Hot, hot, hot Hong Kong

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Leaving behind the beaches of Indonesia was so hard and we were expecting the change of pace of Hong Kong to be tough, especially as we were visiting in rainy season. But we both fell in love with one of the most beautiful cities we've ever visited.

We arrived late at night and managed to get a painless taxi to the hotel, paying the extortionate, but expected amount of £40. We'd had good intentions of using the train but we were so tired and a little grumpy that our beach time had ended that we decided 'to hell with the budget' - that turned out to be the mantra for the last week of our trip.

We stayed in a very interesting hotel, called the T Hotel, which is run by students training for a career in hospitality. It was a bit of a gamble but we'd read so many good reviews and it was fantastic value for money (relatively of course!). Based in the Chinese culinary school, one floor has been converted to 30 hotel rooms. We were really impressed when we walked in the room, it was large and spacious; not at all what we'd expected to get for the money. When we woke up the next morning things went from good to great. We opened the curtains to be greeted with sunshine (yeah) and a jaw dropping view of the ocean and surrounding green islands. Where was the catch?!!

Well, the small downside to the hotel was it was in the middle of nowhere, so nipping to a local cafe for breakfast wasn't an option. We decided to be lazy and try the room service breakfast as it was dirt cheap (£5 each!) and super convenient. It was so good, and such amazing value that this became a daily routine - by the end of the week the staff knew our price order. Maybe city life wasn't going to be so bad after all.

This was my first and Paul's second visit to Hong Kong and we both felt like Hong Kong is a place we could live. Although Hong Kong is part of China it is very different to mainland China. It's way more expensive, but far more civilised - no smoking in public places, no pushing or shoving and best of all no spitting! It feels so much calmer than mainland China, in fact the metro is unnervingly quiet!! English is much more widely spoken here too which make travelling so much easier.

The city itself is incredibly beautiful with a waterfront skyline set against the backdrop of lush, green hills. It is a wonderful mix of the familiar (a starbucks on every corner) and the foreign (neon signs in Cantonese!).

We had four days in Hong Kong which meant we could explore the city at a leisurely pace. Given the awesome weather we had, the first day was spent at Victoria harbour and our first stop was the Star Ferry. Running since 1888, this is the cheapest cruise in the world at just 25p for the ten minute journey which takes you from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon Island. The views are so wonderful it's hard not to take a hundred pictures.

It's lucky we had plenty of time for Hong Kong because the sheer heat meant we took a lot of pit stops in shopping centres just to cool down in the air con. On our first day the temperature was only around 33 degrees, but the humidity was up around 85%. It was good to no longer be travelling in a Muslim country as it meant I could get my legs and shoulders out without running the risk of offending anyone. Looking around at all the beautiful locals (how do they manage to stay looking so perfect?) really make me crave my city wardrobe.

We went back to Victoria Harbour that night and timed our Star Ferry crossing to coincide with the light and sounds show. It's the worlds largest permanent light and sound show according to Guinness involving 40 skyscrapers. To be honest this was a little bit of a let down, although the night time skyline was pretty cool.

Even though our hotel was a little way out from the action we did have a bus stop literally around the corner, which made getting out and about dead easy. Getting back though proved to be a challenge on our first couple of days as we always seemed to have an endless wait for the bus, and the traffic could be really bad at times. The downside to city life and not being close to a metro.

We woke on our second day to blue skies so spent the entire day at the Peak, the highest point in Hong Kong. A key attraction is the Peak Tram, which has been running since 1888 (clearly a busy year for Hong Kong) and takes you from sea level to the top of the Peak. Unfortunately this was closed for maintenance so we had to take two buses to get to the top. The bus ride up to the Peak turned out to be quite a ride. The bus drivers here are complete nutters, drive at 100mph and like to slam on their breaks. Riding up the narrow, winding roads to the Peak was quite an adventure, and took us past some of the most expensive real estate in Hong Kong. As the trees occasionally thinned out you caught glimpses of the phenomenal harbour views below.

At the top of the Peak you have 360 degree views of Hong Kong, which are obviously more than a tad impressive. We did a one hour circular hike that was thankfully largely in the shade and then rewarded ourselves with a long relaxing lunch overlooking the harbour. We bought, wrote and posted postcards in the space of an hour - not at all in keeping with our usual trick of carrying postcards around for weeks before finding somewhere to post them.

We then had the debate of getting the bus back to our hotel, or hiking down. We decided it would be quicker to hike down, and given we now had 'Handy', our free travel companion (basically a complimentary smartphone!) and hence google maps, we should have no problem making it back to the hotel. And we didn't. Less than an hour later we were sat back in the air conditioned bliss of our hotel room.

We'd had such an amazing day that we decided to blow the budget and visit the highest bar in Asia, which until recently had been the highest bar in the world. On the 118th floor of a hotel we'd been promised amazing views of Victoria Harbour and at £40 a round (yes, you did read that right!) we'd expected something pretty special. Unfortunately this turned out to be a massive disappointment. It was incredibly busy when we arrived and so we had to stand! Getting a view of the Harbour was impossible due to a terribly thought through layout. The good seats where basically a breakfast bar setup against a glass wall overlooking the harbour, which was so packed with people it was impossible to get a quick photo. We spent a rather unrelaxed hour waiting for someone to leave so we could grab a decent seat. But it never happened for us. Compared to our experiences in Dubai it was very, very low rent and such a let down that after one drink we left feeling very short changed.

We managed to rescue the evening by visiting Lan Kwai Fong, an area renowned in Hong Kong for its nightlife. This street is packed full of bars and party goers and reminded us of club 18-30 holiday destinations in Europe - there were even touts on the streets tying to entice you into their bars. Unlike in the Med these were not pretty young girls, but large, intimidating men! It was still expensive to drink here (£7 a pint), but the atmosphere made up for the over priced drinks.

Our third day was spent in Central Hong Kong. I wanted to ride the 'Ding, Ding', the only double decker tram in the world. We got great seats right at the front and so stayed on far longer than we'd planned doing a circuit of Central and taking pictures as we went. This was another amazing value for money attraction, pipping even the Star Ferry, at just 23p each. After wandering to some of the most iconic skyscrapers we went in search of a one star Michelin dim sum restaurant that had been recommended. This was a no frills place in the basement of a shopping centre. We had to queue to get in, fill in our own order form, sit on a shared table and drink coke out of a can - so a little different to our previous experiences of Michelin dining in London and Nottingham. We didn't have a clue what we were ordering so went big and ended up with so much food. Most of it was wonderful and it was a complete bargain at just £15 (again, a little different to our previous Michelin dining experiences!)

With full tummies we headed back to the hotel for sunset drinks. Neither of us were up for a big night so we decided to take advantage of the fact we were staying in a culinary school and dine at the hotel. Unfortunately it was Friday night and was all booked up so we ended up settling for more bargain room service and 80p beer we'd picked up at the seven-eleven.

Our final day in Hong Kong brought more bright, dry weather so off to the harbour we ventured once again. Paul had his heart set on riding a Junk so that is what we did. We arrived at the pier just five minutes after one had left so had to hang around for 55 minutes. We found ourselves a bench and watched the beautiful boats come into the pier and pick up the rich folk. I expected our boat would be a big disappointment in comparison but when it arrived, looking like a fully fledged pirate ship, we were both bouncing around like little kids. We were expecting it to be super busy with it being the weekend but we pretty much had the boat to ourselves. We found some seats in the shade and watched the world go by as we sipped on freshly squeezed orange juice. It was a wonderfully relaxing way to pass an hour.

That evening we went to Knufield Terrace for some semi alfresco dining in the heart of the city. I mentioned earlier that the days were super hot, well it didn't get much cooler at night. The change in temperature between day and night was around one degree, hence why we had to opt for semi alfresco dining. Sitting fully outside was way too warm, but sitting inside was too cold because of the crazy air con. Thankfully all the restaurants and bars on Knufield Terrace had both tables outside and inside with bifold doors joining the two. By sitting on the edge of the inside area we had the best of both worlds. It felt like we were dining outside but we weren't drowning in sweat. Setting aside the Ozone bill, this was our most expensive evening and we found once again that we were blowing our budget. Saving Hong Kong until the end of our trip worked out well for us as we were more in the mind set of comparing things to back home rather than to Indonesia. If we'd visited Hong Kong first I think we'd have spent every evening in the room drinking cheap beer from the seven-eleven!

Hong Kong has been so much better than either of us expected and the weather has been unbelievably kind to us. Here's hoping it continues for the last few days of our trip which will be spent in Macau, the Las Vegas of the East.



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