MOONWALKING PROVED to be just a hop, skip and jump for Buzz Aldrin, but the former astronaut decided a journey from the US to Hong Kong was a giant step too big for him last week. Hundreds of delegates who had arrived at 'mission control', the Convention Centre in Wan Chai, to hear the former spaceman promote holidays for star trekkers, were told: 'We have a problem ...' Aldrin, who was to be the keynote speaker at the PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) Annual Conference, the biggest travel industry event to have been held in Hong Kong for years, had sore gnashers. The conference was carried under the banner 'The Future Is Now', the title of Aldrin's planned speech. PR hype about space travel had gone on for months.
Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa made his welcoming address to the delegates, who included tourism ministers, airline executives, and hoteliers, but Aldrin was spaced out, nowhere to be seen - suffering the results of minor surgery on a front tooth back in the US.