Hong Kong 18.9.09

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August 18th 2009

Published: August 20th 2009

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Pete and Jude

Wandering down to Kowloon Harbour, 8am ish

Hi Everyone,

Well here we are in Hong Kong - what an amazing place - talk about the East meeting the West! We arrived in Hong Kong last night at about 8.30pm HK time after an 11 hour flight from Auckland, enjoying a selection of 100 movies plus Tv music and games in-flight - helping pass the time. Baggage collection/Immigration/Passport control was easy peasy, once we realised we had to take a 60 second train ride there - a bit bigger than the Hamilton Airport! The full size bus shuttle took about an hour to get us to our Hotel in Kowloon via another Hotel, so by the time we hit the scratcher it was 4am NZ time - by then we had had enough travel for one day.
Taking advantage of waking up on NZ time (4 hours ahead of local, we took a bus tour of Hong Kong Island which we travelled to via the Tunnel road, which was great - included a boat trip around the harbour ($10NZ!!) , which I think was the highlight. Met another couple of Kiwis from Te Puna, who are also Bike Riders! It has been a balmy (?) 32 degrees today,

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Toyota Crown Comforts looking like Mk4 Cortina's - all 25,000 off em

with a couple of really heavy downpours, so you can imagine how humid it is. The water temp at the beach was 27 C, but we resisted a frolic to avoid cultural insensitivity and upsetting political relations. A 55 minute train ride would put us in China for the day, which would’ve been cool, maybe another time.

The City is a buzz, with new Volvo double decker buses flying everywhere, and some 25,000 taxi’s battling for business. They are all the same type of car, a Toyota Comfort/Crown - look a bit like a Mk 4 Cortina, and $HK18 takes you the 1st few kilometres - $NZ3.80, so nice and cheap, even tho petrol is around $NZ3 a litre here. Bikes consist of mainly big scooters, ie 250 and + cc, with a few sport/naked bikes around. Cops mainly use VFR800’s - quite impressive.

Lots of Lexus on the road, as well as Audi, BMW, VW, Porsche, and all the Jap brands, and all in near new condition - with most people using an excellent public transport system.
As I write this, we are “sheltering” in our hotel room having a nice cold Heinie, which Pete sourced from

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Honda VFR800 (V 4's) Cop Bikes

a 7 Eleven store across the road! ($NZ5.90 for 2 large 600ml Heinies)
Our room - upgraded to a DELUXE (no less) at “no extra cost to you” is TINY (but beautifully air conditioned) even I can touch the ceiling - obviously designed for tiny Asian people, not good healthy Kiwis like Pete and I! Anyway, we have enjoyed our day in Hong Kong and are very pleased that we took the option to stay two nights here.
We are obviously now looking forward to getting to Bahrain and starting our new life for the next two years. Even though the reported current 45+ degree heat there is causing us a little trepidation!

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