Celebration time for some as hotel ordeal ends
(05-08 23:00)
Quarantined guests rushed out of the Metropark Hotel as soon as the doors were opened at 8.30pm.
''It's fantastic to have fresh air,'' said a Portuguese man, who did not want to be named.
Most of the 283 guests were whisked quickly away to buses to take them to the airport or to other nearby hotels.
A woman among a group to emerge from the Metropark brandishing Canadian flags said she was going to celebrate ''with a macchiato from Starbucks.''
Punching his fist into the air, Kevin Ireland, a businessman from India exclaimed: ''I'm out, I didn't like it, not at all, but I am very relieved now.''
But the 45-year-old New Delhi resident, who said he plans to check into another hotel and go out to dinner with friends,
added he is very satisfied with the way the government treated him.
A group of about 50 Hong Kong residents near him waved flags and shouted ''Welcome Home!'' to the guests streaming onto waiting tour buses.
Ireland, a buying agent, said: ''I think most people felt that it was too much but the government must do what the government must do.''
''You can't blame these people for being a little paranoid,'' he said, referring to Hong Kong's previous SARS outbreak.
''This has really been dramatized. We're not in Beirut or Gaza or Kabul,'' he said. ''We're in Hong Kong and downtown Hong Kong at that.''
AGENCIES
• Picture shows Metropark guests acknowledging the cheers as they leave the hotel for the coaches.
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