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I'd only ever seen the Hong Kong skyline on the TV and that made it look like a very modern and clean city, so when we drove into Hong Kong I was quite surprised by just how grubby and dilapidated some of the areas were. The building that housed our hostel was no better, although the room itself was spick and span, if not the most spacious.
Nathan Road, the main North-South road is a mass of people, cars and signs and because of this we inadvertently walked into a Japanese restaurant when hunting for a Chinese meal! Surprise surprise, we later stumbled upon an Irish pub where we hoped they would be showing the Liverpool Vs Milan AC European Cup final. They weren't, but the Oriental looking girl there turned out to be a thickly accented scouser and she told us where to go. We then walked down to the southern tip of Kowloon (nearby) and happened to arrive at just the right time to catch the 'Symphony of Lights' show - a lights show which you watch across the water. The lights on the high-rise buildings are synchronised with the (boring) music to create a very watchable event.
We decided to get a couple of hours kip as the European Cup Final didn't start until about 4am local time. After nearly oversleeping we dragged our lazy backsides out of bed and jumped into a cab to Hong Kong Island where we bumped into John Wark - a very unexpected rendezvous. For those that don't know, Arthur is a big Liverpool fan, Howie is a Man U fan and I'm a (happy) hammer. I transformed into a Liverpool fan for the night while Howie just went on and on about how he didn't want Liverpool to win. There is big rivalry between the clubs and I scolded him for not supporting the English team - until he asked me who I'd want to win if it was Tottenham playing AC Milan. I had to admit that he had a point.
Unless you had your head in the sand (or you think that football is called 'soccer' and is played by men with nice thighs) you'll know that Liverpool performed one of the greatest comebacks of comebacks and won the game after looking dead and buried at half time. We were already very wasted by full time and
Arthur's idea of celebrating was to buy a 50GBP round of Sambuccas. Bad idea. The three of us necked them, but he didn't quite manage to hold them down. See photos below.
We had a great laugh looking through the photos the next day, although it was pretty cringeworthy to recall the tube ride home where Howie and I were holding a blood covered Arthur up in an 8am underground train, surrounded by locals on their way to work. That little incident did little to aid international relations, I'm sure...
It was back to the Irish pub when we finally arose from our slumber. The all-day breakfast was the best that I have ever tasted - and the scouse bird was in a very good mood. Free (soft!) drinks = luvvly jubbly. The day was already old, so we wrote it off and went to play table tennis in the evening. Not being gay or owt, but when in Rome...
There were lots of things that I wanted to do on our final day in HK and I pretty much packed them all into the one day. We started off by getting the ferry across the water
from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island. We then made our way up to the Peak Tram and rode it up the mountain to the Peak Lookout area. The weather wasn't great; it wasn't good the whole time that we were there, but the view was still quite good. By now I'd had my fill of views so we didn't stay too long. Once back down, we got on the 'mid-level escalators' which are supposed to be the world's longest covered escalators. Verdict: unimpressive. After this we split up, with Howie branching off to watch Star Wars III and Arthur heading home to recuperate. I did lots of sightseeing and met up with them both later on.
That night we went for a meal at a Chinese restaurant. Although english is one of the official languages of HK, it's not widely spoken, so choosing a restaurant was a case of finding a window display that looked inviting. We ended up in a place where they put a soupy broth in the middle of our table and then tried to sell us raw meat and fish to cook in it. All we wanted was sweet and sour pork, shredded beef and
prawn crackers....!
After the less than enjoyable (and less than reasonably priced) meal, Howie dragged us to the cinema to watch Star Wars. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would, although I still fail to see how the little green thing can have mastered the way of the Jedi and yet still repeatedly fail to conjugate a basic english verb correctly.
Hmmmmm, annoying I was finding it.
And that was Hong Kong. I'm sure there was much culture to uncover, however, there were far too many bars and reasons to celebrate on our short sejour for me to delve too deeply.
Maybe next time.
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Michelle
non-member comment
Oi
Excuse me Christopher, what is wrong with Tottenham?