To just comment briefly on the gym at the hotel, it was nice, but personally could have used a little larger selection of free weights.
Part Eight:
Friday morning was spent agonizing over finding a flight home and how I was going to get it done. Korean Air still never materialized as Chase partner and the CX flights had no F availability anywhere in the US. I owe many thanks to some DDF’ers who spent time searching and providing me with ideas and options for routings home. The winner seemed to be flying SQ HKG-SIN-FRA-JFK with two long hauls in the suites for over 20 hours. While it would be a loooong day of traveling, it was 20 hours in SQ suites!! The cost would be ~105k SQ miles per passenger after the online booking discount. I already had 17,700 in two accounts from the Lifelock gift from SQ, so I only needed to transfer in around 88k per account. Not bad for the amount of suite flying time. After the point’s transfer was done, I had to wait a few hours until they would be deposited.
We decided to go to the Jade Market and the Ladies Market. Walking from the hotel was around 40 minutes and considering it was a really nice day, we opted to walk. Walking around Hong Kong was significantly different than in Tokyo. Tokyo while busy at times seemed almost orderly compared to the chaos of Hong Kong. There are more jewelry stores than I could count and there are streets that we would run down holding our breath. Not sure if it is our lack of exposure to some of their food and meats (??), but the smell was like no other and we did not care to get more of it.
It took a little for us to find the Jade Market, even with Google Maps on the phone the hotel provides. The Jade Market is in a giant tent type area with lots of stands. Some stands have high end jade, while others have cheaper versions. IT was nice to walk through, but you don’t need much time there.
The Ladies Market unlike its name, does not cater to women specifically. It is a long street that gets intersected a couple of times, but seems to go on forever. You can buy anything from kitschy souvenirs, bad knockoff purses, selfie sticks and lots of other items. We spent and hour or so walking through the stalls and then decided to head back to the hotel.
After 45 minutes of walking back, I went straight to the computer only to find out the points had not transferred into the accounts yet. This is when I started to sweat a little as Shabbat was an hour away and we still had no idea of what we were going to do. I waited another half hour, refreshing the accounts every minute and still nothing doing. At this point I started randomly checking BA for flights again and found J direct to JFK for Sunday. That would be an option, F would be better, but we just about had no choice left. On a whim, I decided to check a couple other US cities and found two F seats to LAX! Success. I booked them with minutes remaining to Shabbat, but I got F seats! I am lucky enough to have some friends who were able to call CX and confirm kosher food for us on our flight. The hardest part had been solved. We had our flight into the US, with an added bonus of getting to spend the day (or two) in LA.
Back to the present time, we were running out to get to KZ for our pre-booked meal. Not knowing what to expect, we stuck with some friends who were in town for work and knew the drill (saving seats as soon as davening was over). The Rabbi made Kiddush and everyone went out to wash. Apparently this was a busy week, with all the tables full, it took some time to get things moving along. I will spare you all with the extreme details of the food (or at least all that I saw), but it seemed never ending. I counted four types of fish dishes (including sushi), multiple salad options, two chicken options, meat and a few desserts as well. One definitely gets their moneys worth and after a week of small meals, it was nice to have this with all these people.
The next day was spent hanging around our room and reading the local papers. We did go out for a little bit after Shabbat was over to see some of the night action in Kowloon. Tomorrow we plan on getting to the airport nice and early to check out all the CX lounges and mentally prepare for a ~13 hour flight in CX F… Ahhh…
