Today we departed from SeaTac airport at 10:05am on 2/27/17 on the first leg of our journey to Hong Kong for a 10 day land tour with Travel With Alan (TWA). Our short flight on an Air Canada Q400 whisked us up to Vancouver in under an hour and then we walked 3/4 of a mile to our next gate including passing through Canadian immigration and another security screening. With only an hour between flights there wasn't much waiting around.
Soon our very loaded Air Canada 777, flight AC007, lifted off on the 13 hour projected flight direct to Hong Kong. En route the Captain alerted us to the existence of head winds which would add an hour to our travels. The flight was smooth for the most part and we passed over several Japanese and Korean cities that we'll visit in a month on our next trip. More about that later. The food onboard was really good, but I personally didn't care for the movie selections. I did get to see Queen of Katwe and Manchester By The Sea. I really loved the first one and didn't care for the second one. I rounded out my viewing with some interesting NOVA TV shows.
Approaching Hong Kong we had to do a loop to sequence the plane for landing at 6:45pm on Tuesday, 2/28/2017. We lost a day passing over the international date line. While waiting for immigration, we met a couple we had sailed with previously on Holland America. They were on our flight, but are boarding the Amsterdam to sail to Florida. It's a small world. Immigration was a breeze and we found our TWA representative who led us to our bus. It was about a 30 minute drive to our hotel, the Grand Stanford Intercontinental Hotel. We checked in (we were upgraded for some reason), and then ventured out to explore our surroundings. The hotel even lets you use a cell phone with free internet and calling to many countries. At a street vendor, we found some lobster rolls on skewers that were quite tasty. The street area was well lit with lots of people walking around. Things seem a bit pricey, but we'll see once we can do some serious shopping.
We'll be here a couple days, and we have a partial day of touring tomorrow. Stay tuned.
