Taiwan to Chengdu

Taiwan, Hong Kong, Chengdu

August 30, 2016

Taipei to Hong Kong--CX (Cathay Pacific) 467 Economy

After our short stay in southern Taiwan, it was time for us to head over to Chengdu, China for another budget/shopping tour of Jiuzhaigou with CTourus. This would be a week-long tour in the Chengdu, Jiuzhai area of Sichuan Province, China on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. 

We have heard so much about Jiuzhaigou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, of its beautiful waterfalls, lakes, and mountains. Now we can finally see this place with our own eyes. 

High Speed Rail station, Chiayi

Starbucks are all over the world.

There are baggage storage in all of the HSR stations.

A picture of the station from the platform.

Here comes our train!

Waiting to board our Cathay flight to Hong Kong at the Taoyuan airport.

Flight 467

Another quick snack in a bag on this late afternoon flight. I really think Cathay's catering is going downhill.

Arriving HKG

Our plane docked at the far end of the airport so we had to take the long walk toward the main area to figure out where our next boarding gate would be. We also had about two hours transit time so we planned on getting some decent dinner before boarding our next flight.

Cute! As we walked through the airport, we saw this replica of the street food stall set up as part of the reminiscent display of Hong Kong history and culture. 

The food court area was quite busy when we finally reached there. It was dinner time and we were fortunate to have found a vacant table before taking turns to get our food of choice.

My order of roasted goose and pork.

MOR's order of Chinese tamale (sticky rice with all the goodies wrapped inside bamboo leaves.)

And his wonton noodle.

ChC's BBQ pork, exceptionally tasty! Not cheap, but good!

Cathay Dragon (Formerly Dragon Air) KA824

While having dinner, we noticed that our boarding gate number was posted. We had to take the shuttle across the field to another smaller building (possibly the North Satellite Concourse) for our boarding gate. I was probably tired and did not take pictures of our flight. I think we had dinner on board but I just don't have any memories of it now. Our flight left on time and we arrived Chengdu around 10:00PM.

Chengdu Airport, where we were picked up by the tour representative who then dispersed us to different mini vans according to the tours we were booked on. It seemed that this one guy was there to pick up people from different tour groups at the same time. Originally, they were going to put the seven of us going on this same tour (CTourus) in this one van, but after seeing that it would not hold all of us plus or luggage, they called another van to pick the three of us up to the hotel. We were a little worried being left there at the parking lot, to say the least, but the van did come and we got to the hotel safely for the night. Tomorrow our adventures begin.