Ryan in the Rain

The timing of Ryan's trip to Hong Kong was pretty good. There was a big hail storm while he was here, but he arrived before it all started and left after it was over. The hail storm delayed some flights, but he did not have to deal with any of that.

There are too many times when you have to plan your air travel carefully around here. During Chinese New Year, everything is just insanely crowded and expensive. I would avoid the airport as much as possible that entire month. During the summer, you have to consider the rain. Most days are just rainy, but sometimes it rains enough to cancel flights. During typhoon season, you have to think about typhoons. They give you plenty of warning before they hit, and they rarely hit Hong Kong, but if you plan a flight a week or more in advance, you can easily get stuck because of a typhoon. Now we have hail storms wreaking havoc at the airport when it should be perfectly safe to travel.

I still live in my tiny apartment, so we stayed at a hotel while Ryan was here. I picked the Regal Kowloon on Mody Road, between Tsim Sha Tsui and Hung Hom. It was a little expensive, but definitely worth every penny. This is a nice hotel in an area full of nice hotels. It is not close to any MTR stations, but that also means it is not as close to all the crowded tourists spots. This is the kind of neighborhood where you can go out and walk around without walking through a million other people. But it is not in the middle of nowhere. The hotel is a block from Salisbury Road and the beginning of the Promenade.

There is another hotel between the Regal and Victoria Harbour, but they are not right on top of each other, so some rooms have views of the harbour. Even if you don't have a view, it is only a block away. The hotel is also close to the Hong Kong Museum of History and the Science Museum.

A lot of hotels don't have any outlets to plug anything in unless you unplug one of their lamps. This hotel had plenty of open plugs on the walls that were easy to get to and readily available. I don't know why all hotels don't do this. I don't have a bunch of smart phones and ipads and tablets, but most people have things they need to charge. Usually when I stay at a hotel outside of Hong Kong, I have a cellphone and camera to charge.

With the hailstorm, we spent most of our time in the hotel. The easiest things to walk to are the Promenade and Avenue of Stars. We have seen all that a million times. Even in perfect weather, we would not have gone there. This was a good hotel to spend more time indoors. Some hotels are good for sleeping and little else. I would not recommend that anyone who comes to Hong Kong just stay in their hotel all day, but if you do, this is a pretty good place to do it.