bonkers in honkers

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Good old Hong Kong felt pretty calm after some of the madness in Africa - no one trying to sell us anything, no demands for cash, pens or water bottles- we quite missed it. In fact the only 'barter' we had was when zoe admired a necklace at the jade market - within seconds the saleswoman who had started off at $300 had talked herself down to $30 -"$60! No? No? okay $50? No? Okay $40". All zoe was trying to do was decide whether she liked the necklace she wasn't even bartering (note to self - try the silent treatment in future - it appears to work).

Our flight in provided some excitement - initially it was unclear whether we'd even get into Hong Kong - the region being battered by a typhoon. Our flight parked up in Bangkok while the pilot decided what to do. His decision was anything but reassuring - he informed that we would "give it a try". Apparently about 50% of flights "attempting" to land had managed it the others had ended up in Taiwan where we would finish if we couldn't land. We got quite excited by this prospect but actually after some "good turbulence" (pilot's words) we landed in Hong Kong.

Having travelled here previously for work to interview investment bankers who thought 'Honkers' was great particularly because they could pop down to Australia for a game of 'real tennis yah' we were expecting it to be pretty materialistic. And it was - but great fun. Travelling all over we stayed on the island in a teeny room in the glam Rialto Mansions (in a mad 20 floor apartment block) and spent our days tramping around using ferry, MTR, loads of escalators and tram to get about.

We had some amazing food although sadly never got to eat at Wing Kee Noodle, a name which we both found disturbingly hilarious. We discovered that we preferred Japanese (which luckily the chinese are crazy about) to chinese food - which can be a bit of an oil-fest. And as well as Hong Kong thanks to free wireless in the hostel we discovered Facebook..with vodka.... fabulous.And we got back into the whole news thing..discovering that the world markets had come close to collapse in the last week and we hadn't even noticed was quite an exhilarating feeling - particularly for a former financial reporter.

We had a good taster of this city and are now moving on to Hanoi, should be even quieter than Hong Kong...or is it?

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Photos

P1020905
chinnaaaaa