Days  0 -1. So titled because it took me pretty much an entire day to get to HK from London via Beijing. Because this is cheaper.  The fantastical holiday of ultimate awesomeness costs a goddamn fortune as it is, I am not going to fork out for direct flights too. This is also by far the most miserable jump of the entire FHoUA, involving a 10 hour flight to PEK followed by 1 hour in the airport (which mostly consisted of queuing, but we’ll get to that) and then a 4 hour transfer to HK. Departing 1740 Wednesday, arriving 1655 Thursday. Ew.

Day 0 yielded some fascinating information about the Chinese people. Anyone who has spent much time in China is familiar with this, but for example it is not considered impolite there to make the most horrendous bodily noises imaginable. I don’t mean farting, I mean some truly dramatic and unbelievable hocking and hacking and throat clearing and nasal cavity vacuuming. I am hard to disgust unless you are playing with your chewing gum (this actually give me dry heaves. Not kidding. Wish I was) but I found this incredibly repulsive, I had to suppress the urge to look ill and threaten to smack people. This must be how the Japanese feel when we sneeze in public, I must try to be more tolerant of that idiosyncrasy in future.

Personal space is another interesting issue. I was fortunate enough to have a spare seat on my left on the flight to Beijing. Now this is fortunate on any flight, but particularly on this one, as the gentleman (and I use that term loosely) on my right decided to read his Chinese broadsheet by holding his left arm at approximately a 90 degree angle to his body, landing his elbow pretty much right in front of my face.  Had I not had the extra room on my other side it would have taken a lot more effort to refrain from ripping his arm off and beating him round the head with it. I despise the general group “people who sit next to me on planes” in any case, but a special hell is reserved for some of them, most notably  “people who sit next to me on planes and will not shut the fuck up”, “people who sit next to me on planes and attempt to use it as an opportunity for business networking” (these categories often overlap),  “people who sit next to me on planes and smell bad/snore loudly/have a really annoying voice” and right at the top of the list are “people who sit next to me on planes and encroach on the fucking 2 square feet of personal space I have been allocated”. The rest make me want to punch someone, the last item makes me want to actually set them on fire.

Day 0 blended sleepily into day 1 as I pretty much expected it to, and I landed in Beijing, filled out the I-do-not-have-swine-flu-no-really-I-swear form, went through about a dozen queues I was mildly confused by, some of which had temperature detectors and all of which had people in military uniforms, and walked straight onto my connection. I am pretty accustomed to airports in general, what I’m not quite as accustomed to is being in a country where I really, really can’t speak a word of the language and must rely entirely on other people to tell me if I am doing it wrong.  Besides which, its China, general paranoia makes me slightly nervous. They try to filter the internet for fuck sake, they are clearly at least partly evil. (Note: I am writing this in Taipei ie. Not China. Mostly because I didn’t have time in china, but tiny amounts of paranoia are a given)

In any case, I eventually arrived in Hong Kong (having of course filled in yet another form assuring the Chinese government it has been weeks since I last sneezed or petted a piglet), laden with baggage, exhausted and extremely hungry, having not eaten since the previous day. On my first evening in Hong Kong, I learned the following things:

• It is possible to do some truly horrendous things to a chicken burger. Possibly only by going back in time and ensuring the chicken in question spent its entirely life miserable, greasy and alone, but nonetheless. Well done Burger King Hong Kong. I never thought anything would out-ick that twinkie.

• If you ask for water in a Chinese restaurant they will bring you hot water. Not tea, not bottled water. Hot water.

• Napkins are not assumed necessary here. Something of a shock to the system after coming recently from incredible-waste-of-fucking-paper land. I have a pile of unused napkin on my desk that I will someday use to provide myself with a lifetime supply of toilet paper in post-apocalyptic earth. Or failing that I could probably construct a papier mache scale model of the Eiffel Tower or something.

• Everyone in Hong Kong speaks English. It might be shit English, but they speak it.

• Hong Kong is shockingly, incredibly efficient. The trains are amazing. On the train from the airport not only do you see a dot light up when you reach a stop, the distance between that dot and the next is in fact a progress bar, indicating how far along its journey from one to the other the train has travelled. Genius. Where else has this? I have never seen it before, but it seems shockingly obvious as a cool feature.