This time around I opted for air travel, since I was a bit more pressed for time and train travel does take a bit of time.  Here are some photos of my early-morning flight from Xi’an to Guangzhou, as well as my bus trip to the Guangzhou East Train Station and the train trip from there to the Shenzhen border.  I actually took the train to Lo Wu, but since I was going to Jack’s it was much easier to take the Shenzhen subway to Lok Ma Chau (Futian) and cross there.  Then I could just catch a $10HKD bus straight to his front door.

Here are some pictures of that trip (By the way, all photos were taken courtesy of my new cell phone.  I didn’t bring any other camera with me to test if it was a good solution for trip blog photo taking – seems to have done the job decently … ):

Taxi to the Xi'an Airport

Xi'an Airport

Working at the airport

A view of Guangzhou from the bus

Lao Tai Tai's on the train to Shenzhen

Watch out!

Bus to Jack's

I arrived the day before Jack was leaving for the U.S. to attend a friend’s wedding so we went out to grab a bite to eat at “China Land”, a restaurant close to his home.

It was as hot as it looks

But the fun was short-lived since I had a lot of work to do at the North Point office where I would be stationed for most of my occupational duties.  While working there I thought it would be a good chance to experiment on different ways to make the commute from Tin Shui Wai to North Point.  The fastest ended up being the 969 bus to Sheung Shui (although it goes all the way to Causeway Bay) and then the MTR to Quarry Bay station.  Less than 90 minutes (for around $28HKD).

But by far the most pleasant way was to take the 269 bus to Hung Hom ferry pier and take the ferry across from there to North Point and walk a few blocks to the office, however it took the longest at just around 2 hours (for $25HKD).  The 269 bus is nice too because it also goes through TST, which is pretty convenient.

I took pictures of my various travel methods which you can check out here:

View of Causeway Bay from the bus

Western Tunnel Toll Booths

A few highlights from my trip were checking out a showing of Kick Ass with Khalil, Davina and Yuklan, spending the night in an office in TST while setting up a computer network (which I ended up having to re-do a few days later – ugh!), Checking out a super late showing of Iron Man 2 in Mongkok on my last night in Hong Kong, catching coffee with Ryan at Starbucks, eating dinner at a really fancy restaurant located in a clothing store, going computer equipment shopping in Wan Chai, and getting some great expense tracking software for my HTC Touch Pro 2.

Here are a few highlight photos from the rest of my time in Hong Kong:

Didn't get to see it -- waiting for English subs

Many levels of escalators!

Dan getting some Adidas swag

On my way back through Shenzhen I got my wallet picked from my pocket at the Futian Border crossing.  That would have sucked way worse if I actually had anything vital in there.  Just an ATM card for one of my Hong Kong banks and about $60HKD.  All of my vital stuff I keep in my travel belt wallet that goes securely under my shirt and pants waist.  So aside from some inconvenience it didn’t create any super horrible situations and I was able to make it to my subway / train / taxi / plane / bus back to Xi’an, where I arrived home, safe and sound, just an hour or two before Cinco de Mayo.

This will be my last trip to Hong Kong until at least sometime in June.  It will be nice to spend a bit longer at home, since I’m up to my neck in a backlog of work and tasks that need completing.

Some big news and information about my future plans on the horizon too, but it is still premature to talk about that, so for now you can just keep your eyes peeled for the post in the coming weeks.

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