First day in HK

---

After waking up bright and early. We had a delicious breakfast in our hotel...The Eaton. A cook behind a counter was waiting to make omlettes and waffles and pancakes on request! Decided after gorging ourselves with strawberries and hash browns and bacon, that we would try the waffles tomorrow. Full and content, we headed up to the pool on the top floor of the hotel. It's actually on the roof with the sun (which you can't see because of pollution) right above you.

It's been very smoggy so far. And very very very humid. I think it was about 80% humidity and 32 degrees today. So, planned for the day we had a boat trip! We caught the train over to Hong Kong after being met at our hotel by Laurie (who funds some of the trip). The train stations are amazing. Probably one of the best in the world! First you select (via touch screen) what station you'd like to go to. Then put in $9 Hong Kong dollars for an adult ticket (that's about $1.20 Australian). When you collect your change you just put your hand in the little collector thingie and it drops it into your palm, which is yet another labour saving device!

We were all a bit...slow when it came to using the machines. But this is probably due to the fact that our home town has no trains! The trains are really fast. They stop at each station for about 30 seconds MAX. To let people on and off. they take about 2 minutes to get under the water to Hong Kong island. It was only a short walk from central station across to the harbour. Our boat was not a fancy one, nor was it a traditional Chinese boat! There are a lot of boats in the harbour. i think there's constantly a lot of boats in the harbour! it took a long time to get going. We passed through industrial areas. There are about 400 cranes (probably more) that are constantly loading and unloading containers off ships. Apparently their turnover for each vessel is less than a day. (compared to about a week in Fremantle). There are also a lot of little cranes that are on platforms and the owners live on them. They have to call people in tugs and hire them to push the cranes out to the boats and then they can load containers onto their cranes and take them to shore. So! The offloading process begins even before the boats land dock!

We passed through this and over bridges that resembled the golden gate and past hundreds of skyscrapers. Eventually, we got out into the ocean. It was still very polluted, and very glary. Sunglasses really helped! It was odd because although the sun wasn't shining, you could still feel yourself burning. The smog hung everywhere and skyscrapers just loomed out suddenly to the front and sides. But luckily, our driver knew where he was going! We ended up on Lamma (pronounced like lah-mah)

---