I arrived in Hong Kong just after 11am, and my flight was departing at 9pm, so I had enough time to head into the city to do a little bit of looking around. I spent a bit of time investigating all the transport options and settled on the following:

I flew two legs with Cathay: Hyderabad to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to Auckland. The two experiences were quite different.

One of my favourite drinks is a mango lassi. You can get it at most Indian restaurants in New Zealand and many restaurants here, but most of the time it is made from either tinned mango puree (if you are lucky) or some mango flavoured stuff (if you aren’t) and a lot of sugar. Since it is mango season here right now, I’ve been able to have the real thing fresh and homemade almost every day.

I just drove 12km in Hyderabad! Granted, traffic was light as it was 9pm, but on the other hand, it was dark and hard to see, and I was driving a manual for only the second time in over 15 years.

Back in New Zealand, I have had very different coffee routines at different times.

A couple of days ago, I had a few new experiences in India. It started when Gopal had to go to the bank. The rear seat of the motorcycle is not usable as it is currently being modified to be comfortable for more than 20 minutes at a time, so he went alone. Plus, we have our niece staying with us at the moment, and there is no way all three of us can go. He left around 2:30 and the bank shuts at 4. It’s about half an hour away.

We live in a pretty quiet part of Hyderabad. We’re in such a rural area that frogs in the nearby rice paddies are the biggest source of noise at night. One night a buffalo mooed the whole night, but that was just a one-off. This complex is still only partly populated so it’s pretty quiet most of the time. There is still a bit of construction noise, but nothing too bad. The biggest sources of noise here are fighter jets and gunfire.