YMCA*

24 March 2010
We left Cairns on a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. Cathay Pacific have just been voted worst airline 2010 by G&C – perhaps that’s a bit unfair as no airline will ever be worse than Ryan Air but being as we boycott them, they don’t really count. Everyone had been pre-allocated seats so the 6ft 3ins blokes were sitting in knees-around-their-necks seats and the petite-ladies had the extra legroom seats and there was going to be no changing. There was no vegetarian meal available for us (this was a seven hour flight) when we asked why, they tried to palm us off with the reason that our travel agent must have forgotten to order them – strange and unbelievable seeing that the ever-wonderful Trailfinders had remembered to order them for every other flight. However it sort of came right and we got a couple of Business Class vegetarian pasta meals and a plate of fruit at later-in-the-flight snack time as well as a promise that they would get it right on the flight to Tokyo. They also slightly redeemed themselves (for G at least) by having some very good music available on the entertainment system – including some music by a French jazz group which has Seb Rochford on drums (he’s easily pleased – bless). On the plane we read a newspaper about Hong Pong which was suffering some of the worst pollution ever known – it seems that a storm had blown in lots of sand from the Gobi desert which had got stuck because of low pressure and was trapping all the pollution in over the islands. Evidently pollution is measured on a scale of zero to 500 and this measured 500 – but the newspaper was optimistic that it would have gone by the time we arrived because a monsoon was just off the coast!
We arrived earlier than scheduled in Hong Kong – the airport is a state-of-the-art impossible-to-fault building with superb signage and huge open spaces (Sydney airport please take note). A plush limo-coach drove us to Kowloon taking us along some beautifully engineered roads and across the graceful Tsing Ma Bridge – the world’s longest road and rail suspension bridge at 2.2km and past hundreds of high-rise buildings all twinkling with lights. We arrived at to our hotel and we were taken up to our 15th floor suite overlooking Victoria Harbour to Hong Kong Island. Our Hotel? The Salisbury – also known as The Hong Kong YMCA. For those who know the story, please forgive us repeating it, but it goes something like this. When we were booking our r-t-w trip, we couldn’t get a direct flight from Cairns to Japan so rather than going back to Sydney or Brisbane we decided to come via Hong Kong. Hong Kong hotels are expensive but C wanted a view of the harbour and HK Island and decided it had to be the Peninsula Hotel but at about £500 per night for a standard room even she thought it a bit steep. So a little research revealed a hotel next door with exactly the same view for a quarter of the price – and in a suite...hence The Salisbury aka the Hong Kong YMCA. And a surprisingly luxurious suite it is too (but think Habitat rather than Heal’s) with outstanding views across the harbour because the monsoon wind has blown away the pollution. What fortunate people we are.