Monday - Hiking and getting into China

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Today was the first official full day of the tour. I was up early as we were meeting at 8am to get the bus and go hiking. I nipped to Maccy D's for breakfast before meeting the others. We were joined by Stuart from Northern Ireland and Ged and Lauren form Calafornia.



We all headed out to the tube and then caught a bus up to Victoria park. It was a hot day as usual and the bus was full. When the bus terminated we got off and walked up the view point which had two sides, one with a view out over the sea and the other a view out over the city and took lots of photos and then walked down the winding path. I'm so glad we did it this way as the path was very steep and in the heat of the day, even though there was shade it would have been a mare. We got hot and sweaty enough walking down so walking up would have been exhausting.



We walked back into the city and then caught an old fashioned style tram back to near our hostel. We had arranged a late check out so we showered and changed, checked out and then stored our luggage away and went for lunch at a local Chinese restaurant.



After lunch we nipped to the local supermarket to get supplies for our night bus journey into China as we wouldn't have any time for dinner. We then headed back to the hostel and relaxed until 3.30pm when it was time to leave.



We took the tube and changed once and then changed again for the train to the boarder. Once there we had to pass through immigration leaving Hong Kong and entering China and all went smoothly. There were hundreds of people coming through and we got split into foreigners, Chinese nationals and Hong Kong channels to make the processing easier.



Once through into China we nipped to the loo and got some money out at the ATM and then headed to the taxi rank and had to queue up with lots of other people. There were several queues so we. Hose the shortest. To save everyone standing with there back packs on Sally queued for us and some of us nipped to Macdonalds to grab some good. On the way my flip flop broke but luckily I had access to my spare shoes in my ruck sacks omit wasn't too inconvenient.



When I got back our bags had been moved into the queue and more people had joined behind us and Sally had moved forwards. We. Invoked through to get our bags getting death looks from some of the people who were queuing as if we had pushed in. It was at this point that a couple of people queue jumped us and then Sally got really mad and had a go at the guy controlling the flow of taxis. Words were said and a second security guard got involved, but Sally stood her ground lo. When it was our turn to get a taxi we had to split into two groups as there was 7 of us and we all had our back packs. We headed to the bus station in quick succession which was a few minutes away.



We then headed for the bus but had to have our bags scanned first like you do at the airport. There was a family ahead of us who must have been moving home was I have never seen so many bags, boxes and even fans (the electric ones to keep you cool) in one place at time!



Finally we got our bags through with no issues and then headed to the bus. We stowed outer back packs underneath and then climbed aboard, putting our shoes in the plastic bags provided. We were all given top bunks near each other so we could chat and giggle at the situation. They are not the most comfortable of places to sleep and if you are tall or broad it makes it difficult to sleep. As Sally said they are made for Chinese people not Europeans lol. Ged, Lauren, Nitzan and Bhavisha seemed to fall asleep ok and stayed that way (or so it seemed) but Stuart struggled, and at one point he flipped around so he was sleeping with his head in the foot well and his feet up,over the seat lol.



We made a few stops every couple of hours for comfort breaks and then we stopped for a couple of hours for the driver to have a rest. We eventually reached xxxxxx around 7am where it was raining. We were picked up in a minibus and dropped off near our hostel which was called Monkey Janes hostel and was a sort walk from where we got dropped off. There is no traffic allowed in the pedestrian area around the hostel hence the walk.



Ged and Lauren were allocated a private room in the main building and the rest of us were given a 4 bed mixed room in a building a few seconds walk away.



Xxx

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