzie nor I emote much, I must admit I was sad to see her go. The suddenness of the whole thing was strange and I felt abandoned to a degree. The prospect of five days alone in Vietnam and Cambodia, while survivable, was not appealing. Mackenzie was a great traveling companion and she will be missed. Luckily, I was able to get four seats in the middle on my 2-hour flight to Vietnam and took a nap. I’m sorry this blog entry has been so long in coming but I was under orders not to publish anything that would ruin the surprise of Mackenzie arriving so I just didn’t write anything for a while. Goodbye Mackenzie!!!
After taking the Airport Express into town we caught a free bus from the station to the Peninsula Hotel (one of HK’s finest) and walked across the street to our more humble accommodations at the Salisbury YMCA. We beds in dormitory rooms which put us a couple of rooms down the hall from each other but my room was empty besides myself so Mackenzie spent most of her time there except for sleeping. Just before 8pm we walked out the door and across the street to the Tsim Tsa Tsui waterfront to watch the new lights show HK’s Tourism Authority had started a couple years ago. They arranged to have 30 buildings (big skyscrapers and a few smaller ones) on both sides of Victoria Harbor put on lights that were coordinated with music and each other. It is a nice sight to watch, but really impressive when you contemplate the work that went into it. Setting up the lights (on multiple 50+ story buildings), music, and making them synchronize is a really impressive feat. Following the show’s conclusion we started walking east to Hung Hom in search of our night’s dinner destination, PizzaHut. I knew the general direction to head, but had never spent much time in the area during my mission so we were basically winging it. The walk turned into an hour ordeal as we definitely did not take the most direct route. However, the pizza was delicious as we had hoped. After twenty minutes of walking back, being forced to backtrack out of a big resort, and grabbing dessert at McDonalds, we decided to grab a cab. It was a wonderful decision as he had us pack at the YMCA in 5 minutes for less than $3US.
.JPG)
The next morning I woke up early to do our laundry as we had a pinched schedule with the laundry room opening at 7am, needing to check our bags about 9am , and then hurry to the Temple to do some work, before catching lunch and Church services in the afternoon. However, everything changed with an email Mackenzie opened around 8:30am. She made a few phone calls, received some urging from her father, and told me she needed to fly home ASAP. Her grandparents’ mission call had been changed from August and New York City, to June 11th and Brazil. This meant she would miss them if she stayed for the whole trip so she decided to leave HK early and fly back to New York. By noon she had changed her flight (the CathayPacific ticketing office was in the office tower above the Peninsula Hotel, very nice coincidence) and we went to the in-town check-in to put our bags on different planes. In-town check in is a service I believe unique to HK. You can go up to 24 hours before your flight and check-in, grab your boarding pass, and send your bags away. “In-town” refers to the fact that the airport is on a man-made island 30+ minutes away from downtown and all the hotels. It works great for us as we can check out of our hotel in the morning, check-in for our flight and leave our bags (they magically show up in our next city), all while never having to leave downtown HK and enjoy the day touristing, going to the Temple or whatever.
We arrived at Church a few minutes after 1pm and joined the combined Relief Society / Priesthood lesson. Afterwards we chatted with the Branch President for a while and he dropped into a Jersey accent after hearing Mackenzie was from there. I don’t know if it was good/bad, but it was entertaining. Sadly, Sacrament meeting was the last hour so we had to depart before that opportunity. We stepped out of the building and hailed a taxi which took us to the Airport Express train station. At the airport we grabbed BurgerKing and waited as long as we could before heading for our gates. Thankfully, they were #1 and #4 so we didn’t have far to walk and I could walk Mackenzie to her gate (male urge to make sure she arrived on the plane safely). What has happened to her in the last 48+ hours, I have no idea?
.JPG)
While neither Mackenzie nor I emote much, I must admit I was sad to see her go. The suddenness of the whole thing was strange and I felt abandoned to a degree. The prospect of five days alone in Vietnam and Cambodia, while survivable, was not appealing. Mackenzie was a great traveling companion and she will be missed. Luckily, I was able to get four seats in the middle on my 2-hour flight to Vietnam and took a nap. I’m sorry this blog entry has been so long in coming but I was under orders not to publish anything that would ruin the surprise of Mackenzie arriving so I just didn’t write anything for a while. Goodbye Mackenzie!!!
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