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Published: December 16th 2007
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Hong Kong ...
our view from the peak. Getting to HK was a long mission. The initial excitement of being on the plane fizzled out when we were told there was a 'slight irregularity with engine 4'. After 2 hours on the tarmac they decided that we should get off the plane as it was going to take longer than expected to fix. Nine hours later and we were in the air! Qantas were good though, they dished out $60 worth of food vouchers. We ate enough for a week and managed to buy a bag full of snacks for the plane. Imagine our faces when they decided to give us 2 dinners on the plane! (not sure why they did this). Thankfully, we were staying at our friends Darren and Tracey's place, who didn't seem to mind getting up at 3am to let us in. Luckily, we did not wake little Jack up. We slowly awoke in the morning and were greeted with a beautiful view from their apartment windows which soon had us eager to get out and amongst it. Unfortunately, a smog was hanging over HK which meant our views did not reach as far as they should. Tracey told us that it blows down from
China this time of year. As I write this I am on a train in China and coincidentally, I am looking at factory after factory billowing smoke and the smog here is a lot worse.
We decided our first stop would be a trip up to 'The Peak' on a cablecar for what is said to be the best views of the city. Before going up there we wandered around some of the city and it's back streets and immediately took to it. It was our first stop in Asia and the culture difference fascinated us ..... particularly the food .... shark fin soup anyone!? Once up 'The Peak' we saw the city in all it's glory. I had always anticipated HK to be a large sky rised urban spread but the view of the whole thing shocked me. Its huge! and looks amazing with the harbour and surrounding land/islands in the picture. That evening our hosts took us for great food and a quick stop tour/crawl of the legendary nightspot area of 'Lan Kwai Fong'. This included an ice bar, vodka jellies and the best daquiries one could imagine!
Our second day was spent over the water
In Training
Darren and Tracey took us to a Russian Vodka bar in preparation of the journey ahead of us. We are still unsure how Tracey managed to do this to her face! ;-) at Kowloon, walking around the shops and markets. We soon find out that Kowloon is much busier and crazier than HK island. We had a fun day exploring and one event dominates our memories of it. As we strolled along the main road, we noticed a crowd had stopped and were looking upwards. We took a look and saw a man half hanging out of his window, shouting his head off in Chinese. We soon realised that he was a potential jumper. At this point, you immediately have a dilemma. One side of you wants to stay and see how the situation unfolds. The other starts thinking about the fact that he might jump and thats something that would stay with you for a very long time! Thankfully, to distract us, the police and fire services arrived on the scene in abundance and quickly placed a giant air pillow in his line of fire. This relaxed us a bit. Meanwhile, the man was stripping his clothes off and throwing them out the window and continuing to shout. He was clearly having serious problems and whatever he was shouting, the crowd did not like it because they started to egg him
on and tell him to get on with it!! This continued for the best part of an hour until a fireman appeared 2 stories above and begun abseiling down. Before the guy caught on, the hero had bounced off the wall and kicked the guy into his room, saving the day. Crazy shit ..... Crazy HK! That evening we saw the light show that the buildings of HK put on at 8pm every day. Its actually quite a sight and a little funny (well we laughed anyway), we will try and put a video of it on this blog at some stage. In short, the buildings show off their neon prowess and lasers fire into the sky all perfectly in time to an interesting theme tune! Another huge chinese feast followed, this time at the Jumbo floating restaurant and after a couple of drinks, we were ready to crash out.
We were lucky enough to be there for Jacks 1st birthday party which was a fantastic way to finish our stay. Darren and Tracey were perfect hosts so thank you very much and it was great to catch up. You have a nice lifestyle over there guys ..... enjoy
it! We left the party with our bit of birthday cake and made our way to the chinese border. We knew it would be pretty different over the border and it sure was. Having had it quite easy in HK with people to show us around and many people speaking English, we were now back on our tod and trying to find a bus station again. After a mini stress, we found it in time and got on our bus .... complete with beds for an overnight trip into mainland China.
G+L
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Amy
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new hairstyle lynny??? take lots of pics in china- i'm really curious about it there. are you almost to Europe??? xxx