Another day another ciuncou and leaving hongHkong this morning it was an education to find that just when roads in the uk are at their busiest the traffic in hong kong is still ssleep so my taxi sped to the sirport from jordan in just fifteen minutes i think anyone would be hard pressed to better that. The flight sss fine coming sfter a really grest breskfast in the executive loungevwhen i even hsd aaguiness at is thirty in the morning. The China airlines flight was nearly empty, we got there ahead of schedule and immigration formalities took just a few moments and my case was coming round on the carousel as I got to it. Then I went and got our airport express train tickets and went back to arrivals to wait martin who had been on a very full flight on Singapore airlines? Then we arrived at the main station, it was quite simple to find our hotel and left baggage there, got complimentery water and did some shots of buses nearby. Martin found an up-to-date map at the metro counter and got day tickets then metro to the light rail or tram line. Nothing much to write home about but we had a ride and a few kinesics shots, most passengers seemed to be locals taking their first ride, cameras were the norm so we got no hassle. Very overmanned especially at crossings and junctions, we saw the university branch line in construction and got nice shots there. Neither of our phones work here and it took a while for the staff to get our internet connected. I've got the hotel to turn off the music in the corridor and it is now peaceful. Without windows it should be quiet, we had a couple of craft beers on the way back to the hotel plus s MC Donald's as we saw few other options in near reach. Tomorrow we trade in our vouchers for rail tickets and get which speed train to the port in the south. Very hot and muggy weather. n C here to edit.

At least the site seems to have normal sized print tonight, I had a really good shower and scrub down when in got back mid afternoon as it was hot and dusty around the container port served by what else than container port road which is accessible via the MTR albeit still running erratically following the crash on the scissors junction late Sunday night or should I say early Monday morning, they have scrapped all plans to introduce the new signslkins system, I wonder why. I also found that the return airport express journey will be by taxi as they don't start the trains early enough to get an eight am flight which to my mind is pretty poor. I was thankfully heading out of town this coming not that that means anything like quiet just less rsmmed in, they have ladies with white signs saying stop when they were spilling out when the trains stop and are overfull. The kight wasn't that useful first thing but I should have reversed locations but I got several hours and by mid afternoon I looked at my mobile at the time adding eight hours but forgot it was summer time so got back earlier than expected but then I'd had enough lorry fuel particulates for one day.  I needed to get everything packed again ready to get to Taiwan in the morning, I don't seem to have much space but of course all my winter clothes and coat are tucked away now which leaves a lot less leeway.. anyway all done now and I've taken a look at the map to refresh my memory when we arrive at the main station in the capital, our hotel shouldn't,t be far away. The lorry traffic in Hong Kong is much more mundane as they seem to have had a clear out of the older types but the quantity remains but far too much white in use. I meet my travelling companion Martin on arrival his flight should follow me within an hour on arrival. We'll get our train ticket from our voucher ourchsedp from the net and get seats reserved on the way down to the oosprt on thursday.

 Comfort ofothe business lounge at abu dhabi airport iican report that in addition to delicious sweets and finger bites there is a type of bread and butter pudding of such delicacy that I've already had three portions so I can survive in Hong koKo without eating tomorrow. The lounge is really top notch so much better than the efforts at manchester but of course you can't get a bacon butter here. They haven't got anywhere in the transfer lounge security screening to put shoes back on, a fault Manchester did address but they are oodles more polite here and the service is almost overwhelming one thing the Arabs are good at is hospitality. So the world is still recovering from the new Zealand mosque killings very shameful and I read tonight that the yellow shirts in Paris are right wing anti Semites and attacked a Jewish writer. Violence is never a very good route but reading a book on Indian independence non violence under ghandi



​ almost started a load more trouble and the idea that everyone becomes saints overnight and permits themselves to be killed on the prospect of a better afterlife seems about on par with Isis. I think the most shameful places in our own British society are the right wing extremists who hide beneath a mantle of officialdom  such as police or quangos. I'm expecting a busy but peaceful few days in Hong Kong before I move on to taiwan and a notch on my new country list!

Nearly ready for the Asia trip on Saturday although Etihad have sent me the boarding card from Abu Dhabi to Hong Kong 14 times but none for Manchester to Abu Dhabi. Looking at them on Trust Pilot doesn't inspire confidence but I expect I can easily collect the boarding card at Manchester, fingers crossed. Phoning them is a bit like contacting an American company, actually it all makes Brit stuff look sort of OK. Anyway they were cheap and hopefully I'll sleep part of the way. I'm meeting a friend in HK and he is coming down from Guangzhou for the day with a fellow transport fan, their city has a very active fan base.

I managed to get a Lonely Planet on Philippines and notes via my traveling companion which seemed to amount to Best Of British luck on that sector but I remember being very worried about Mexico which was actually delightful. We had the Polio Fellowship branch meeting and AGM, I was due to do an illustrated talk but time ran out but I'll keep the slides and notes ready for any lull which may occur this year. Next month we have a meal out. The BPF as a whole seems to be grinding slowly into the ground which after 80 years is an incredible shame. A couple of actions I've taken on board to do which I can sort tomorrow.

I'm just running a few DVDs to give out as gifts on the trip but everything else is ready for the off. It has been a week of awful weather so got no filming done at all, at least we have the new shed and I'll make a start getting the garage emptied on my return. I had a very frustrating time with the Red Planet hotel in Manila trying to arrange our pick up and ended up phoning Manila to Air Asia who assure me all is well but the hotel insisted when they contacted them our booking for the flight was a day earlier which it isn't, ended up telling them what I though of their service, we'll just get a taxi it is only a 20 minute drive depending on traffic.

I'd ordered a marriage cert for friends who I was doing family history for, it arrived in a little over a week when they had stated 4-6 weeks so that was a great improvement, perhaps they are wised up and are cautious about delivery times so people are happy when they get them early. Anyway not a loty going to happen until I'm underway now so I'll try and update as we progress through Asia.

Around two hours of digitised material has been added to our shop and Youtube today, well it will be bed time! I've also updated the list on the shop front page. Remember that we are generally putting old tram and trolley material on download as the general demand is low but they often appeal massively to a country based audience as opposed to those interested only as transport material. There is a wide variety in the latest batch covering from Montreal interurbans, numerous German systems, Portugal, Italy, Yugoslavia, the DDR, Belgium,France Belgium,The Netherlands plus a few bits of steam and other rail items to supplement the tram scenes.

I did some more finalising of the forthcoming Asia trip with most pick ups and drop offs now confirmed. The weather isn't being very kind to us this week, numerous interuptions in power supply as I did the editing today and consequent need to retitle the files to save. Annoying but thats the situation in Cheshire which you would think was in the outback but it seems that the folk of Cheshire really hate having their trees trimmed and thus they crash on to overhead power lines in the high wind we are experiencing, hoping for much better weather in Asia. Well I must get on with my chores, a few Hong Kong shots in past times to whet your appetite for the latest offerings to come shortly.

With the weather now back to sleet and howling gales it is probably fortuitous that I'm heading to warmer climes in a few days and have spent the afternoon getting the documents in order and adding the macro detail to the trip and requesting airport pick ups in less well public service provided locations. I've also just finished the last filing and recording of the material on cine films in the next batch for deposit with the OTA. I'm about to start getting the next 5 hours processes and then I'm back on top of things, all the first 5 are now on Youtube plus downloads via the PMP shop pages. I think the only thing I need to do is to add the latest pictures to the Smugmug site. Here are some shots from Reading last week. We did get some of the rubbish from our garage down to the tip and the 'shed' plot ready for installation on Wednesday , I hope to b able to shift the majority of contents to empty the garage before I leave for Hong Kong on Saturday morning. The conversion of the garage to the PMP collection display room will be in April on my return. The coming weeks weather in the UK looks grim so I'll continue with storage and copying and who knows perhaps a sly new Bus Spot Ultra  and I'll compile a new list of bus film  locations for my return, trucks don't pose so much of a problem and we have plenty of places to go at.

A busy week preparing for our forthcoming Asia trip but we did manage to get to Oxford and Reading despite the weather being very different from the Met Office forcast but then it is no better the the way the BBC interprets the same information. I've got the photos filed and ready to put on our Smugmug still image shop, hundreds of thousands of pictures that you can download as files or order prints and even get commercial rights to use them in publications or on web sites. The same now applies to this site where you can purchase a licence to use video from our digital download option or from DVD, this should be ordered together with the required film. I shall be loading yet more amazing archives being presented to the world for the first time in several instances, they will later go on for deposit in the OTA archive.

We had a lovely evening with friends last night and advanced their family tree quite a lot, within a month we are actually back into the 13th C which is quite amazing. I've made advance on my own tree following the first match to my Vincent ancestors on the Ancestry DNA and made yet another contact on my father's Irish side of which I've now many links but joining up the dots is hard as Ireland is notoriously difficult for family history. Mind you I don't even know where Jim O'Grady now lives, he'll be 90 this coming November 11th. This morning I bring you a catch up with pictures in Oxford and the covers for the latest DVDs, I'm putting the digital options on this morning for Oxford and Reading and hope that we'll be able to get more back numbers loaded as this is certainly the way forward. We've had a pair of Siskins on the bird feeders this past week which was a colourful addition, we have had them before but not for a few years.

We are still hoping for UK bus visits later this week still weather dependent. I hope to have archive uploads on Youtube this evening and through the week. I have a chain of medical matters to get sorted which is taking up time as was retuning our tv back to England from Wales, that alone took hours.