Hotel finally confirmed

I’m glad to say that we now know where we’re staying, and the hotel is right on the harbour front on the Kowloon side in Tsim Sha Tsui East, and very nice too. I had a close look and it seems to be perfectly placed for all of Susie’s daily trips out to exam centres, and should also be a fairly straightforward journey down to the Star Ferry, from where I’ll cross over to the Central Ferry Piers to begin that day’s adventure. One of the hotels we could have been allocated was 20 miles north, up on the west coast of the New Territories and half-way to China, so we’re pretty happy with the outcome!

Look, another map 🇭🇰

At the suggestion of an experienced friend-of-the-blog for all things concerning Incidents of Travel (my mum!), I’ve bought a proper map for daily route updates in the old CrossingCanada style, so look out for that once I get started. My brother Oliver has also pointed out that Hong Kong’s climate is incredibly similar to his in Southern Florida, which has focused my mind powerfully on the ‘heat and humidity vs. effort’ conundrum. To manage expectations a little (mostly my own), this will definitely NOT be a high mileage trip in the style of previous ones! With the humidity factored in, 30°c could feel closer to 36 or 37°c, so I think I’d better monitor my efforts very carefully. The exceptionally hot weather in the UK this week has been good for getting an idea of what it will be like.

Filling in another blank

There was a blank space under my bike where a little folding wheel should go – a wheel that makes folding and rolling the bike around MUCH easier. So I got onto eBay and met Fred, who was French and turned out to be a Head Chef in London who buys and sells classic 1980s bikes as a hobby. Classics like this one. He had a rusty old version of my bike in his garage in West London, with no saddle or right hand pedal, so I bought it for spares. Despite all of the rust, it’s actually a younger relation of mine, according to the Sturmey Archer gears which handily have a date stamp of Oct 1991, and made me appreciate just how well my one has been cared for:

And finally for today, to live up to that famous requirement for advertisers to ensure their ads are “legal, decent, honest and truthful”, I thought I should tweak this one from the last blog post a tiny bit: