Ok, let me jump out of order here a little and share some pictures from yesterday...
The K-1 kickboxing event was at the Asiaworld Expo center, which is a huge convention center / arena area next to the airport. They hold big trade shows there all the time, and occasionally they have concerts, and in this case, a big Kickboxing thing.
The easiest way to get their is to take the bus or train to the airport, its one short ride (or long walk) from there. I got there a bit early by bus and since Pat was running late I decided to stop at the airport to get lunch. I wanted to check out the new terminal they just finished. I assumed it was just some small addition, but it turns out its frickin' huge!
Not quite as big as Terminal 1, but still an impressive structure. I think so far only two or three airlines are using this terminal... so it wasn't nearly as crowded as the main terminal I arrived at. The wavy roof is cool.
Obscenely large for an indoor billboard! its a gigantic Yao and Jackie!
So as I mentioned, this place wasn't really didn't seem to be too busy w/ travelers, and I noticed there were a LOT of stores and restaurants here (whereas the check-in area of terminal one has relatively few). I started becoming suspicious... as you may know, HK loves its malls... and this new terminal started look like an excuse to build another one. :-P
I grabbed lunch at the BK and took a look around, they have something like 100+ stores and restaurants and some sort of '4D movie theater' (i think its Imax 3D + 'smell-o-vision')... ok, i guess if you have a long layover and you feel like the screens on the plane are too small! :-P
I snapped this picture discretely at one of the gift stores with my phone camera:
Now if they did this in the US, people would be screaming bloody murder... :-P
They also have a thing called 'Hollywood Asia' which was like an exhibit on HK movie stuff... props, pictures, memorabilia, etc. It turns out its also connected to a game arcade too with HK movie themed games (from what I read)
I want to go back and actually go inside. I didn't have that much time to go (and it costs HK$20 to enter to just look around, or $10 if you had a boarding pass, i think it was free if you ate a certain amount of food at their cafe).
But you can see a lot of it from the outside:
This was costumes from ' The Banquet' (starring you know who). In the middle is this famous outfit.
At the front entrance they had a car painted to match the one from 'Initial D', and they also had a lot of 'Infernal Affairs' related stuff. I think these two statue things were supposed to be related to it:
But they don't really look like Tony Leung and Andy Lau, do they?
On the side wall they had a composite of lifesized cutouts of a ton of famous HK stars. You could go stand in front of them and take a picture as if you were standing with them on a stage. And some more promo materials for Banquet (they hang these types of banner things in the lobby of movie theaters here in HK for upcoming movies, they get quite elaborate in some cases.
Anyway, I'm flying to Japan at the end of this month, maybe I'll spend an extra hour at the airport after I get back to check this out. :-P
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