Results tagged “Movies” from East Asia 2017

So my morning started at 4:44 when I got a couple of smses from Optus welcoming me to Hong Kong. #grunt Of course there was no getting back to sleep after that, what with having to disembark and all. And at 5:30 I got hungry so it was all over. Saw us spinning around at Kai Tak, to have us facing the city. And then the sun rose. We didn't have a single good day of weather the entire trip, and we get a perfect one the day we go home. Doh!!

Hong Kong at dawn

Hong Kong at dawn

Hong Kong at dawn

Hong Kong at dawn

Got ready, and brought some breakfast down the room, but never did get around to download photos (which haven't been downloaded since before Shanghai).

Rex Fortune cruise ship and Hong Kong

Apparently they wanted us out of the room at 8:30 so we did that. But we had different pieces of conflicting information telling us the disembarkation procedure. One said just get off 40 minutes before our car was due (we decided to get a car back into Hong Kong so we didn't have to battle trains and taxis and get all sweaty). Another said wait with the rest of deck 5. I asked at the pursor's office and they said go with the rest of deck 5. But that made no sense because people with earlier cars would then be late. At around 9:20 we went and asked the lady in the theatre and she said we just needed to go get off in about twenty minutes. So that turned out to be quite simple and no queue. I just wish they could have been more organised in their literature. So that was the end of that. We left the ship. Sad times.

In the terminal we just walked out. Noone even looked at our passports (that we'd picked up yesterday afternoon). Then into the baggage hall to get our bags, which was all organised nicely and super simple. They called our car (we ended up being very early) and we did a survey by some local travel type people.

Our car came and we got driven across Hong Kong. And dumped at Kowloon station.

*blink*

When I'd booked the car, I filled out "Hong Kong Station", and the guy who took my booking appended Central. So how they translated that to Kowloon I have no f#$%ing idea. So I was pretty pissed off about that. Thanks Cunard. How to leave a bad taste in our mouth as a parting gift.

Anyway Stu just said we would be ok, so we got out, and checked into our flight and checked our bags at the in-town checkin. We'd been planning to have Tim Ho Wan at Central, but we decided instead to go to the one in Sham Shui Po, and go to the Golden Computer Arcade to pick up a couple of little micro usb cables (I really love the 20cm cables you can get two for $5AUD, and only currently having one is a bit of a pain sometimes when there's multiple devices to charge).

So two trains later we got to Sham Shui Po and walked along Fuk Wing Street until we found Tim Ho Wan. It's a lot like the organised chaos we first experienced at Din Tai Fung in Taipei, so we didn't feel too threatened by the little crowd of people milling around and the procedure to get a seat and order food. We were there primarily for the crispy pork buns (which they call baked bun with bbq pork) and they were every bit as awesome as we were expecting. We also had a few other things which were nice too.

Baked bun with bbq pork - ftw!!!

After lunch we walked back to the Golden Computer Arcade and got our cables.

It was such a beautiful day I couldn't stand the thought of just heading out to the airport - I felt liked we should be looking at the city or something. So I convinced the sweetie that we should get the train to Hong Kong station and just take the ferry over to Tsim Sha Tsui and back. Simple and cheap and we'd get a great view of the whole harbour (and the Queen Mary 2). So we did that. And it was awesome :)

Hong Kong Observation Wheel at Central

Queen Mary 2 at Kai Tak through the Hong Kong Observation Wheel

Central Ferry Pier

Xin Guang First Ferry and Stonecutters Bridge

Kowloon from Central Ferry Pier

Hong Kong from the Star Ferry

Night Star ferry arriving at Central Ferry Pier

Super Star Virgo in Hong Kong

Twinkling Star ferry departing Tsim Sha Tsui

Shining Star ferry and Hong Kong

Hong Kong from Victoria Harbour

Hong Kong from Victoria Harbour

Queen Mary 2 at Kai Tak

Then back to the station, one station hop under the harbour to Kowloon, and onto the airport express train. Of course it would have been easier to go straight from Hong Kong since we were right there, but they charge your Octopus card when you go to check in to the flight, and we weren't sure what would happen if we then got on at a station further away.

Quick train trip out to the airport, through security and immigration, and into the Qantas club. I downloaded all my photos since Shanghai and the GPS, and we both had showers and felt much better. Then it was more catching up on the laptop.

USB charging on the Airport Train

Champagne in the Qantas Club at sunset

Sunset over Hong Kong airport

We had the exact same seats on the 747 on the flight back as we did up. One of the two-seater seats right up the back, so the sweetie didn't have anyone next to him.

I was pretty tired so attempted to sleep. And failed. Just lay there with my eyes closed for three or four hours. I didn't have any dinner, just a couple of bread rolls which were a bit awful actually.

Gave up trying to sleep when my legs got restless, so watched Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Which I found to be extremely confusing (maybe it was just that my brain was mush). The kid is asking questions and keeps getting told not to ask questions and it's like well how the heck are *we* meant to understand what's going on? Tried again to sleep after the movie but legs were still restless, so watched Bridget Jones' Baby, which was all a little silly, but that took us up til landing time in Sydney. Breakfast was this little pizza thing, but I'd been starving for a while so my stomach wasn't ready for food (don't ask). Just had the yoghurt and juice.

Rodd Point, Sydney

Parramatta Road, Sydney

About to land at Sydney Airport

In Sydney there was a bit of a queue at the e-tickets, and then a bit of chaos going through the gates due to people having issues getting in the way of people trying to get through. Then picked up our bags and off we went to the domestic terminal.

Flight to Canberra was in a dash 8. Could *almost* see mum's place but it was directly underneath us. Came in from the north into Canberra.

Lake George

Touchdown at Canberra Airport

Chrissie very nicely picked us up from the airport and took us home. I went and got some supplies, then crashed for a couple of hours, at one point waking up and taking a minute to realise where I was. Stu slept most of the afternoon heh.

Have mostly unpacked and done a load of washing of all the fancy new clothes.

And I've also been fighting with our internet which is completely unusable at the moment, as well as downloading photos, gps etc.

So all in all a pretty good holiday. The cruise was pretty awesome for the most part, with just a few things that really pissed me off. The weather was crappy for almost the entire trip which was a bit sad. I think Nagasaki was the highlight of the ports for me. I loved the fine dining, and the buffets available pretty much all day. I dread to think how much weight I've put on! Cruising is something we'd definitely consider doing again.

Woke up at 06:00 by Stu's alarm set last week when we had to get up to go to the airport. Grunt. Didn't get back to sleep after that.

View of the East China Sea and sky from our balcony

GPS and battery attached to our balcony. This is where the GPS sat for much of the trip.

Watched part of a talk by Pamela Chen Moore, a Taiwanese lady who'd lived in England for half her life, as a replay on tv.

Then went to breakfast relatively early.

After breakfast I did a wander around the back decks on deck 6 and 8, and then had a good long wander through deck 3.

View off the stern of the Queen Mary 2

Deck 6 spa and stern of ship

Deck 8 aft end

View of deck 6 and 7 from deck 8

Terrace Pool on deck 8

Clarendon Fine Art Gallery

Chart Room

Veuve Clicquot Champagne Bar

Commemorative Queen Mary 2 bell above the Grand Lobby

The Grand Lobby

At 10:00 I went to the port info talk on Incheon/Seoul.

Planetarium Dome in Illuminations Theatre

Then I wandered around some more and ended up back at the jigsaw I started yesterday. Not much had been done since I left it, so I stayed to work on it. And ended up finishing it. Whoops.

Lower Royal Court Theatre

Seating in the Royal Court Theatre

It was about 14:00 by this point, so collected the sweetie and we went to have lunch.

After lunch we headed up to the library and I borrowed a couple of books.

Came back to the room and read for a while.

Around 16:00 I went out for another wander - this time up to the Commodore club. It was practically deserted due to an event which had just finished and cleared out. Would be a lovely spot for an afternoon drink, although they don't allow jeans :/

Commodore Club seating

View of the bow from the Commodore Club

Model of the Queen Mary 2 in the Commodore Club

Then walked around deck 9, which is where all the big expensive staterooms are. They even have fancier doors heh.

Went to the purser's office and bought 300 RMB, to save us having to look for an ATM tomorrow.

At 17:00 I went and saw Sully, which I quite enjoyed, even though I'm sure much of it has been dramatised and may not have actually happened the way they showed it..

Came back to the room and started charging devices and batteries.

I'm actually a little apprehensive about going to Shanghai tomorrow. We've been to three different Chinese territories, but this is the first time to China proper. They like Australians right?

Dinner was great as always. Stu had Thai seafood salad, aubergine gratin and cappacino cheesecake. I had lamb koftas, roast beef which was wonderful and tender, and creme brulee.

Group photo taken on Bob and Virginia's last night. Back: Bob and Virginia from Tweed Heads, Norman from the UK, Stuart and Karen. Front: Kay from the UK, David and Licia from Perth

Woke up at 06:00. Blerf.

Got ready and downloaded photos, blogged etc. Had breakfast around 09:45.

After breakfast Stu started up some washing, and I did a wander all around deck 7, including the Princess and Queens Grill which are normally off limits to plebs like me, but they didn't mind me going in to take some photos while noone was in there.

Deck 7 promenade, starbooard side looking aft

Bow end of the deck 7 promenade

Spare propellers at bow of deck 7

The very front of the state rooms and public areas and bridge of the Queen Mary 2

Deck 7 promenade

Three laps around the ship on deck 7 is just over a mile long, two laps is just over a kilometre

Deck 7 aft

Deck 6 pool

Deck 7 promenade, starboard side

Inflatable life boats on deck 7

Deck chairs on deck 7, unfolded and with cushions

Looking aft at around deck 9 from the starboard side scenic lift

Princess Grill restaurant

Princess Grill restaurant

Princess Grill restaurant

Queens Grill restaurant

Queens Grill restaurant

Queens Grill restaurant

Queens Grill restaurant

Queens Grill restaurant

Came back to the room and we watched the port info on Shanghai while our washing dried.

Current position of the Queen Mary 2 on our stateroom tv

View forward from our balcony

We had lunch in the smaller aft Kings Court which doesn't have as much choice as the big one, but it did have pizza.

Took another walk around deck 7, this time with the sweetie.

Me with the spare propellors

The Grand Lobby

Flowers in the Grand Lobby

Me in the Grand Lobby

We also had a look at the games area. It's mostly people playing Mahjong, but also scrabble and rummy tiles. There's a corridor for games on both port and starboard sides. On one side there was a jigsaw nearing completion, while the table on the other side was empty.

Left there, and I tried to get an audio headset thingie for all the "Maritime Quest" info boards around the ship, but apparently they don't have them at the moment. ?? Something to do with them being out of date?? Some lame excuse anyway.

So I went back to the jigsaw and helped them finish it. Then around the other side someone had started a new jigsaw. So I helped with that until 16:45, so I could then join the sweetie to watch Passengers. It wasn't too bad, just a bit of Hollywood fluff really.

Illuminations Theatre

Illuminations Theatre showing the planetarium dome retracted

Back in the room afterwards I brought the GPS inside and download all its tracks since departing Hong Kong.

Then it was time to get ready. We headed to the pub again, this time in time for the pre-dinner trivia. We didn't officially play, but if we had we'd have gotten 18/20. There was one table that got 20 though, oh well. Collected some questions for our next trivia night. Not that I want to run another damned trivia night, but some people can't help themselves but win it!!

Then into dinner. Stu had the parsnip soup, guinea fowl and toffee pudding. I had prawn cocktail (very small serving), sole (not bad, my alternative choice after I found out the steak dianne was using minute steaks), and the toffee pudding.

And finally into bed.

Slept through til 07:11 which was nice. Definitely a good comfortable bed.

We went down to Festiva again for breakfast.

Then we packed ourselves up and checked out around 10:45. Went outside and hopped on a shuttle bus to the Taipa ferry terminal. At the terminal we went in (it was 11:15) and got tickets for the 11:30 ferry. A very quick trip through immigration and pretty much straight onto the ferry.

Our ferry back to Hong Kong

The ferry trip was pretty grey. We passed between Lantau Island and Cheung Chau. And then we were back in Hong Kong!

Hong Kong from the ferry

Getting through immigration was nice and simple, but getting out of the ferry terminal was not. You end up in the middle of a shopping centre with no clear exit. Even when we found a way outside, you end up on Connaught Road with no way to cross it! This city is really not very pedestrian friendly, unless you happen to know your way around shopping centres and know where all the internal overpasses are. Mind you the city is not very car-friendly either, as all the little streets turn into car parks for most of the day. I don't know how people stand it. Anyway, after battling our way along narrow footpaths, and giving up and walking along the road for half of it, we ended up at the hotel.

The room is small but adequate (bed is tiny haha). They nicely provide an android phone for local calls and data, although it's locked down so you can't just tether your own devices to it (well maybe you could if you looked hard enough). But it was useful for maps and browsing.

Our room in the Butterfly Hotel

View from our hotel room

After we'd settled in we headed out for a late lunch. As is tradition we went to Dim Sum Square for crispy pork buns!! (and other things too). There was a small queue outside waiting to get in. One of these days the restaurant is going to move again to somewhere much bigger..

Happy hour, save water, drink beer! Sign outside a pub on Wellington St

Crispy pork buns at Dim Sum Square

After lunch we hopped on a train to Causeway Bay to go see a movie. Our Octopus cards still had a bit of money on them, and it was kinda cool to know exactly what we had to do to get there, even knowing which direction to go without looking at a map. Of course at the other end it's a different story, because once again we had to negotiate shopping centres. In the end I found a concierge desk and asked where to go.

The movie we saw was Martin Scorcese's "Silence" about Portuguese Jesuit priests in Japan in the 17th century. I found it difficult to watch mainly because I don't know what I'd do if I was tortured for my faith. They also had a scene shot in Macau, where we'd been literally yesterday.  That was pretty surreal.  A good, but quite long movie.

After the movie we took a train back to Sheung Wan. Picked up beer and chips at a 7-Eleven for dinner, because we're classy like that. Washed hair and in bed by 21:00.

Stu and Karen at Times Square in Causeway Bay

Times Square, Hong Kong

Had a fairly civilised first flight of the day - 09:00. So we woke up at 6am and got ready, and Chrissie arrived at 07:00 and we were out the door by 07:10.

Had a spot of breakfast in the Qantas club before boarding. And saw "Airforce 2" on the taxiway as we were boarding.

Stu and Karen on the plane at Canberra Airport

Sadly planes were taking off to the south, so our seat on the left side of the plane didn't give us a view of Canberra city.

Looking towards Melbourne CBD

We arrived at the gate in Melbourne exactly one our after leaving the gate in Canberra.

In Melbourne, security was pretty quick, although Melbourne should follow Canberra's lead and have lots of convenient benches before and after security to organise all your stuff. The space after security in Melbourne is very pretty much non-existent which makes it a bit awkward to repack your bags.

Immigration was completely boring - you just stick your passport in the machine, have your photo taken, then dump your passenger card in a box.

Our next flight was due to board at 10:30, so we went straight to the gate. But after standing there for half an hour they finally made an announcement that there was a problem with one of the cargo doors they were looking at, and it would be another 45 minutes before we boarded. So we high-tailed it out of there and went for a drink and snack in the Qantas club. Much more relaxing. In the end they didn't board until 13:00 with pushback at 13:27 - over two hours late.

Karen at the Qantas Club at Melbourne Airport

On the flight I had tortellini for lunch which was quite nice, but quite filling. Later on they had noodles for a light dinner. With icecream and fruit in between.

I watched Moana first up. Nice enough movie, not sure how it'd stand up to repeated viewings. It was visually stunning though, would be nice to watch it on a bigger screen. Stay for the end - shiny! Next up I watched La La Land. Which to be honest for the most part I found really .. boring ..! The songs just didn't grab me and the whole first scene I'm going like "what's the point?". Meh. I did like the camera work on some of the scenes though - lovely long takes reminiscent of the old school days of movies. Next I watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them which I enjoyed. Little references here and there to the Harry Potter world (including a teensy bit of John Williams' score), but able to stand on its own. Finally I watched three episodes of season 10 of Big Bang Theory.

Given that we were two hours late leaving, we landed in Hong Kong at 18:47 local time - only an hour late. At the airport we headed to the Macau ferry ticketing area to get tickets for the 21:00 ferry to Macau. Then had to sit around the airport for an hour which was a bit boring. But not for as long as if our flight had been on time! Sat next to a super annoying Vietnamese guy who was facetiming his girlfriend but he wasn't really talking (and neither was she), he just had her on video with the volume up really loud so all the background noise was super loud and annoying. In the end we moved to a much quieter spot.

At 20:30 we were able to catch the people mover to the ferry terminal. We had allocated seating on the ferry (they gave us seats at the front but on opposite sides of the aisle, with noone in the window seat) but the ferry wasn't full so I took the window seat next to Stu. The ferry ride was a bit boring - it was dark and rainy so there was really no view. Took a bit over and hour to get to Macau (would have been quicker if we hadn't had to do a go-slow because of the airport extension work going on). Then a bit of a walk to the arrivals hall, and we walked in to chaos. A couple of ferries had arrived at once so there was a room full of people. It was *somewhat* organised but a bit stressful getting through immigration (and sadly no stamp for the passport). Then to go pick up our bags. It's a little bit nerve-wracking because you never actually see your luggage when you get off the plane. You give the ticket office your baggage receipt from the airline and they go and get your bag and put it on the ferry. So it's a little bit scary wondering if your bag will turn up. Fortunately it did, as if it hadn't we'd have had to spend the next couple of days shopping for clothes, which is noone's idea of fun.

The hotels all have shuttle buses from the ferry terminal, so we went out and across the road to find ours. The relatively short drive to our hotel took us past the Parisian and the Venetian which are pretty over the top themselves. Finally we arrived at ours, and really the whole place reminds me of Vegas. Absolutely over the top. Just insane. Checked in and came up to the room. But it was nearly midnight so we just had some noodles from the mini bar and the single beer (complimentary mini bar, as least on the first night) and collapsed into bed.

Diamond lobby of the Galaxy Hotel, Macau

Our room at the Galaxy Hotel, Macau

Bathroom in our room at the Galaxy Hotel, Macau

Toiletries in the bathroom of our room at the Galaxy Hotel, Macau