Part III – The Enjoying - HongKong & HOME!!!
Day Thirteen (Tuesday, August 11th) – dawned VERY early. Luggage out, get dressed - no small task, when your party includes a 14-year-old and a baby who already shares her mother's love of sleeping in! – and down to a last hurried breakfast buffet. Good-bye, White Swan! We shall probably not stay in your like again!
By the time we got to Hong Kong, we were pretty ragged. Becky was not feeling too chipper, as was to be expected from a baby with an upset schedule. But the vaunted new airport was truly a thing of beauty; and the airport shuttle bus from the Hotel Regal Kowloon was a wonder: an air-conditioned beauty with recliner seats, its own restroom, curtains and a sunroof, and complimentary water bottles! More than one of us asked, "Couldn't we just camp here, until our plane leaves tomorrow?" It was good that we had such a bus, because it was a full forty minutes to our hotel.
On our way, we got a first-hand look at why China was so implacable about the return of this former British colony: the buildings, the skyscrapers, the evident prosperity of this bustling port (two absolutely enormous container-shipping facilities went right by our bus window) put all the great Chinese cities we had seen so far to shame. Oh, no question that Shanghai and Guangzhou are bustling and prosperous themselves; but it will obviously take at least another 99 years for them to catch up with Hong Kong/Kowloon.
The hotel, when we got to it, promised everything, but delivered little. Once again, as in the Lakeview/ Nanchang, the lobby was spectacular – and the turbaned Sikh greeting visitors was a cute touch of atmospherics – but the rooms were, well, a big disappointment, after the White Swan. (Heck, we liked our Lakeview rooms better!) Our room in particular was small, short on towels – and there was no crib or rollaway bed laid out. THAT was a shock, since they had had us on their reservations book for at least a month. It took a Laurel & Hardy double-team of housekeeping idiots at least 45 minutes to maneuver the two beds in – AFTER I had maneuvered the two useless sitting chairs out. And then I had to maneuver the beds, and the worthless marble-topped table, for another ten minutes, so that we could, finally, get PAST Christy's rollaway to lay Punkin in her crib. Whew!
This hotel, at last, had a sign on its bathroom mirror reading, "Tap water IS drinkable" – but our tour leaders advised us against drinking it anyway. No problem – room service, as in all our previous hotels, provided both hot and cold water on demand. So we got some takeout food from a fastfood restaurant across the street (which shall remain nameless, except to say that, No, Jack does NOT beat the Mac), and sank into the sleep of the just until nightfall. Then, for lack of imagination, we went down to the hotel's dinner buffet, and dug in. Early to bed again – not only were we still feeling the effects of the day's rushing about, but there would be another 5:00 A.M. wakeup call, to get us out to the airport in time for the 9:25 transPacific flight.
Day Fourteen (Wednesday/Thursday, August 12-13th)– Another luxury bus ride to the airport, where we found out why they allotted two and a half hours to get us on board. Checking the luggage and getting seat assignments, through a single working ticket line, took almost an hour by itself. Thank Heaven for the subway transit to our gates – we could never have walked that far that fast – because by the time we reached our departure gate, they were boarding. We hadn't even time to exchange our last Hong Kong dollars, before we were up the ramp and into our seats.
The flight to the USA, in contrast to the flight into Beijing, was booked solid. They managed to seat Barb & me together, but Christy was two rows back. And there was no hope of getting a spare empty seat to lay Becky in – there were no empty seats, period. (The flight TO China was half-empty; the flight back FROM China to the US was packed – and three-quarters of the faces were Chinese. Hmm – wonder why?) It promised to be a LONG 14-hour flight, and it was. With no empty seats, Becky had to stay on somebody's lap; and she indicated early on that that lap would be Barb's. With all that stimulation going on, and no place else to be, she fought sleep, and fought it, and fought it. All told, she got probably no more than two hours' worth the whole flight – punctuated with three (count 'em – three) dirty diapers (ever try to change one of those in an airline rest room?).
The movies did show some improvement over those we got on the flight over: Great Expectations (Gwyneth Paltrow has really been WASTED since Emma), the DiCaprio version of Man in the Iron Mask (yawn), and the surprise gem of the trip – a Chinese (with subtitles, yet!) noodle comedy called The Lucky Guy. It was a stitch! (And boy, did we need it by then!) They ran out of movies before they ran out of airtime; so we got Wag The Dog again; being awake and completely bored, I plugged in my earphones this time, just to see if the movie made any more sense that way. It didn't.
Somewhere over the Aleutians, we crossed the dateline again. As the pilot dryly pointed out, this meant we would be landing in Minneapolis an hour after we left! The humor was, I'm afraid, lost on a boatload of people for whom the actual effect would be losing their night's sleep.
At last, thank Heaven, we hit Minneapolis. I'm afraid we were all way short on sleep – and Northwest lost one of our suitcases. Fortunately, it wasn't the women's suitcases, or the baby's, but Daddy's – and there wasn't anything in there I couldn't live without for a couple days, at least. But it didn't improve my mood; and when we found ourselves through Customs, separated from our group (all but one family had different flights from ours), and on our own in the Airport Mall with three hours to kill, tempers got short. We found a sensible solution. After I got some cash at an ATM machine (I had left China flat broke), I gave half to Barb, and she went looking for something to feed herself and Becky, while Christy and I just crashed on some mall seats. Forty minutes later, Barb came back with lifesavers: some Diet pop for me, and Christy's first bags of Doritos in two weeks! All was well again!
The flight to Grand Rapids was blessedly uneventful. Since it was only about half-full, we had no trouble getting our seats reassigned to give Barb an empty one to lay Becky in – and she promptly passed out for the duration. Added to the couple of hours she got in flight over the Pacific, and that meant she would be greeting the Welcome Party at GR Airport on about six hours' sleep.
Well, our fears proved unfounded. Bethany was there with what seemed like 30 people, and Becky was apparently charmed by the sight of so many little faces that looked like her again: she cooed and giggled for everybody, showing one and all why we chose her. Bro Joe popped up in the milling throng like a true savior – he had brought, not my woefully undersized little Corolla, but a company minivan! Joe, I owe ya my life – again! An uneventful ride home, and it was time to greet our kitties, drop the bags, call my Mother, count our blessings, and sack out….
To be continued...
