Whirlwind Hong Kong

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We decided to try and do as much as possible to experience the culture and that meant getting up at 7am, which was suprisingly not painful, seems u had no idea of what the outside world was doing in the window-less room. We made our way on the subway to central, where we caught a local bus up to The Peak, the steep mountainous high above HK island. It was a great tour in itself watching everyone (who fast walks) bustle in the heart. Couple of sites; the facades of most of the buildings look like a third world coutry, with outside plumbing, and outside their windows they hang their washin (this is main streets where double decker buses are nearly touching them); red taxi's which make up most of the cars on the road are crazy, specially viewing them from the top front seat of a d-decker; the cemetaries are like the buildings, in theheart of the city and steeply tiered, very weird site. Got to top fairly early in the morning so hardly anyone there. Site was a smoggy one but amazing, it was like a view from a Simcity. Decided to walk up a path and saw cleaners sweeping leaves, this city is CLEAN. On every corner there was someone sweeping. Buy the time we returned the tour buses had arrived and it was packed. We decided to take this tram down, which was pretty thrilling because it was so steep, you start wondering about the break system (prob. on par with Katoomba one Mum except 10 times the distance). From there hopped on a bus to central where we wandered up tiny little cobbled stairs full of markets, every street going vertical seemed to be full of them. We stopped for a photo opportunity at the mid-level esculators (loacals were smirking) about 6 large ajoining esculators that take you over many streets. From there we went down and had a look at the harbour and then foun ourselves stuck as there's not many crossings on the major streets here, just overpasses with little opportunity from the street to find thier entrances. Made our way to a little authentic HK resteraunt, little did we know how authentic!! The probably 25 seater resteraunt was obviously popular and we got seated at a square table which held 8, and was full once we sat down. We ordered roast chicken with rice and a plate of dumplings, with the only cutlery being chopsticks. I thought we handled it quite well but we were attracting much stareing by the other six occupiers. The roast chickenn was a bit hard to swallow, with a few hard bits (lets hope it was chicken) at one point Andrea couldn't swallow and was trying to ask for a serviette without luck, quite funny at the time. By the time we finished it was obviously business lunch time and pretty much every resteraunt (which is alot) had ten people standing outside its doors. We moved, with help from subway to Kowloon, back to the district we were staying which is quite different to Central. Every 2 min u were heckled by a man to buy something and only the westerners. It was fine for the first hr, but because we were spending so much time there it became very annoying but i guess i'll have to get use to it. We made it to the harbour which was another awsome site, and went down the riverwalk, which was called Avenue of Stars, that had tributes to Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee and various other people that were obviously famous. A sit down at a coffee shop was needed to people watch, with a view that filled up the wall to wall glass with hundreds of tall buildings. Went back at night to watch the 'biggest perminant light show in the world'. About 30 of the biggest buildings synchronised light show with music. Lasers and whole sides of buildings were lit up. Had couple of drinks and eat in Irish Bar with westerners, had a bit of a chok on some nachos (maybe it was the chicken coming back up) and made it back up to our hostel room. Had a massive day and my legs knew it too, so off to bed with a interrupted 6hr sleep.

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