Au revoir Hong Kong

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It has been quite a busy few days and, as I write this, we are struggling to stay awake at the end of our second day of overland travel but we have reached Hanoi. Some might say that our arrival was more a matter of blind luck than good judgment but we made it nonetheless.

So, we left you in Hong Kong having spent two hours sitting in the Chinese Embassy waiting to apply for our visas. That night was a long one and for all the wrong reasons. After Gregg posted our last blog entry the jet lag kicked in big style and we found ourselves wide awake and the wrong side of midnight. In our infinite wisdom, we decided that we had to get the better of this jet-lag thing and so set our alarms for 8am and promised each other that, no matter what time we eventually went to sleep, we would get up then and struggle to re-set our body clocks by simply failing to give them a choice. This, we were sure, was a fool proof plan. The only problem was that we desperately wanted to sleep and, whilst usually alcohol free temples ( ;-) ), we concocted the second part of our plan - alcohol. We were quite sure that this would make us sleepy sooner rather than later. Unfortunately all it did was make me giggly and give us beastly hangovers the following morning. Nothing, it seemed, was going to put our 'temples' off keeping us awake until gone 4am.

And we crawled out of bed shortly after 8am in a state of immediate regret.

We had by this stage decided that Hong Kong was too frenetic and expensive for our Devonian tastes and that we wanted to leave as soon as our Chinese Visas came through which, we had been told, would be the following morning. That being the case we found our way to the local bakery (in the mall on the way to the metro) and found the closest things approximating pasties and attempted to now not only re-set our body clocks but also our bodies.

I should pause here to explain two things:
1. There is at least one shopping mall attached to most metro stations in Hong Kong and several more besides - a real shopper's heaven.
2. Pocari Sweat. If you can get over the name, this seems to be the Asian equivalent to powerade. The label seems to indicate that it replaces the "ions" lost when sweating and, despite the name, it is actually perfectly drinkable. In the absence of the sea this was picked as the hangover cure of choice.

So having drunk said sweat, and eaten, we went to get our train tickets out of HK and into China. Not a tricky task but it did still involve 3 metro trains on 3 different lines and about 20 minutes walking in between stations to get to the mainline rail station.

After going to the rail counter to ask for the tickets we wanted, a train to Guangzhou and then the sleeper from Guangzhou on to Nanning we were told we couldn't buy them at the main counter as only the China Rail Service could sell the second ticket as it started in China. We were kindly directed to their kiosk and after one wrong stop found it.

A quick cash withdrawl later and we had two tickets each for the next day's trains. Great except that our first train left at 11:28am and it was a 20 minute check in as it was across border train, and we had yet to pick up our passports from the embassy and it didn't open until 10:00 and was the wrong side of the harbour! (Oh and did we mention the over 2 hour wait the first time?) So we started to sweat, or should that be continued given the heat and humidity.

Anyway there was nothing we could do now, so we got on with trying to have fun. Back across the Harbour and out of the Metro into HK Park (a touch of serenity in the middle of all that pace was a god send) on the way to the tram up to "the Peak" The tram is actually a furnicular railway, and it is really steep in parts. Once you get to the top it is worth the ticket thought as it is quite an imptressive sight to behold HK in all its glory spread out in front of you. Its just a shame that the perpetual haze spoils an otherwise breathtaking view.

We stopped for lunch up there having passed the Bubba Gump Shrimp place and various other chain brands, and settled for some Dim Sum (as it something you should do whilst in HK)
We ordered the Beef and rice, and also some chicken and shrimp dumplings.

Back down the peak tram after lunch and a city tram ride to pass some time as we were both nearly asleep on our feet. We got in in Central HK riding East in the direction of our hostel which we were thinking of as home already but purely cos of the beds!

It got to about 3:30-4 ish before we gave up and headed home, for a snooze in Lou's case, but only after I got her to agree that an hour was enough else she wouldn't sleep in the night. So I woke her at 5:30 but she refused to wake despite the protestations that she was awake but listening to the music I was playing out of the computer.

Suffice to say she didn't get up quickly but we got there in the end only to start planning tomorrow's early rise to get checked out and to the embassy in good time. I was sent out to get dinner and get the refunds on the ocotpus cards (HK's Oyster card equivalent-which was very easy and included the unspent cash!)but it is easier to get a chinese takeaway in Plymouth than HK, maybe because I had no idea what was what, so had to go back and fetch Lou to come with me and we ate in the mall in some strange asian fast food joint that looked as mass produced as McD but as it was asian I like to think we were still being authentic?!?!?!?!

An early night in an attempt to rejig the body clocks and Tuesday was done!

I awoke earlier than I wanted and certainly earlier than Lou did but we both got up nonetheless at about 6:30 despite the alarms being set for an hour later. We packed up and checked out by 8:30, neglecting to pick up the last two beers in the fridge, not that I had the space to carry them.

We got on the train to the embassy looking like a pair of pack horses, and drawing more than few stares in the morning rush hour. We arrived at the embassy at about 9:15 to see a big queue and a rising dread that today was not going to be a good day.

After a double check though there was a seperate queue for passport collections and applications so the queue was for the people waiting to go through what we had on Monday!

I nipped in and picked the passports up within about ten minutes, and was also undercharged according to the embassy costs sheet. Maybe today wasn't going to be so bad. A few unsuccesful taxi hails and we decide to get the star ferry acorss from Wan Chai to Hung Hom peer as we were right next to the hopping on point. It did mean a 15-20 minute walk in the heat with the bags at the other end and, given Hong Kong's fondness for overpasses, that also meant a fair few staircases to climb but we got there and into the station by 10:20ish a significant improvemnet on the feared close call.

We breakfasted eventually having been up for nearly 5 hours in, I am ashamed to say, Mc Donalds. However we then went about trying to spend the HK$'s up and ended up buying duty free chocolate in departures. (There is very little there to buy of a snack nature to our disappointment)

Onto the train and, aftera short 5-10 minute delay starting out, got moving in the direction of Guangzhou, China. And our next entry!

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Photos

HK Park
Gregg under a water feature

HK Park
Note the enormous sky scrapers in the back ground.

H K Park
A dragon fly that Lou spent a good ten minutes trying to photograph. There were literally hundreds of them hovering over the lake in the park.

Victoria Peak
Waiting for the tram.

Victoria Peak
View from the 'Sky Terrace' right at the top. Going up umpteen escalators - fine. Coming back down again & Lou's acrophobia kicks in!

Victoria Peak
Beef steamed rice. Looked vile, tasted significantly better.

HK$2 Tram Ride
All over hong kong the 'scaffolding' is in fact large bamboo. This left me with two questions: 1) How does it not fall down and b) how can they work on it that high up. The only person I saw working on it was about two floors up so, perhaps, that's your answer!

Asian Fast Food
Possibly Japanese, tasty nonetheless.