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Published: February 25th 2007
We arrived in Hong Kong on the evening of the 17th Feb, absolutely shattered from our overnight flight (where Laura didnt sleep at all, Olly was out like a light!) HK airport is a huge contrast to Heathrow with lots of space, few queues and total efficiency.
We got a luxiourous coach to our hotel where it was only the two of us on board, (Laura was drifting in and out of consciousness due to lack of sleep and didnt even notice crossing over between the islands). The drive through the city gave us our first glimpse of the scale of this magnificant city and the brightness of the thousands of neon lights.
Our hotel, the South Pacific is located in Wan Chai on the Northern side of Hong Kong Island. The room was small but still very nice. We were on the 16th floor so the view was a bit of a shock every morning as the whole wall was a giant window!!!
Our first adventure was to try and find something to eat that evening, it was 10pm and we didnt think we stood a chance of finding something open, how wrong were we...HONG KONG DOES NOT
SLEEP!!! The shopping malls were packed, as were the streets and restaurants. To get our nearest big shopping street we had to walk through a really smelly market (Laura was not a fan of the hung up meat and fish for sale! Olly just wanted photos!!!) We were both exhausted and Laura was sleepwalking at this point so went for the first safe looking place to eat! The Spagetti House! Obviously the most traditional food we could find, and we promised that we would try harder when we had more energy.
The next morning...well afternoon really! It was Chinese New Year and Olly phoned Wing, a friend of his Grandad's who lives in Hong Kong, to arrange meeting up. He advised us on things to do and said that he would speak to his 2 brothers and sister to plan a few trips for them to take us on, which was very kind of them.
We set off in the hustle 'n' bustle of Hong Kong in seek of an octopus card, these are a gift from god! This is basically a top-up swipe card that you can use on any mode of public trasport from tram to
boat(and even buy meals in some restaurants!!!) You literally swipe when you get on and swipe when you get off and it deducts the fare!!! Britain defs needs some of these!!!
With a fully charged card we headed off on the underground for Victoria Peak, a must do whilst in Hong Kong. To get to the top of this beast of a mountain you get on a tram that makes you feel like your on obvilion for 7 minutes, at some points its almost vertical. As we had queued in an orderly and British fashion we were shoved and elbowed by many people and as a result we were right at the bottom of the tram (Olly got shut in the door! and only just managed to free himself before it started moving!) with probably the scariest view!
The bruised ribs were definately worth the view once we got up there!It was staggering! You can see right over Hong Kong island and Kowloon and we now realised just how high these buildings were, and how densly packed the city is.
Geek fact: 6.8 Million people living in an area of approx 400sq KM, (thats a lot of people, and
most of whom pushed me at some point!)
After the breath taking view we needed a sit down and some food, a sarnie suited the bill perfectly. Whats strange is that there is a huge shopping complex up at the top.
We decided it would be a better idea to walk down this mountain! (Olly's idea!!!) so we set off down the path(descending very rapidly some may say).
Once we had sucessfully made it to the bottom we walked through what looked like the downtown area of Hong Kong island; lots of bars. Olly got cornered by a begging monk pleading for cash, after saying no he continued to thrust the pot at Olly, so supergirl butted in and grabbed him, shunted the monk out the way and made a dash for it!
We then took the famous star ferry across Victoria Harbour to Kowloon, where we wanted to watch the symphony of lights, a large laser show that is on every night at 8 and illuminates lots of the buildings. However a large swarm of people had gathered in our way, we stopped and waited for something wonderful to happen. 8 O'clock came and went and
our view was poor, eventually at half past a "parade" began, which was to mark new years, the floats and dancers were in Olly's mind very impressive, however I was not impressed with the advertisments that they tried to call a parade!
Olly's a sucker for bright lights and cheerleader girls!!!
After standing around for what seemed like hours to most, we boarded the star ferry and returned to Hong Kong island. Due to Laura not being in the best of moods at the moment Olly cheered her up with the biggest jugs of (free refill) cokes weve ever seen!!!
They were huge jam jars!
Wing and his family came to meet us in our hotel the next morning and took us on the tram to the central district. From here we caught a bus to the Southern side of HK Island, where we passed through Repulse Bay, Ocean Park and got off at Stanley Market.
We walked through a busy market place and got our first taste of the sheer amount of fakes you can buy...everything was on offer but we resisted.
We then we taken for traditional Chinese meal of 'Dim Sum', which consists of lots of
small dishes, Laura bravely ate the shrimp, fishball, beef and mango custard. For someone who is not very adventurous when it comes to dining Olly was very proud.
After this spectular feast we headed back to the hotel for a quick drink in the starlight lounge on the 28th floor. It was lovely except for the awful singer who seemed tone deaf. Unfortunately we managed to hit happy hour and to our disappointment we got a free drink and had to stay longer. After finally escaping the racket we headed for the harbourside to watch the New Year celebration fireworks. HK really went to town with these.
On Tuesday we woke up at 11 and rushed to get ready. On the way to the MTR we bought our wonderful guides and new friends a small gift (some chocos). We then ate a fantastic buffet lunch at the YMCA hotel with a fantastic view of Victoria harbour, olly had the roast beef followed by curry followed by noodles followed by pudding...Laura had the curry(lamb curry tho!!!) With great thanks to our new friends our bellies were once again filled.
They had planned an itinerary for the rest of the day,
our first stop being their lovely apartment in Kowloon. Tony then drove us up through the New Territories including the beautiful Clearwater Bay. They explained that the whole area had changed massively since they were children, and it was now far more built up. Then we headed back to the bright lights of the city for Temple St Market which occurs every night and is very famous. To get there we walked up Ladies St which as you guessed it sells alot of items for women. Wing said that at the time it wasnt very busy which we were amazed at as we could hardly move.
After we said our thanks and goodbyes, we headed off in search of the ever so famous worlds "longest" escalator, after getting lost twice and walking pretty much straight passed it we found it. We had both imagined one continous 800m escalator, however to our total disappointment there was lots of small escaltors with gaps in between!! we were not impressed. We got on it never the less but quickly got bored and disembarked when we saw pizza express. Yum yum.
For some reason Olly was up like a button (his phrase
not mine!!!) at 7am the next morning and he decided it would be a good idea to wake me (it wasnt). He ended up bringing me breakfast in bed an hour later and was pleased as it allowed him to have a good nose around the stinky market.
Today was all about finding the largest seated bronze buddha in the world, this was more like it! Although the queue for the cable car was 90 minutes long we were resilient, and it was well worth it.
The cable car is a fairly new attraction and takes 7 minutes to reach the Ngong Ping village somewhere up in the clouds.
It was absolutely packed as we hiked up the 150 or so steps to reach the buddha. It offered fantastic views of Lantau island.
Tonight was the night we decided to handwash our clothes, the worst idea weve ever come up with! It was going so well until Olly managed to soak me, him and the entire bathroom with the shower head...he claims it was an accident but i was not amused.
Hoping they would be dry in the morning we went to bed, how wrong were we!
We packed
our bags, damp clothes and all and headed off for a final look around Hong Kong. We got our first bit of rain so dived into a giant shopping mall which was like the crystal maze. We finally managed to find something to eat, then off to the airport.
Usually we would get bored sitting waiting for our plane however free internet was on offer(where most of this was written!)
We were both very impressed with our first destination on our travels however we feared that our next accomodation would not be anywhere near as glamorous!!!
Although there are vast numbers of people crammed into a small amount of space it all seems to work with such efficiency. It was very interesting to witness the Chinese and Western culture living side by side and it was definately a place where we would want to return. We are very grateful to Wing and his family for there hospitality and making our visit to Hong Kong very memorable.
Hope that didnt bore you too much but we crammed alot into such a short amount of time!
See you down under...
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Alys n Edd
Alys Owen & Edd Wright
57 exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!
hey guys!!! glad to hear you're havin fun!!! and have escaped the claws of rainy brissol!!! You pretty much did exactly the same stuff as me (alys)!!! but in a different order!!! tho sadly i never met Wing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cant wait to catch up in Oz!!! Hope you get some sun in Sydney cos HK was looking a bit grey!!! hope all is well and that you found lauren ok.. ol, looking forward to catching up in nz, let me know what you're up to. i'll be hanging around q-town for a while. and check our blog for tips on the south island! Lots of love!!! Alys and Eddy!!!! xxx! ps sorry laws, we love you really, but it's quite obvious the sections that you typed(!) But dont worry it was very interesting. x