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Published: November 19th 2007
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Our flight landed in Macau, casino capital of Asia so us not being gamblers, or having much money for that matter, we decided to high tail it out of there as soon as possible. A public bus to a ferry terminal and a 1 hour ferry ride took us to the Kowloon area of Hong Kong where we planned to stay for 3 nights. Getting to Hong Kong went very smoothly and as we will write in later blogs, this was typical of most of our transportation around China. Coming from the Philippines it was a huge relief!
We had booked ourselves into a hotel at the Chungking Mansions, a favourite with backpackers because the 'mansions' offer some of the best value accommodation in town. Let us tell you that 'mansions' is a gross overstatement for this place! It's basically a concrete 15 storey building of 5 blocks containing hotels, shops, restaurants, offices, pirated goods, porn etc and nearly every floor smelt vaguely of curry. For £13 a night we got a room/shoe box only slightly bigger than a single bed with ensuite/smaller shoe box with shower over the toilet for multi-tasking. It wasn't actually too bad and the location
The Star ferry
shuttling passengers between Kowloon and Hong Kong island. of the 'mansions' was excellent for exploring.
Donna's version of exploring was visiting the historical sights of H&M clothes department, Zara and every other shop between them! Neil's version of exploring was searching for hair gel which wasn't greasy, nasty bryllcream and for ways to claw back money which we were no doubt going to have to spend because of Donna's 'explorations'.
Aside from the shopping we did have a small list of touristy things we wanted to do. The first was getting the Star ferry from Kowloon across to Hong Kong island (very cheap at only 2 HK dollars - about 12p). Hong Kong island incidently had it's fair share of shopping centres but was certainly less touristed then Kowloon with some lively streets and home of the Mid-Levels escalator, the longest escalators in the world at 800m and a 20 minute journey. With contraptions like this you will therefore not be surprised if we told you that Hong Kong runs like a Swiss clock and in this respect is similar to Singapore. If you don't know what we mean by this then let us explain. Getting around the city is easy thanks to a large variety
ahhh...how romantic!
if only you could have heard the cheesy techno music in the background. of transport options and those options being prompt, regular, clean, cheap, hi-tech and comfortable. The streets are clean and the pavements and roads are constructed out of material that does not require roadworks to maintain them every month. There is no shortage of staff to keep the city clean as well or to help the transportation run smoothly.
The second touristy thing we wanted to do was to see the light show which can be seen every evening from the riverside at Kowloon. At 8pm the many neon lit skyscrapers on Hong Kong island start flasing with lasers and search lights beaming from their peaks to a very poor musical soundtrack (where is Jean-Michel Jarre when you need him?). The positives of this experience is that it made for good photo and video taking and the light show was very well timed to the music. The negatives are that as soon as the clock hit 8pm, what seems like half of Hong Kong descends on the riverside along with it's entire army of tat selling tourist touts and the river becomes a sea of restaurant/casino/sight-seeing boats that obscure the view from riverside sight seers.
Hong Kong has a
lot more to offer the tourist than what experienced but our next destination was China and our budget could not hold out in this city. This city was an undaunting place to start our adventure in China and of course gave Donna a chance to stock up her wardrobe (rucksack) with clothes for the coming colder weather! BBbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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