Hong Kong Days

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So starting where I left off - the football did not go well at all much to Rob's delight - I thought it would be awesome to finally catch some Newcastle footy but obviously not. Therefore we had a night of sorrow drowning (rob celebrating) on the hostel terrace with the english guys matt and pierre who'd come along with us. Some cool Irish guys we'd met in the bar told us that tommorow (Sunday) there was a footy match going on - Hong Kong Invitation Team or something v LA Galaxy and mr poncey Beckham. Up for a bit of Live footy in new surroundings we planned to get up and go tommorow as Beckham had not managed at all to sell all the seats. Next morning woke up pretty late, around 1pm which meant 2 hours to get to the stadium and get tickets and get in... I was still up for trying but failed to convince Rob who decided to stay back and get some laundry etc done. Katie however jumped out of bed at the chance of being in the same stadium as Beckham. We needed to get to Hong Kong stadium in Causeway Bay which is seemed was pretty near on the MTR (Hong Kong Underground). We headed down into the subway and found it to be the most modern, efficient and easy to negotiate subway I think I've ever been on. Ultra modern although still pretty busy! Completely blagging it we made it to Causeway Bay station at around quarter to 2 and whipped out the map and again blagged it through town to the stadium. This area of Hong Kong seemed a bit more down to earth with less of the Prada and more of the H and M and street market. The stadium was built almost dug into the hillside and was pretty impressive. Tickets were on sale thankfully so we grabbed a couple and headed inside to choose a seat as it was free seating. With our KFC Bucket as the first meal of the day we settled in great halfway line seats at around 2.30 - 2.45. Amazed they were still availible I looked around the ground to see that huge numbers of people had congregated in the corners... obviously wanting a Beckham close up. Very sad. The match began and everytime Becks had the ball a huge high pitched scream went up which was funny at first but ended up with some serious cringing! It was hard to tell who was being supported, I came to the conclusion that it was Hong Kong and Beckham. I was delighted to watch him have a shocker and Hong Kong nick one on half time. The second half hotted up a bit with LA grabbing an equaliser. Everytime the ball went near to going out for a corner, that particular corner got all excited and willed it to go out. When Beckham took it they all went nuts climbing over each other to take pictures. Pretty sad! I was trying to picture how fans like this would be received back at St James Park... clearly footy is viewed slightly differently here although there were some die hard Hong Kong fans who were going nuts infront of us, especially when they grabbed a last minute penalty and scored! However LA went up the other end and won a penalty of their own instantly which lead to these die hards frantically giving the ref the finger. Thats more like it I thought although we couldnt help laughing. Beckham scored to do the only good thing he'd done all game and we were heading out before we realised it was a trophy match so penalties would ensue! LA shot over and HK got all 5 so Beckham lost - brilliant. It was pretty surreal to see the winning team running over to Beckham to get pictures with him when they'd just played and beaten him! When Beckham took his shirt off katie nearly died but that was nothing to what was happening in the corner where he would go back down the tunnel. People were going nuts waving shirts and big pictures of him... really not cool, I dont get the obsession! It had however been a right good laugh and we were pleased we'd come, an interesting look into footy in asia and a footy fix for me! We headed back to Kowloon and saw the view on the skyline was nice with a pink sky so we sat for a bit before hitting the net for a bit. It was nearly 8 so we figured we would go and watch the nightly lazer show since we were down here already. It was ridiculous with all the buildings on the skyline having all their lights hooked up to crazy super mario style music with lazers going overhead. Only in Asia! But pretty impressive! Me and Katie viewed it as a massive party and started creating characters as usual. We headed back to the hostel for a quiet night eating 7/11 microwave food and watching Jumanji. Top notch day!

Next up was Monday and we decided to hit up Lantau - Hong Kongs largest Island but far from its most inhadbited due to its mountainous terrain. Here we'd find the Tian Tan Buddha statue - the biggest outdoor seated Buddha in the world at 30m or something! Sadly the Lantau ferry was only running at weekends but it was easy enough to get the MTR. At Chung Tung station on Lantau there were signs leading to a cable car up to the Po Ling Monastery and the Buddha - sounded like a fun way to get there but was very overpriced! From the moment we got the cable car we started to get the impression the Buddha wouldnt quite be the spiritual place we'd imagined and more of crappy tourist spot. It had the feel of queuing for a theme park ride. The ride however was pretty impressive, steeply taken up 6km into the misty green hills. Obviously we spent the entire journey deciding which point would lead to the most horrific death if we fell. The people we saw walking the path far below were survivors of previous carnages. The Buddha loomed into view on top of his hill perch and looked pretty impressive and mysterious in the mist. Off the cable car though we were forced to walk through a tourist village with all the usual crap and obviously a starbucks. As much as it was really impressive and interesting to get a taste of Buddhism by walking around the spectacular Po Lin Monastery too, it was a shame that it was like this nearby. We headed back down and decided we'd do a bit of exploring in Kowloon as we passed through on the way back. We hopped off the MTR 3 stops before ours at the top of an area known as Mong Kok - a working class, chinese district with loads of markets. We headed through a flower market and found the bird garden where all these bird obsessed men brought every single kind of bird imaginable for show and sale. There was a huge array of cages as well. Very strange! Anything from parrots to tiny little things all cooped up and on the market. We headed out and started making our way back along Nathan Road (yup, quality name nathan!) to the Temple Street Night Market which was just beginning when we got there around 6. It was so bizarre and we spent hours looking around all the nik naks and junk! Communist garb such as General Mao quotations books and pictures were rubbing shoulders with dildos and schmolexs. Hilarious. Me and katie decided we wanted a ridiculous watch and headed for one of the stalls. No rolexs were on view but when the store holder heard we were interested he got out the big guns and revealed a hilarious assortment of copies. They wanted too much for them so we ended up going for General Mao watches that saluted every second. Disgustingly hilarious. We've got a bet going that the first one to stop has to buy the other a beer. Rob however couldnt resist the lure of a Samurai style sword and haggled the man down to about 2 quid. Ridiculous but brilliant. We all picked up some fake Ray Banns which we believed made us look unbelievably cool before stopping at a little stall and having some noodles and a beer and heading back down Nathan Road happy with our purchases. The area had been a really interesting change from the overly westernised areas on Hong Kong Island with little cafes with locals drinking green tea and eating noodles to men sat playing cards on tables in the street . Felt like we'd experienced a bit of China and the market had made us laugh... lots. Back at the hostel and knackered from all our walking today we crashed out for the night.

Today we were up relatively early (for us) at around 10.30 and decided to head out to the other side of Hong Kong Island to go to a theme park called Ocean Park in Aberdeen. We heard it had rollercoasters on cliff edges and were sold so grabbed a ferry over to Central and walked to the bus stop to the park. It wasn't quite as good as we were hoping although the log flume and crazy tower on a cliff edge that drops you were pretty good! The rollercoasters gave me serious whiplash and were pretty bollocks. It felt a little bit more like a fairground even if the setting was pretty spectacular. Our ray banns survived every ride still attached to our faces so we were proud of that at least. Completely drained we headed back to Kowloon and have now set up camp in the crazy modern internet cafe once again. The gamers are going completely nuts which makes me feel like I'm walking past ur room Alex. Think we're gonna get a few beers in tonight and chill out with some food which isnt fast food. touch wood.

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Comments

[Alex]

Nice, you saw a 30m high buddha, sounds pretty awesome, and i think the name of the chairlifts is right on cue lol, they definately look badass! As does the laser show, what's rob's samurai sword like? has he killed either of you yet?