Last stop

---

Can't believe we're going home soon! It didn't feel so close until now. We're in our last destination, Hong Kong.

Hong Kong isn't really on the south east asia backpacker trail because it's a bit expensive. The cheapest room we could get was £10 each a night and although the location is amazing, the building is pretty skanky. Our flight was very quick and flying into Hong Kong means you get some great views. It took ages to queue for immigration but we passed the time laughing at a Harry Potter lookalike. We stupidly caught the airport express train to the city, which costs 3 times as much as getting a bus (damn).

We arrived in Mong Kok, which is the most densely populated place on earth according to the guiness book of records. Well, I certainly believe them...it's chaos. Terry quickly got fustrated at everyones apparent incapability to walk at a decent speed. Hong Kong have 7-11, a great subway system (more about that in a bit), clean streets and all our fav food
chains. What more could a young traveller want?!

We've been using the MTR (their underground) to get pretty much everywhere and its seriously impressive. It's quite like the tube in that they use Octopus cards which are like Oyster cards and the carriages look similar. They have coloured lines too and you can interchange at various stations. It looks like the Singapore version, it's very clean and your not allowed to eat or drink (as I found out after recieving some very scary looks after slurping away at a slushie).
The stations are massive because they include
networks of tunnels which take you beneath the streets of Hong Kong, away from the heat. One station took us at least 10minutes of solid walking to exit in the place we wanted. It's great purely because of the air con! Me and Terry have both decided the MTR journeys are hilarious because the station names make us giggle (lots of kok going on here) and because we're so incredibly tall compared to the cantonese! We could never lose each other here!

We've visited the Space Museum purely because it's free on Wednesdays. It was worth a walk around, theres a few nice interactive bits and if you've got £2 spare you can watch a space show of some kind. Unfortunately, our daily budget here is 100 HKD each, which is £8.50. This is to cover food, drink, transportation and activities and it's actually do-able.
On our first night we found a Hong Kong fast food place and had bbq pork and duck with rice and a drink for 29 HKD. It tasted pretty great and was very filling. They're selling all kinds of interesting looking/smelling snacks on our street but everythings written in chinese so we'll have to take the plunge soon.

On Thursday, we caught up on lost sleep and moved room. The hostel had "upgraded" us to a family room, which was stuffed with beds because our double room wasn't ready. Our double is actually a twin but nevermind, the aircon is the best. We realised that we'd been bitten the day/night before by some new particularly nasty brand of mosquito. 3 bites each and they've swelled up and itched all day. It was the wrong day to try out my new tailor made hi-tops as they rubbed the bites on my ankles and turned them into gross pussy bites, ewwwww. They better be gone by my graduation photos!

The Peak is a moutain on Hong Kong Island where loads of rich people live because the views are incredible. There is a complex right at the top with great views. We took the bus (no 15 from central bus terminal, 9.80 HKD) the whole way, which took about 45 minutes. The view on the way up was jawdropping! There was a kid sitting next to Terry and he asked his dad why Terry had tattoos. His dad then had to systematically answer all of the kids questions about tattoos (do they hurt, how do you get them off) with answers that wouldn't slag off Terry but convey displeasure at the same time. Hilarious to listen to!

We enjoyed the view of the island side and the city side from the peak and headed back down to the city. The rest of the day was spent shopping at many of Hong Kongs markets and malls. We did Times Square mall, Langham Place, Ladies market and mongkok computer centre. I walked away with a nice t-shirt and a new purse. I've almost impulse bought an iMac twice now, as they work out at £1044 instead of £1399 in the UK (27inch model). As if that wasn't enough, I nearly had a heart attack in Mongkok where the Samsung laptop I've been eyeing up online cost £390 instead of £600. I though a lot about weather I should buy it but decided that since my 3 year old laptop is still working well and I'm not sure how decent my new work laptop will be, I should wait. How wise of me!

Today has been our last full day here and we've been quite busy. After systematically crossing possible things to do off our list due to budget, we ended up having a nice cheap day.
First, we headed to harbour city mall to spent the hottest part of the day in the comfort of an air conditioned mall. It was full of really expensive shops, nothing in my price range but nice to walk around. I think Hong Kong probably used to be one of the best places to shop before Dubai came along and stamped all over it! There is a lovely park called Kowloon Park which we visited in the afternoon. It's got an avairy, bird pond, swimmimg pools and all kinds of nice little fountains and statues. We both got ice creams from the mcCafe (yes, mcdonalds also run a franchise of cafes here haha) and walked around untill the heat got the better of us.

Next we headed over to the waterfront to see the avenue of the stars, a little area kind of like the hollywood walk of fame but for chinese actors. The only ones I knew were Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan! I had my picture taken with a big statue of Bruce Lee 😊 I would've done all kinds of crazy poses but it was very busy. There were a few other statues and stuff to read but it was fairly small. We had time to kill so I treated us to starbucks by the harbour. Lovely views all along the harbour by the way, if cityscapes are your thing....

Nathan Road is the main touristy area so we had a little look around the area. We went into Chungking Mansions, which is a building with loads of budget hotels in (but shops and resteraunts below) with a bad reputation. I intentionally choose our accomodation elsewhere after reading bad stuff about the building and sure enough, we'd been offered drugs about three times in the space of a minute. It's a bit weird actually because Hong Kong feels so safe, like everyones so calm and harmless but in that one building it's so different. Don't stay there!

After dinner we went back to Kowloon Park to relax (and eat more ice cream). They have a lovely chinese garden there where loads of old people do tai chi and relax. It felt very peaceful there, like a little calm oasis in the middle of the city.
Hong Kong put on a "light and sound show" every night across the harbour and as it's free we had to go. It was ok, it could be a lot better but maybe I'm just comparing it to the light and water show in Dubai too much because nothing tops that. The show was in English tonight but to be honest, the only spoken word is just announcements saying welcome to the show so don't let the show being in Cantonese put you off.

Now we're back at our hostel ready for our last night of hostel sleep! Tommorow we fly Hong Kong to Dubai at 22:30 which will take 10 hours. Then we sit in Dubai airport for 3.5 hours (duty free here I come) and get on another plane to Birmingham for 7 hours, arriving at 12:30 on Sunday. We're both really not looking forward to the journey back but at least we're flying Emirates again so we'll get loads of films to choose from and free booze. It feels weird thinking about going home because we've been away for nearly 7 weeks. I can't help but be excited about little things like wearing jeans again, not spraying bug repellent and not having to do currency calculations 20 times a day!

I don't regret anything about this trip. I'm kicking myself for not going travelling sooner and just can't wait for my next adventure. If your considering going, stop reading this and just go and book that ticket (or open a savings account...) right now!

---