Hong Kong

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We flew out of South East Asia and on to East Asia, where our first stop was Hong Kong. We were staying in Kowloon rather than Hong Kong Island as it is cheaper - we got a box room where we could fall into the bed from the doorway for 20 pounds - cheap by HK standards!

We spent our first day wandering around Hong Kong Island doing all the tourist things!! We got the Star Ferry over and walked amongst the massive buildings. The first we saw was the Jardine tower - nicknamed the building of a thousand arseholes due to the many windows!! We then went on the mid-levels escalator which is the longest escalator in the world running 800m and lasting 20 minutes! We got off in SoHo and had lunch before making our way over to Victoria Peak to have a ride on the Peak tram. This was our first real taste of how the Chinese feel about queuing. The tram pulls up and the free for all begins - old and young being pushed aside by grown men! The views from the peak are pretty good but would be better if it wasn't so smoggy!

That evening we went for dinner at a family friends' apartment on Hong Kong Island. I hadn’t seen Lindsay for years and didn't know her married name so when we turned up and the concierge asked where we were going all I could say was Lindsay someone (formally Jones) and her husband called either Mark or Matt!!! We didn't know their flat number and had forgotten their phone number - I think the concierge thought we were having a laugh! We had to leave and find an internet cafe to look up the phone number and come back - half an hour late! Oh well - that'll teach us to be disorganised! We had a great evening, lovely food, wine and chat - missing the last train home and having to find a taxi!

The following day's plans were interrupted by the Olympic torch relay! We had planned to see certain things but the torch palava kept forcing us to change our plans! We accidentally saw it twice but only as we were struggling to get through the hoards of people to get somewhere else!

We went to the Man Mo temple which is suffocatingly full of incense sticks, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and Golden Bauhinia which is where the handover to China took place in 1997. In the evening we watched the sound and light show from the Kowloon side which illuminates all the buildings on Hong Kong Island.

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