Apple has taken its Asia-Pacific online stores offline for the time being, preparing for the launch of iPhone 5s orders in several markets there. Unlike with the iPhone 5c pre-order launch last week which took place at a uniform 12:01 AM Pacific Time, the iPhone 5s online order launches are staggered around the world in order to accommodate the in-store launches happening in many of the same countries at 8:00 AM local time.

The first online orders for the iPhone 5s should be going live in those Asian countries (Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore) in about two and a half hours, as Apple had notified its Australian customers that orders would begin at 2:01 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time.
Other markets will see similar overnight launches for online orders, with Apple having informed UK customers that orders would begin at 12:01 AM British Summer Time and U.S. customers that orders would begin at 12:01 AM Pacific Time.

















Top Rated Comments
That is the link that you should have used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia or maybe this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continents.
While Australia and Asia are in the same timezones (hence the same start time). Australia is of course a continent of its own and not part of Asia although of course closely related in many affairs due to the geographic closeness alone.
People's ability to make utter fools of themselves online with the biggest information finding tool on the planet at their fingertips never ceases to astound me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia-Pacific
You know that is done for show, it is more exciting when the site comes back online with new items, rather than those items just popping up.
Apple is all about presentation