From Istanbul to Hong Kong

Recently I went to Hong Kong, and a fun time was had by all (apart from the bit where it was freezing up a mountain, that sucked). Here are some random shots of Istanbul airport, because look at this guy.

Every now and again he took out a big metal stick thing and did something to the ice cream with it. I'd suggest "stir", but it all looked a bit more complicated than that. Elsewhere, I stumbled upon a bookshop selling endless copies of a book with gun kicking action adorning the cover:

If you're wondering who he is, Wikipedia will enlighten you because I haven't got a clue. Nice threads though. After leaving the bookshop (and I really had to, because everything was in Turkish) I thought I'd wandered onto the set of Mass Effect when I saw this amazing hologram woman rambling on about all the planes I could be missing:

As it turns out, she's just a projection on a bit of board so that was a little bit of a let down. Directly opposite lots of tourists wre taking pictures of this collection of plastic - I hope they didn't think it was real.

What am I saying, of course they thought it was real. Anyway, a few hours waiting later (with no internet, because trying to work out how to pay for the airport wifi was an advanced lesson in "wtf") and I was off to Hong Kong. Last time I was there was 1999 - I'm not sure if this is the same airport or not, but it's pretty impressive. Hello there, nice view out of the window.

I had to wait about five hours here for Silvakreuz - they have free wifi, but it's pretty terrible (and even worse when on a Kindle, which is all I had with me). So I spent some serious quality time looking at this guy:

When I got bored with that, I had a staring competition with this poster:

As you can imagine, I wanted to die about an hour in. I did find some olde worlde type aeroplane hanging from the rafters though:

When I got tired of that (about twenty seconds later), I forced myself into a seat and burned through most of Weaveworld by Clive Barker. Eventually the right plane arrived, and here is a picture of some clocks to commemorate the event:

If you're wondering, the airport to Tsim Sha Tsui is about forty minutes by taxi and costs about $280 HK. Make sure you get the red taxi, because other colours serve different areas and you'll be charged more. That's how it was explained to me, anyway.

Fast forward a little while, and we're outside this place:

 

If you've never stayed in a Hong Kong mansion, you're in for a surprise because "mansion" is what it most definitely is not. They are, however, fantastic if you're on a budget and manage to luck out and get one of the small hotels that are decent (and by hotel, they mean "small apartment with maybe four or five tiny rooms along the main corridor").

My next post will take a look at the mansion, along with an introduction to the wonderful world of "How the hell do we get this door open". I may or may not complain a bit too.