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Asia » Hong Kong » Kowloon
May 29th 2010
Published: July 7th 2010
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After spending 12 very very long hours in Bangkok airport check waiting for our flight we finally made it to Hong Kong ('fragrant harbour'in English).
We navigated the surprisingly simple bus system in Hong Kong to finally make it to our 'hotel'. Now England could learn a thing or two from the transport system in Hong Kong, the bus stops are labelled before you get on the bus and each has its price written along side it (unlike in England where it only tells you the final destination and if you haven't taken the bus before you really have no idea.... well I'm sure its written somewhere but its not clear.) and each stop is announced before you get there so you know which one is your stop. Easy peasy.

I think its a bit of an over exaggeration to say we stayed in a hotel. It was more like a box room, only big enough for our twin beds and us really. They are very good at packing people in. The Chungking Mansions, I think they were called, was this maze of a building with a random market on the ground floor. It then had about 5 lifts (which were extremely uncomfortable as they were usually crammed with about 9 people, regardless of size of bags, into this closet sized space. I mean Harry Potter under the stairs closet.) and a million floors which led to about a million rooms all for travellers like us. A very stressful time navigating our massive bags round the 'mansion whilst being asked if we wanted indian food and other junk (the market was actually an indian market which was quite ironic seeing as we'd just come from there...). Either way we made our way to what would be our home for the next few days! As it was late afternoon rather than catching up on sleep we thought we'd go exploring and go to bed at a reasonable hour to avoid jet-lag. We stumbled across this amazing park, it was like Hyde park only bigger and better and more impressive. They had some very interesting bits of art. Generally apart form the park it was an uneventful day. Except for what we like to call ''crazy drinks!' The were these amazingly large health/tea drinks with massively chunky straws and jelly! They were very odd and only found in Hong Kong but soon became our favourite drinks of the whole trip. Its unreal how many we managed to cram into the short time we were there. A few of our personal favourite were chocolate milk tea, caramel coffee tea, passionfruit juice, strawberry mango and aloe jelly, strawberry custard pudding and apple tea. We had many more but thoe we're just a few!

Luckily we were able to meet up with Yuki (an old school friend of mine from Hethersett) and she toook us to have a traditional breakfast/lunch on the outskirts of town. We had the most amazing food, personal favourite of ours was this yellow sponge-y cake. Most places in Asia seem to be lacking ovens so this was very enjoyable! It was quite an experience (especially as our chop-stick skills were heavily judged!) which left us feeling very full before we headed off to do some sight seeing! We decided to take a cable car ride up to see the Giant Gold Buddha. COnsidering this was Asia we did not plan for it to be cold. At all. So when it started to pour down and we started to go further up into the clouds we got scared. We were not dressed warmly enough at all. Being British we thought we could handle being cold, we could man up enough to not have to pay to buy a poncho. Five minutes later with whatever pride we had left we bought poncho's.
As it was raining it meant that there were very few other tourists out with us. This suited us down to the ground, we climbed the 260 or so steps at our own pace to be wowed by the impressive Statue/Museum (You could go inside the Buddha). The views were magnificant! A trip well worth making!

We also spent one day at a theme park, Ocean Park. Again it rained but we used our Poncho's we'd bought earlier and saw Panda's (the main reason for us goinhg to this park!) and some very ugly gold fish. We also got to see a very good water show involving dolphins and seals or sea lions (I can't tell the difference....) which was very awesome too. We went on a few rides and then headed to the infamous 'peak'.
The peak is the place to see the whole of Hong Kong. You have to take a ride along a very famous tram line which runs uphill. Although we didn't actually get to see the view as it was much too smoggy it was plenty of fun. But by the end we were very glad to be back at our box room as the rain had completely destroyed our shoes!

Quick side note about food, its amazing! Especially the egg custard tarts. I can't really explain how amazing they are, they're fresh and the pastry id flaky and oooo just amazing. We were very very happy with the food.
Another side note about the markets in Hong Kong, they are very very very good, if a little pricey sometimes but the jade market, ladies market and the night market all offered very similar touristy items but we very much enjoyed spending a vast amount of money!
It was not long before we had to leave Hong Kong, another city we'd become quite attached too..... But it wa stime for a train ride to see Ruth in Beijing! Except perhaps we got the date of our train wrong and turned up 24 hours in advance! But minor details! We were very thankful to Yuki, who deserves a massive shout out, for housing us our finally night and making it pretty amazing! We had one last traditional meal before heading to a random arcade to play games and then dessert! It was the most fun! And we did finally make our train.
24 hour train ride, fun times!


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9th July 2010

Bubble Tea
I live in New Zealand, and as we have a good amount of asians we can find the drink that you call "crazy drink" in many areas. I just thought I would tell you what they are called in our market as you may be able to find them else where in the world. Bubble Tea, and Pearl Tea. I also drank one in LA but it was horrible. :D Thanks for you blog, having a good search for traveling ideas when I go to Hong Kong :D
9th July 2010

Hello girls
Seems long time since your last blog, worth waiting for, very very interesting. Hong Kong sounds amazing and what a lot of fun you girls are having. Wonderful, looking forward to the next one....... enjoy!

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