Leaving Hong Kong by Chep Lap Kok Airport is substantially different than it was at the old one. At Kai Tak, the plane had about 300 yards of runway in which to take off, and then had to bank sharply left in order to avoid hitting the apartment blocks on the side of the hills surrounding it, something which never failed to scare the willies out of me every time I did it. If you happened to live anywhere in the vicinity, looking out of your window must've been a nightmare - It really was only a matter of time before some guy was going to wake up one morning and find an airliner protruding from his French windows! Mind you, it was still slightly worrying when I arrived in Hong Kong the other day and the plane somehow managed to land on only the left hand wheels before tilting with a thump onto the others after touchdown, so the pilots obviously don't want to take all the terror away from a landing at Hong Kong.

Anyway, it's a whole new world I'm going to - I could tell this as soon as I boarded the Qantas plane (Queensland And New Territories Air Services, in case you ever wondered what that stands for). Suddenly I was surrounded by stewardesses with thick Australian accents - that's Australian accents which were thick, not the accents of Thick Australians before you start on me - referring to all the female passengers as "Guys" and wanting us all to be mates. Clearly, the idea that Australians speak English is a complete misconception - they try very hard, but really do insist on abbreviating every other word and using slang at every opportunity. The general rule seems to be to replace the end of virtually every word with either "o", "ie" or "y" so that you can, for example, send your kids off to kindie before having hen fruit (eggs) for brekky at Maccas, going for a smoko and having a barbie with johnno in the arvo. Then in the evening you can go ploppy with the dingle-dangle before flopping down on your wugga-wugga... ok, so I might have just made that last bit up. It all sounds to me like somebody's let a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, as they say down under - and that's some good acid!

The news was playing when I put on my headphones during the flight, and the first thing I learned - other than the disquieting news that Cyclone Tracey is heading for Western Australia and that Darwin is under 20 feet of water - was that "Upon finding Tracey Richards dead in her flat with multiple knife wounds, New South Wales Police have stated that it looked to them like a classic case of Suicide". Honestly. That's what they said. Where the hell am I going?

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.