Asian moon…

In my previous post, I blogged about the time when my missus and I went to Japan on a holiday. Well, actually, it was, more or less, a tour of the Far East, the Asian countries in that direction – starting, first of all, with Hong Kong…

It was not so convenient to fly in those days and I remember we had to fly to Kuching and then, to Singapore, stopping there for a night in transit…but that was good in a way as we were able to shop for some winter clothing that we could use on the tour.

I did not really like Hong Kong. For one thing, they all spoke Cantonese at the time and when one could not speak the dialect, they suddenly turned inhospitable and not very friendly. I hear they’re much nicer now and are conversant in English…but I wouldn’t know as I have not been there since.

We landed at Kai Tak (that was the airport at the time) in Kowloon and went via the undersea tunnel to the island. I remember going via cable car to Ocean Park and there was this place called the Sung Village…

…and we dropped by the ATV studios as well…

My missus was an avid fan of those Cantonese series from Hong Kong on videotapes at the time and would watch every single episode without fail.

Next, we flew to Taiwan and we had the good fortune of bumping into the young and very handsome, Kris Philips, better known as Fei Xiang…

Of course, he’s old and shrivelled now…and the last I heard of him, there were rumours saying that he was having a gay relationship with (Steven) Liu Wen Chen.

I quite liked it in Taiwan…

…as the people there were all Hokkien-speaking, the Chinese dialect that I am most proficient in…even though theirs was a little bit different but despite that, we were able to manage very well which, unfortunately, was not the case when we went to Seoul, Korea after a few days in Taiwan…

I remember shopping there and because there was this communication breakdown, I just put all my money on the counter and let them take what I should pay for whatever I was buying – the people there were very nice and polite though.

It was December and as you can see from the photographs, the further north we went, the colder it became…

…and from Korea, we flew to Japan.

Flying there was not a problem as there were stops along the way but we flew back all the way from Tokyo on 18th December, 1983 and it was such a terribly long flight. Then, as we were descending at Subang, the airport in KL at the time, suddenly the pilot aborted his initial intention to land and the aircraft turned quickly and started picking up speed and flying upwards again. There was an announcement on board – something about a crash…but that probably was a slip of the tongue. All enquiries after that were accorded very vague and evasive replies. Eventually, we were diverted to Penang and had to wait there for hours and hours till the wee hours of the morning before we resumed our flight to KL. As we landed, we saw the unfortunate aircraft (a MAS Airbus A300, Flight 684 from Singapore) that had landed before ours and crashed – the whole top part of the plane had gone missing! Gee! That was scary!!!

I can’t remember how we flew back from KL – whether it was via Singapore and Kuching or through Kuching…or whether we already had direct flights from KL to Sibu at the time. Whatever it was, we sure were glad we got home in one piece, praise the Lord!