Fragrant Harbor and Deep Drains
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Tigerair 2962
Pt III: HKIA & Getting to Disneyland
The foreigners’ queues for immigration were quite long and when it was our turn we realized that we didn’t fill in the arrival cards. We must have missed them when the crew were giving them out on board the flight.
Instead of a stamp on a passport, we were given a ticket stapled onto the passports. I wondered if we could remove them when our passports ran out of space (unlikely to happen though). Funnily my Taiwanese stamps were covered by the HK entry ticket. Perhaps this action reflected the immigration official’s political stand.
The first thing that we did after customs was to locate the CTS counter where we would buy our Disneyland tickets. Instead of paying 450 HKD at the door, one could get tickets at CTS for 420 HKD. However, apparently there are cheaper options such as HKZHAN.COM (395 HKD) but it seems that one would need to go to their downtown office to collect the tickets.
Next up was lunch since we were hungry and figured out that meals at Disneyland would be expensive. Maxim’s Food² was our choice.
We thought that a 3G SIM card would be useful in helping us to get around Hong Kong. I had done research online and knew that one could get SIM card from 1010 located at the Departure level. A helpful airport staff helped us with the directions but it shouldn’t be hard in the first place. Other visitors to HK had the same idea as us and there was a queue forming up outside the shop.
Since we would be in Hong Kong for 4 days, it made sense for us to get one2free Power Prepaid which cost 88 HKD. One week of unlimited data cost 78 HKD; the remaining 10 HKD could be used for calls and SMS-es. Nano-SIM is also available at 100 HKD.
The 1010 staff served us with the brutal efficiency only available in Hong Kong. She forgot to give us our 12 HKD change and it was 10 minutes later before we recalled. She wasn’t pleased and only returned us the change after much reluctance. Welcome to Hong Kong!
I had a Octopus Card from the previous trip but Ying didn’t have one. We topped up mine with 100 HKD and she bought one at 150 HKD (100 HKD value, 50 HKD deposit) at the Airport Express Station.
We only left the airport almost 2 hours after we landed. Following the instructions on the Disneyland’s website, we could take any of the ‘A’ or ‘E’ buses to Lantau Link Toll Plaza where we could change to Bus R8. ‘A’ buses were much more expensive than ‘E’ ones and we knew why after boarding E21. It made detours around the airport area as well as around Tung Chung before going on the expressway to Lantau Link Toll Plaza. In contrast, the ‘A’ buses went direct, saving around 30 minutes’ of journey time.
Finally we reached Lantau Link Toll Plaza and located the stand for bus R8.
We were the only passengers getting up at the bus stop; on hindsight we could have crossed the underpass to the bus stop on the opposite side to avoid going on a looooong U-turn (which included crossing Tsing Ma Bridge twice…).
My Long Way Down 