flight time to hong kong’s lap chek kok international airport from mactan cebu international airport was roughly two hours and 35 minutes. we arrived at hk’s airport around 11:53 p.m.

first reaction: yay!! we’re here. geez, their airport is BIG! our own mactan cebu international airport is rather pitiful compared to lap chek kok international.

my love for long walks was put to a test beginning at hk’s airport. haha, airport pa lang - we’re in for a long walk going to the immigration counter.

i don’t remember the exact details now. but i think we had to walk through the whole stretch before we could get to the immigration counter. yay! naa na mi makita na signs.

keep on walking. take some pix along the way, too. board displaying flight sched.

okay, time to rest the legs. bitaw, we just have to try the flat escalator [haha, first time kita. so la kabalo sa proper name].

just walk some more

immigration counter is now in sight… the next floor is the airport’s departure area.

cordon to control the people queuing for immigration

free maps and hk guides stand. there are lots of them around the airport. be sure to get some before proceeding to the immigration counter.

 sample of two different hk tourist literature

 mtr [a.k.a. train] route guide

 hk food/restaurant guide

another hong kong map

haha, we got so fascinated with the availability of sooo many FREE hk tourist literature that we were unable to observe where our co-passengers went. yataps! where do we claim our baggage??? hmmm… everyone seemed to be lining up at the immigration counter. okay. let’s just follow suit. at this point, we were unsure if we went to the correct line. that’s because the people before us were mostly koreans. they were definitely NOT our co-passengers. bloopers kicked IN. hehe.. line and i got out of the line. [imagine two ignoramus passing under those cordons, you'll have a funny image - hehe^^] it was at this point that we decided to ask. according to the chinese lady whom line asked, we really had to go through immigration first before we could get our baggage. thus, we lined up again. this time at another lane. we went for the lane where line thought she recognized some of our co-passengers.  to make up for the little blooper, i urged line to just take some pictures.

ah, line. i remember - naa diay koy guba.on na camera. pose sa.

ako pud.

little did we realize that us having so much fun at taking pictures would lead us to yet another blunder. haha, an immigration officer suddenly shouted “No Pictures!!!” yataps.

he probably thought that line was taking pictures of him. hehe, line just got fascinated seeing many monks.

line and i had truly a difficult time containing our laughter. but we did manage to behave while waiting for our turn at the counter. when it was my turn at the counter, i thought i was in trouble. the officer took some time looking at me and at my passport. he kept glancing back and forth before he put a stamp on my passport. i waited a little bit for line, but behind the immigration counter, another officer gestured for me to proceed to the arrival hall. NO WAITING - a sign i apparently failed to see was conspicuously posted on the glass walls. as soon as line joined me at the arrival hall, we proceeded to finding where the baggage claim area is. as both of us were first timers in hong kong, we didn’t know where to to go.

strategy: let’s just keep on walking until we stumble into it.

we walked and tried to locate our flight number posted near the several baggage carousels. this didn’t take some time because an aiport employee carrying a push cart greeted us with, “From Cebu????” wooh, he had our baggage with him. apparently, the baggage on the currently moving carousel was for a korean airline. mana ang sa cebu pacific.

wooh. everything went too fast. if i’m not mistaken, all these took place within 30 or 45 minutes from the time we got off the plane until we got out of immigration. with our baggage completely secured, i urged line for us to sit and regroup and plot out our next plan of action.

beyond 12:34 a.m. line and i found a seat and talked about whether we stay at the airport and wait for morning to catch a bus going to the city OR we braved the streets of hk and leave the airport. at that time, i only had 200 hong kong dollars, while line only had 40 hong kong dollars. the money we brought with us were USDs. from our earlier research, the night bus costs 23 HKD. thus, for the two of us - fare would be $46. we were six hk dollars short. i couldn’t use my 100 hkd because bus drivers don’t give change back. an octopus card, as we’ve previously read, would have come in handy. however, since it was already past 12 midnight, the counter that sells octopus cards was already closed. the machines where one could buy train tickets and octopus card were also out-of-service.

line and i were so itching to leave the airport that we decided to convert 100 USD to HKD. we didn’t convert all our money because we knew that airport rates are rather low. as we still didn’t have the exact change for the bus fare, line bought some food at seven-eleven.

“eatable” hello kitties were in the noodle.

line was skeptic of the hello kitty that she only ate the noodles.

after line had eaten, we decided to call our hostel. we wished to find out if we could leave our baggage with them. that’s because we need to leave very early for macau and we didn’t want to be lugging our baggage around. however, we could only get the machine. thus, we decided to leave the airport and head straight to the hostel.

leaving hk airport. some more walks from the arrival halls to the bus station outside the airport.

exit sign

more signs

out of the airport. on to the cold.

the night bus

N21 = our ride to the city / Fare: 23 HKD/pax

eye-catching sign/reminder on the bus

line and i on board a fast-moving bus

[lost in hong kong: up next]

[except for a couple of pictures; the pix are line's]

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