HongKong and China

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well. what can i say? Hongkong was WET. it rained all day. everyday. it was quite a cool place to visit... we stayed in Kowloon in the Chunking Mansions. full of indians!!!! quite entertaining, altho stressful. when we first arrived they pounced on us trying to drag us to their accomodation. of course we had already booked and just wanted to find our guesthouse! eventually, this really helpful guy told us that we wanted the third floor. the hostel was a hole. oh my god. weve stayed in some scummy places, but this was up there with the best. it was a tiny room, they managed to squeeze a double bed and a single bed in there with an ensuite bathroom(just big enough for the toilet... let alone the shower). all i can say was it was dry, and there was aircon and a TV. so its all gravy. we booked a third night there and paid for it... so after the second night we took our time getting up (the weather didnt exactly inspire an early start). kate had just got out of the shower (and was wrapped in just a towel) when there was a knock on the door and the hostel owner barged his way right into the tiny room. both kate and i tried to keep him at the door but he was determined to get into the room. we asked him to come back in 5 mins, but he wouldnt go away! it turns out that he had double booked the room, and that the receptionist who we paid money to for the extra night actually didnt know a thing about room availability. so consequently we were kicked out. they had no spare rooms. naturally we were annoyed at this, and went ranting and raving about it to the owner. there was some other people who had had the same experience on the same day and they recommended 1 floor up, a beautiful hotel with luxury rooms for just a little bit more. so we got our money back and fled to the fourth floor and LUXURY. i cant believe we paid $280 for a hole when we couldve been livin it up one floor above for $350! urgh.

/rant.

hongkong itself would be awesome without the monsoon weather. we went to the top of victoria peak and had a hazy view over hongkong... there is a huge shopping mall at the top there.. and we whiled away a couple of hours laughing at the BubbaGumpShrimp shop (from forrest gump) and buying shoes. we then saw hongkong at night from the top (probably well worth it... but it was so cloudy we couldnt see much)
we took a walk along the avenue of stars whilst eating popcorn...
kate nearly killed herself 3 times in her flipflops (which had no grip on the bottom... so she kept falling over on the wet shiny surface... hilarious to watch but eventually the things broke and had to be chucked. even more hilarious is that she dumped a perfectly good pair of flipflops in koh phiphi!!!)
we went to the ladies markets...
and got scared by the things on the menues in the chinese restaurants (goose liver, chickens feet, pigs trotters etc) they have some disgusting 'delicacies'.

we also saw the city at night from the kowloon side and watched the light show at 8pm. it was awesome... all timed to music.

hongkong was expensive so we decided to get out asap. which was a shame, because we left the morning of the 10th anniversary celebrations of hongkong being handed back to china. so we missed the fireworks. but it was a necessairy sacrifice...

China. oh. my. god. its so crowded! we arrived in guangzhou and had no idea how to get to the hotel which was aparently 'next to the train station'. Pah! turned out it was next to the other station and we had to catch 2 tubes to get there. and when we got there... it was worse. not only were there 1000s of people cram packed into the place, but they all had umberellas. which made it 100 times worse. we wandered around the station trying to find some indication of where our hotel was... but no one spoke english and the train station is MASSIVE. there were no signs... all we had was that it was 'behind the airport express bus station'. eventually we ended up in the police station asking for directions... they had no idea where the hotel was. *sigh* we eventually pointed to the paper saying 'airport express' and they pointed us in the direction of the bus station. when we were closer i spotted the hotel sign! so we were wet through, but happy.

we caught a flight to Chengdu from guangzhou ( we werent up for the 36hr train journey). so we had to leave at 5am. niightmare.
as we landed in chengdu, kate mentioned that at one point in the journey (when i had been asleep)the plane swerved right sharply... she wondered why and then looked out the window only to see another airplane not too far away :S but we were okay. we landed!!
chengdu is huge too... took a while to find our haven here. and it is a haven. its right in a section where there is a lot of 'old' chinese buildings - which is gorgeous. and they all speak english here!!!!!! its amazing. love sims guesthouse. there is one problem... the chinese government are evicting them next year when their lease runs out. i think they want to build a tower block here. which is such a shame :'(
yesterday we visited a place south of here called Leshan - where there is a giant buddha carved into a cliff. its really impressive! and we climbed mount Emei to a temple at the top there too. This morning, we visited the Giant Pandas. they are sooooo cute!!! i want to take one home with me!!!

anyway. im going to go eat something... the food in the hostel is so good... none of the odd 'pigs liver' rubbish. its good stuff like fried rice and tomato etc. im going to be sad to leave!!! we are off to Xi'an on Friday evening... embracing the hard sleeper trains for 16hrs. :S

wish us luck...!

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