A jaunt abroad

Russell and I FINALLY went on vacation in Asia but outside of Japan. Spurred on by a request to meet up from my friend Lis (who was in the middle of some serious globetrotting) we weighed our options.

The criteria:
- Outside Japan
- Cheap to get there
- Cheap to stay there
- No complicated visa (we're lazy - we'll try to get over it.)

Top choices:
 - Seoul, South Korea
 - Hong Kong
 - Taipei, Taiwan

I had just been to Taiwan (though not Taipei) for a conference and Russell and I are kind of saving Seoul for a serious swing dance weekend - its got to happen one of these days...

So Hong Kong it was. At first we thought the tickets would end up being too expensive. Note above that we are lazy and that also meant booking at the last minute. Then Russell remembered to check Peach - Japan's newly minted budget airline. $60 each way for the win. We bought our tickets and proceeded to forget to book a hotel room. Lis reminded us a couple of days before we left, so we scrambled and found a hostel with a private room for three (in-room bathroom and all!)

So how about that budget airline? It was spiffy, new and modern but still pretty much hell. Even for me, and I love flying. For those of you who travel, you've surely seen the kind of standard size airplane with three seats on one side an two on the other? We were in that size plane but it was three seats on each side. We had a middle and window seat. Russell had to share half of my leg room. Oh, and it left at 9pm - thus arriving at 1am (one hour time change). About 30 minutes in my tailbone hurt. Thankfully, Russell hunched form was shielding me from the passenger on the other side of him who was happily munching the remains of extra garlicky fried rice with tear inducing green onions on top.

After getting through customs (the most massive line I have ever seen, but not the longest wait by a long shot - yay efficiency) we got a taxi and showed him the address for our hotel. Unfortunately, our hotel name and address was in English, and he did not speak English. He flagged down a stewardess who read it to him. Silvermine Inn? He still didn't know. In Mui-Wo? When he heard the town name he seemed convinced of the destination and off we went. After about 20 minutes of hairpin curves up and back down a mountain (Hong Kong's got mountains!) we found ourselves in a rather remote looking town. The driver pointed us down a dark alley and tried his best to reassure us.

We went down the alley (the snuffling noise to the right was a feral cow) and sure enough, our hotel was by the water. The hotel manager was waiting for us and we successfully checked in. First obstacle overcome, we set our alarms and crashed for the night.