Inter-Continental Shuffle

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The flight from Auckland to Hong Kong was pretty uneventful. I was glad to leave the cold and sorry to leave my friends knowing i'll almost certainly never see them again.
I arrived in HK airport at bout 7am and spent the next 8 hours (before Alice arrived) totally over-whelmed at the number of people and only venturing out of the corner where my pack was to my 'happy snacks' at the booths. It was, to state the obvious, fantastic to see Alice again and after the hugs and greeting we got on a 45min coach into HK central.

Hong Kong

It's difficult to sum up Hong Kong without wittering on about the size of the sky scrapers and number of people; but its a good nice enough place and we spent a nice day kicking around the centre (although we had several public transport nightmares, including, but not limited to spending $60 on a taxi in the wrong direction and waiting 45min for the wrong bus). The next day we went to Lumma island (about 20 min away by boat) which was more tropical i guess you could say and roaming with giant spiders that look like giant beetles with too many long, legs. Hong Kong actually includes 3 or so islands including 'Hong Kong' island and about 50km of the mainland pilfered by the British. We spent two days there, it wasn't enough to see all the things, outside the city centre that are worth doing but as it is our last stop before home we can finish it then. I was quite glad to go as it was very much going from one extreme (the NZ bush) to the other

Kuala Lumper

...is like a block of cheese left out for too long (bare with me on this). It smells bad, it's uncomfortably sweaty, more full of life than anyone is really gonna be happy with, all in all your not sure if it's a good idea or not; but if you peel off that top layer of mold and are a little brave you can have a great experience. But i shall leave Alice to fill you in on some more details

So having spent several very hot sweaty hours trying to find a hostel in Hong Kong we decided that booking a place in Kuala Lumper was probably a good idea. So when we arrived it worked like a dream and we were out having some amazing Thai food 2/3 hours after landing.

While in KL we went the the botanic gardens, the Batu batu caves which had 273 steps up and had monkeys everywhere and generally did the tourist thing.

In the evenings we eat great food in various street side stalls watching the world go by... and there was a lot to watch. Chris managed well with the crowds although he did get a little overwhelmed the first time we went to China town. There are three layers in the streets of China town. At the back there are shops, which are totally hidden by the street stalls, then there are people walking in the crowd selling DVD's and fruit.

Today we are away from KL and heading to the oldest jungle in the world, we are about to head on a three hour boat trip and hopefully see some cool animals like water bufflo on the way.

Alice+Chris

This computer is not letting me upload photos so you will have to check back in a couple days 😊

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