Where's Michael Fish when you need him?

Three weeks ago I returned to NZ from summery UK via Hong Kong where it was 34 degrees and even though I didn't leave the airport's air-conditioning, I felt uncomfortably oppressed by all that heat and humidity bearing down on the vast curving roof; and then I got back to Auckland for the coldest day of the year. It was raw and chill and miserable.

Yesterday I returned to NZ from Macau and Hong Kong where it was again - still - 34 degrees and drippingly humid. I had spent a week going from melting heat to goosebumpy air-conditioning, setting off a similar fever-chill series on a personal level that had me prostrate in bed for 16 hours. But then I got home to a bright and surprisingly warm day, all set to head off to Gisborne this afternoon, seduced by reports of what last week was brilliant clear sunny weather. Except that now there's a massive cold front passing up the country bringing snow even to such unlikely recipients as Rotorua and Napier, and the phone is promising single-digit figures for Gisborne itself and freezing night temperatures.

It is winter, after all, but Gizzy and the East Cape usually skim through with lots of sunshine and warmer temperatures than elsewhere, and I was looking forward to exploring Whale Rider country. Bother. If only the forecast had come courtesy of Michael Fish, I could be feeling optimistic.

Beating the heat

At the Peninsula (where I stayed last time I was in Hong Kong, in a 6-room suite with a hallway and brass telescope) the string quartet was playing 'Roll Out the Barrel' as I sipped my Earl Grey at high tea. Were they being ironic? Because the Pen's afternoon tea is as far from a knees-up as you can get.

It's in the lobby, with high moulded ceiling, acres of shiny marble, potted palms and white-suited bellboys opening and closing the doors for everyone, even those who arrive, sweating, on their own feet instead of gliding up in one of the hotel's fleet of Rolls Royces.

The tea was well done, beautifully presented and very tasty: hot little pastries, cucumber and salmon sarnies, pretty petits fours (especially loved the almond friande with the maraschino cherry) and bottomless tea made from leaves. Lots to look at as people came in and out; and no hurry at all to vacate the table, despite the long queue of people waiting.

It was all very classy and elegant, and cool in every sense: unlike outside where it was stiflingly hot and muggy, people were huddled under their umbrellas, and others had given up entirely and composed themselves for sleep on shady benches and elsewhere, shoes off, folded cardboard under their heads and dead to the world.

 

Everything is illuminated

Macau is a very compact place: a peninsula and a couple of islands linked by bridges, only 30 square kilometres altogether, so we’ve been travelling the same roads back and forth as we’ve been taken to various sights over the last four days. This quickly became a favourite view, across a man-made lake to the man-made cityscape of tall and extravagantly-shaped buildings. The Grand Lisboa is the oddest of them all, and at night is spectacular.

We were on our way to yet another Portuguese restaurant, Antonio’s, and were served by Antonio himself who indulged us (and himself) with his party piece after the excellent meal and the flaming crepes Suzette: he wiped off his sabre – what, you didn’t know that chefs had sabres? – and showed one of our group how to take the top off a champagne bottle with one swipe. That’s the glass and all, cleanly, with no splinters, or lost wine. Pretty cool, we all had to admit.

There was nothing cool about today. I’ve no idea of the temperature or humidity, but walking around the narrow streets I nearly melted, and reduced a substantial paper serviette to a limp rag simply by wiping my brow with it. My sense of direction was discombobulated and I went in frustrating circles trying to find my way back from a little park where I was sorely tempted to commit a sort of theft by releasing the birds left there by their owners in tiny little bamboo cages.

Despite the heat, there were people there working on the machines that are dotted about in parks throughout the city, doing unselfconscious tai chi under the trees and even walking backwards down the path; as well as playing cards and mah jong in stone pergolas. And everywhere there were people sweeping and tidying, keeping it all neat and tidy.

Then it was off to the ferry for the hour-long trip to Hong Kong, for which it would have been lovely to stand on deck to enjoy the islands and the interesting shipping, but we had to stay shut inside by foggy windows, alas. This city is as busy and energetic as ever. It’s odd to see other white faces here, after Macau, and the waterfront is very cosmopolitan – as well as spectacularly illuminated too, on this hot and muggy night.

Ni hao

Back in Hong Kong, just two weeks after passing through here on the way home from the UK - waiting now for the ferry across to Macau (straight from the airport, via train and a series of escalators, all very automated, clean and efficient).

We were wafted here in Cathay Pacific's Business class. I love those pods: unlike Air NZ's Business which scrimps on comfort, these are the real deal, with big TV screens, seats that recline fully flat WITH ALL THEIR PADDING, tables that are easy to eat off, feathery duvets and good-sized pillows. And excellent food and wine and chocolates and hot flannels...

So feeling pretty chilled - which is a laugh, seeing as how it's 34 degrees here.

Counting down

Also, gearing up: for the big family expedition to England next week, where I will be the only one of us in the aliens queue at immigration, all the others smugly flashing their British passports.

There will be Paris, London, Harry Potter, 'Downton Abbey', Oxford college accommodation, old friends, older aunts, Ireland and Hong Kong. Air NZ will be wafting us there in Premium Economy (as long as Chile's volcano allows us to get off the ground) and returning us in Business. The only fly in the ointment is having to pass through LAX, where even posters everywhere encouraging passengers to expect friendly treatment from staff (and where to report it if not) aren't enough to compensate for the stupidly, unreasonably, inefficiently, massively inconveniently, cruelly stringent security measures that make being even (especially) a transit passenger there simply hateful. HATEFUL!

Heathrow isn't a bundle of laughs either, full of officious jobsworths glorying in their power to make innocent, tired, anxious passengers even more miserable; and it's dirty and crowded and uncomfortable and inefficient. But on past experience, the uniformed non-entities at LAX enforcing absurd levels of security on innocent see-aboves take the cake for delivering an unpleasant, tedious, wearying and worrying un-Welcome to the USA.

Premade? Still working on this version.

Well, fancy that. Thanks, Google Alert! It's kind of exciting, to know there's a Sim with my name - and what are the odds that she's a traveller? She's also described as tan (nup), thin (hah!), Pisces (Scorp), brown-haired (who knows?), single and normal - but her eyes are grey and she aspires to Knowledge, so that's near enough. As for living in a 'secret sub-neighbourhood called Exotic Destinations' - well, how about Bay of Fires, Tryphena, Ningaloo, Koblenz and Paris? And that's just the first half of this year. (Sorry: but this blog is called TravelSKITE.)

I'm not so sure about the 'visiting foreign hotels' bit though: that sounds suspiciously like what's depressingly titled 'site inspections' in the trade - something that travel agents get saddled with when they're whisked overseas for what other people assume is an exciting, exotic free holiday. While we travel writers see ourselves as in an entirely different category from agents, I've been caught up in some of these myself on group famils, and also heard true horror stories of having to be shown round 20 hotels in a single day. It's madness: you can't distinguish them from each other after about the first four, so it's a total waste of time. But mainly, how tedious and dispiriting, to be shown some fabulous hotel room all marble, 1000+ count linen, balcony overlooking turquoise bay dotted with islands, and dazzling bathroom, and have to focus on the fact that the bath-tub is too high for elderly clients to climb into.

What they should do is give the agents video memory sticks of what's available, and then let them just enjoy the hotel they're staying in, which they will then remember both vividly and - hopefully - fondly. Like Indigo Pearl on Phuket, with its classy industrial-chic theme; or the Hong Kong Peninsula's 6-room suite with TV over the bath; or the Raj Palace in Jaipur's croquet lawn and super-attentive staff; or the roses and hand-made chocolates in the Plaza Grande in Quito; or the intricate pattern of bougainvillea petals on the bed at Legends in Mauritius; or the fireplace in the bathroom and the Inca walls at Hacienda San Augustin de Callo at Cotopaxi in Ecuador; or the over-water villa at Lagoon Resort on Aitutaki; or the rustic four-poster in the tent at Kangaluna in South Australia; or the 16th century longhouse in Anglesey that smelled of lilies and hay. See? I remember them all perfectly - and I'd recommend any one of them, totally (almost).

Happiness is warm nuts

Here we are at Auckland airport, home again, home again, jiggety jig, waiting - and waiting - for the First-Born to pick us up. Not that I'm ungrateful, but after the smooth efficiency of Cathay Pacific's service all the way from Delhi via Bangkok (unexpectedly) and Hong Kong, it is a bit of a let-down. Or maybe just real life again.

Cathay did us proud, with upgrades to their fabulous business class on every sector, and on the two long ones we had the wonderful cosy pods with lie-flat beds, feather pillows and duvets, fold-out big TVs and great food served by charming and attentive staff.

From the warm cashew nuts before dinner, through the lady who ushered us more than a kilometre through Hong Kong airport, through security, on several levels, in lifts, on travelators and even a train from arrival gate to departure in just 20 minutes, to the speedy arrival on the carousel of our priority luggage, it's been a breeze and a pleasure.

Ups to Cathay!

Atishoo, atishoo

It's 30 degrees in Hong Kong at 9 o'clock - 9pm, that is. The harbour was big and smooth as we came in, thickly sprinkled with ships and the water gleaming under the full moon, in which the Man is once more the right way up.

There are masked people everywhere and roving staff with Health Check armbands and thermometers looking sharply at anyone who's sniffing. It's not the place to have a sudden sneezing fit, but I got away with it. This time.

Chinese Whisper

This morning in the staff meeting, the teacher i/c international students announced a visitor next week from Qingdao. I quivered silently for a bit, but then I had to whisper to the woman next to me "I've been there!" She smiled, I have to say, thinly.

Well, what are the odds - it's a small (by Chinese standards) port in the Yellow Sea and I was only there in March. I scored a cruise with the OH and some Aussie journalists on the Silver Whisper, a Silversea small ship, from Hong Kong to Shanghai via several ports plus a night in Beijing. At the Peninsula Hotel there. Which would have been impressive, had we not by then already spent two nights at the original Pen in Hong Kong, where we had a 6-room suite in the tower. Six rooms. With a hallway. Ankle-deep oriental rugs, quantities of televisions (including over the bath) and a telescope. And our luggage in the dressing room, spirited there, we scarcely having seen it since checking in at Auckland. We were met off Cathay Pacific's Business class at the airbridge, people! Then we were wafted through all the tedious airport stuff and conveyed to the hotel in a Roller.

That was the plebian version of arrival, however: the real celebs helicopter onto the roof and disappear into the penthouse suite and it's as if they're not even there.

Different story on the Silver Whisper - everyone knew who we were and used our names from the get-go. Necessarily more compact there, but also very luxurious - bottomless champagne in the free minibar, imagine that - and a great contrast to much of what we saw, a lot of it involving wheelbarrows and bamboo besoms. Qingdao was our last port of call before sliding up the river into the heart of Shanghai on the last morning.

>>> ...A day’s sail south brings the temperature up again and when we dock at Qingdao I’m not shocked to see brides with bare shoulders posing for photos in front of St Michael’s Catholic Church, though when they gather up their skirts to leave, I’m equally unsurprised to see they’re sensibly wearing striped football socks underneath. Draped over a hill, this is a lovely town with a strong German influence, and when I wander through the lanes I could be in Bavaria — until, that is, I pass the hospital where brightly-coloured plastic bedpans are piled up next to buckets of flowers at a stall by the entrance. I visit a cavernous mansion and look at the Spartan bed where Mao slept, sniff the incense at a gaudy temple with fierce statues and a stuffed cat in a basket, duck under washing strung across the footpath and am thankful that it’s two o’clock and not noon when I discover that it’s a clock-tower I’ve just climbed at the Lutheran church.

The people are friendly here, and I receive many greetings, including “Hello, foreigner!” from a party of schoolchildren. They’re chattering excitedly over their day at the seaside: the beach is swarming with people sieving rock pools with tea-strainers, sunbathing on the yellow sand, collecting seaweed and shells. I walk along the pier that stretches out into the bay, past stalls, photographers and magicians, to the pavilion at the end. I can see a pagoda, a cathedral, a communications tower, some skyscrapers, and lots and lots of people. I can see China.

[Unpub.]