Monday morning – the departure day has arrived. I set my alarm but am still awake at the normal time. Everything is quiet in Lexi’s house so I have to creep around and end up drying my hair in the back room with the doors closed in the hope that I don’t wake anyone as it’s only 4.30 am.

Lexi is up and is coming to the airport with me – as much as I have tried to dissuade her from this, she is insistent. The Uber arrives and off we go. I check in, there’s no queue but I am told my suitcase is overweight!! It has 1.4 kgs too much so Lexi and I scrabble around and remove stuff and then finally we manage to remove a few things to the backpack and it’s acceptable. We have a quick coffee and then it’s time for me to go through departures and into the lounge. Hugs and tears – as we both knew there would be and a final selfie and a wave good-bye.

The flight is pretty good and uneventful. I watch a couple of movies and read my book, a short snooze of about 30 minutes and before you know it, we are landing in Hong Kong. I have a day room booked at a hotel because there is a lay-over of about 8 hours. I check into the hotel, change and head to the gym to get rid of some energy. It’s pretty decent as hotel gyms go and I’m actually there longer than intended.

After freshening up and repacking my cabin baggage, it’s back to the airport. Cathay Pacific lounge has a good selection of food and I’m starving so have some Chinese vegetables and chicken. There’s also a counter where you can order hot food but as I know they will feed us on the plane, I don’t really need too much.

Hippy Times 🏋🏻‍♀️