Life, Day by Day

The City Tour Our harassed travel agent cum tour guide arrived early the next morning to pick us up for the " part of the package, shouldn't be missed " half day city tour.  There were just 6 of us (my aunt-nun has joined us by this time) and so our ride was the same van that we rode from the airport.  Our tour guide was named Eric and he was very informative and his Chinese English with a British accent was very entertaining.  He says pooh instead of poor and people turned to peepoh...heheh.  On our way to the cross harbor tunnel which we will be entering to go to Hongkong Island, he pointed out heritage places, shopping centers, hotels, schools as well as tenement houses which had clothes lines hanging out from window to window up to the top floors. But remember this was in 1993, so I don't know if this practice is still common in the Kowloon part of Hongkong.

We checked in at Holiday Inn Golden Mile at Kowloon and to my surprise, their front desk staff was not as fluent in English as I would have expected from people living in a British Colony or maybe because this was the night shift?  In fact for the next 5 days, I found it difficult to communicate with most of the locals I encountered, either they could not speak English very well or they refused to speak it.

Our group of 5 flew from Bacolod to Mactan International Airport in Cebu on November 10, 1993 to take the PAL flight PR 0302 bound for Kai Tak Airport (this airport closed in 1998) in Hongkong for a 5 day holiday.  We were not part of any tour group so that our travel agency gave us specific instructions on what to do and who to look for when we landed.  During that time, there were no cellphones, so that we had to rely on oral and written instructions which were simple enough I thought. 

The very first time I went overseas was in November 10, 1993.  The place: Hongkong.  The company: my mom and brother, together with a distant aunt and her grand-daughter.  The purpose: primarily for pleasure but also to escort home our father's first cousin, a Good Shepherd nun who was ending her assignment there.  We took the CEBU-HK Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight going there and a Cathay Pacific (CX) flight coming back.  The rationale for taking 2 airlines was because my auntie-nun bought a one-way CX ticket for her trip home while we wanted to ride PAL. Well, I thought that's a good way to check out both carriers...at least I can say later I have experienced them both.