Tai Ping Shan

Wednesday 26th October

We had a morning to kill before our airport transfer at 14:10 so after a quick discussion we decided to have a ride on the trams and go looking for a new camera for Janet. Her current camera is very old and is playing up. She is worried that it will break completely and she won’t be able to take any photos of the scenery in New Zealand. As Hong Kong is supposedly one of the hot spots for all things IT it seems a good place to look for one. There is a tram stop right outside our hotel so we jump on the first one that comes along – a nice little orange number and climb to the top deck where the windows are all open and we can ride along enjoying the views with the wind blowing through our hair. When we get to some likely looking shops we hop off, these trams are excellent value, it’s a fixed rate of $2.30 adult or $1.10 senior however long the journey (that’s approx. 25p or 10p). The guy in the photographic shop was lovely, the sort of person you feel an instant affinity to. He looked around 50 and spoke pretty good English. Cameras were clearly a passion of his as he spoke very knowledgeably about them but he did laugh out loud when Janet showed him her existing camera and declared it an antique or vintage one. A deal was struck for a new camera, and he threw in an extra battery, a case and an SD card. We did check the price he charged at another shop and it seemed very good especially even without the freebies thrown in. All the way back to the hotel Janet tried out her new toy, happily snapping away. The results looked very good and she is very pleased with her purchase.

We arranged for an earlier pick up to the airport and were pleased we did as HK airport is vast and it took quite sometime to go through security. We did manage to have a couple of hours in the lounge, but for such a large airport we thought it was not as good as others we have been in.

Air New Zealand is known as a budget airline and we can certainly concur with that view. It was very cramped with narrow seats and limited leg room. The aisles were so narrow that every time someone walked down them you were knocked if you had an aisle seat, even if you tucked yourself in. Their only redeeming feature was that they had the most marvellous air stewardesses who were sassy and great fun. None of us slept for the 11 hour overnight flight, we were too uncomfortable and were delighted when we landed the following day in New Zealand at 11am local timeLæs mere