China, Hong Kong: Friends and Bright Lights

Hong Kong was a much anticipated trip for us; we were very excited about visiting the city that both of us have wanted to visit for a long time. To get to Hong Kong from Guangzhou, we decided on taking a three hour bus journey. We used a bus company affiliated with the grand China Hotel in Guangzhou and the service and buses were of high quality, making the journey very pleasant.

Upon arrival at the China border crossing in Shenzhen, we disembarked the bus to go through customs. The place was insane and mayhem was all around us as we were herded to the immigration desks. Several bus loads of people were literally running to get to the desks first, in order to get through as quickly as possible to catch their awaiting bus on the other side. Once we were through, it was pretty much plain sailing all the way, but we had to race the bus loads once more at the Hong Kong immigration checkpoint down the road.

The meal with Ben was the first time either of us had eaten beef tendon, which was surprisingly good

By the time we approached the outskirts of Hong Kong, it was getting dark and we noticed the skyline started to reach more upwards; there were many highrise apartment buildings sprawled out along both sides of the highway we were on, and they spanned quite a distance back away from the harbour. This started painting the picture for us as to where the 6.8 million or so inhabitants of Hong Kong live.

At this stage, we couldn't wait to get off the bus in the Mong Kok neighbourhood of the busy Kowloon area of Hong Kong. The bus dropped us off at a main junction in Mong Kok and we had to stop in a 7-11 convenient store to ask for directions to Argyle Street, which was where Hong Kong Budget Hostel was located, and where we would base ourselves the next several days. We were SO relieved that the woman, even though she was older and probably in her 50's, spoke impeccable English and knew exactly where we should go. We definitely saw a difference from mainland China, during our time in Hong Kong, of the British influence from their control of the island while it was still a British colony.

Places to stay in Hong Kong, especially on Hong Kong island, were relatively expensive, so we decided to stay in the Kowloon area as this is where most of the cheaper hostels were located. With great public transport connections to Hong Kong island from Kowloon, we were not bothered to stay off the main island, since the sights would only be a few metro stops away (about 10 minutes).

Mong Kok was very busy; people were milling about in the streets and walking every which way to shop, eat or go out for drinks. We are sure that we looked like typical first-day tourists in Hong Kong as our heads were raised upwards and we couldn't take our eyes off all of the bright neon signs that were hanging from buildings above all of the streets. Mong Kok, in particular, has a few narrow streets whereby you cannot see past the signs in some areas because there are so many!

Our first dinner in Hong Kong was the cheapest meal we had there, and one of only a few Cantonese meals during our entire stay. There were so many different food options in the city that we ended up eating Japanese food, Italian, American fast food (oops!), a Cantonese organic fusion meal that was delicious and great for our last dinner in Hong Kong and, of course, a couple more Cantonese meals, one of which Dan's friend Ben treated us to while we were out one night on the town. The meal with Ben was the first time either of us had eaten beef tendon, which was surprisingly good in a spicy noodle curry dish.

Speaking of Dan's friend Ben, we were able to meet up with him one night while we were in town. We went to a really nice shopping mall on Hong Kong island called Pacific Place and saw the movie "Shooter", which we all liked very much. After the film, Ben introduced us to the really cool tram that runs on the island and vaguely resembles the "hop-on, hop-off" older London double-decker buses.

Ben suggested we get off the tram early and walk a little bit towards the place we were going to eat dinner. During the walk, we passed many compact neighbourhoods with a lot of character. After the great meal, we went for one drink, which ended up being more than a few. Much later, we had missed the last metro train by at least couple of hours and we had to catch a taxi back to Kowloon. We were hit by a massive 76 Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) taxi fare, which is equivalent to about £5, or $8. In the grand scheme of things, this was not much money, but when travelling on a budget, it was. We shouldn't complain at all, though, as Ben was very considerate and bought our dinner and a couple of drinks that evening. Thanks Ben, we'll return the favour in London sometime!

While we are on the subject of meeting up with friends in Hong Kong, we were fortunate to have met up with our good pals Mads and Frida from Denmark. Before we talk about the fun day we shared with them, we should first let you know that we tried really hard to meet up with a couple of people we met in Yangshuo (Sandra and Collette), but failed. We kept exchanging emails and notes but never got to see them again, unfortunately.

For those of you wanting a refresher on Mads and Frida, you can read our Nha Trang, Vietnam journal - we met them in the beachside city when we were there in April. When we arrived in Hong Kong, we had sent an email to the Danes, asking if they could meet us a few days later in Mong Kok outside our hostel at 11am, so we could see some of the sights of Hong Kong together. The funny thing is, while we were waiting outside our hostel, we saw the two of them approach. They got really, really excited to see us, but it wasn't because we had arranged to meet up.

In fact, Mads and Frida had not yet received our email, but they knew where we were staying and had decided to check out our hostel to see if it was better than the one they had stayed in on the previous night. They just so happened to arrive in Mong Kok at the same time we had asked them to come in the email we had sent - very freaky!

Searching for a hostel with them was not easy, as Dan can confess to have experienced it. For one thing, the places in Hong Kong were quite expensive, as we mentioned above, and they also didn't know where different hostels were located; it was a bit of a guessing game. We should probably interject here and let you know that our hostel was basically located in two large apartments located on the 5th and 7th floors of a building with over 15 floors. Inside the building, though, were many hostels and cafes, as well as some other more secretive establishments that we didn't want to learn any more about.

11am was also the time we had asked Sandra and Collette to meet us, and Kyle waited outside the hostel for them while the others went on their search. Every so often, Dan and/or the Danes would pop back downstairs to let Kyle know that the search for the perfect room was still on. Once Kyle had given up on Sandra and Collette arriving and only had to wait for the other three, he managed to fit in breakfast and a bit of shopping at the Mong Kok Computer Centre, to buy some recordable DVDs for the shiny new laptop bought on the first evening we had arrived in Hong Kong.

Whilst Kyle was eating his heart out and shopping leisurely through the computer centre, Dan was stuck climbing up and down many floors taking Mads and Friday to various hostels in order to check out the rooms. Our hostel was booked up and the second place that the three tried was Dragon Hostel, at the end of the corridor on our floor - it was too expensive. After another failed attempt, Dan and the others found themselves drinking warm water served by an old Cantonese woman, in a place that was also too expensive (they probably jack up the prices to cover the cost of the free warm water). The old woman rang another Cantonese woman to see if she had a place for them to stay and, soon after, another woman came to help.

This second woman spoke no English, same as the old woman, but she had a trusty mobile phone with someone who spoke English on the other line. In a few moments, the three of them were whisked away to another building outside and, after long and hard negotiations on Frida's part, the perfect room had been found. You may think we are contradicting ourselves by including this story about the two Cantonese women who did not speak English, since we said everyone in Hong Kong spoke English. Well, we think they were actually from the mainland, and that they swam across the border to hide out in the more luxurious Hong Kong.

Once the room was booked, Dan, Frida and Mads rejoined Kyle, who was patiently waiting outside Hong Kong Budget Hostel, happy to have been fed and to have found the blank DVDs he was looking for earlier. The four of us set off for Hong Kong island, as we wanted to see some of the sights there. When we first arrived on the island, we went to a coffee shop and enjoyed frozen coffees and exchanged photos (digital, via our trusty USB sticks) of Nha Trang with them. After relaxing and chatting for a while, we went to check out the world's longest escalator, which was 800 metres long.

An 800 metre long escalator? We thought that we would step onto the moving walkway and be transported through many of Hong Kong's streets for twenty minutes, enjoying the sights as we did so. However, the escalator was quite broken up so that passengers could exit at each block or section where there was a break. So, we found the escalator to be more work than we had anticipated, and we decided to jump ship just over halfway along. A few minutes before, we passed many inviting restaurants and bars in Hong Kong's busy Soho area. Tacos were the most appealing food to all of us, and we decided to stop in for a quick snack.

By the time we finished eating, darkness had fully come and we walked along many streets to head towards the ferry pier, admiring all of the tall skyscrapers as we passed them. We wanted to catch the Star Ferry from Hong Kong island to Kowloon, across Victoria Harbour, in order to watch the laser light show that highlights the impressive skylines of the two areas. The ferry ride lasted about ten minutes and was a great way to look at both sides of Hong Kong at night. The viewing area was packed with many people, but we were all able to take a good look at the show. The music was cheesy but an entertaining event nonetheless.

Temple Street night market in Kowloon was close to the viewing area along the harbour, so we headed there next. The market was busy and crowded, much like everything else in Hong Kong, but good things were on offer. Forty-five minutes later, we were back on the metro heading towards Mong Kok, a couple of stations away. We had a late dinner at a Hong Kong chain restaurant called Cafe de Corral; the food was good and we both even had the Cantonese beef tendon noodle curry dish again. When dinner was finished, we bid farewell to Mads and Frida, hoping that we may bump into them again in mainland China. If not, a reunion in London or Denmark will definitely be needed!

If we pop back to our first evening in Hong Kong, we can tell you about the laptop we purchased, to enable us to continue publishing these journals for the rest of the year (yes, you will get over 7 more months of these!). After many hours looking for a laptop in China, and almost purchasing one (refer to the Guangzhou journal entry if you missed that story), we knew exactly what we were looking for - the Toshiba laptop we didn't buy.

The first store we looked at was across the street from our hostel and was called Fortress, a chain store similar to Dixons in the UK, or a small version of Best Buy in the US. Hong Kong didn't have the same Toshiba laptop model that we saw in China, as the market was different between the two places. Actually, Hong Kong offered many laptop models that were far superior to the ones we saw in China, and at lower prices. An HP Pavilion caught our eye and we bargained with the store salesman for over half an hour, trying to work out the lowest price he could offer, plus any freebies he could pass our way.

Once we had a set price and offer from Fortress, we walked a couple of minutes down the road to Mong Kok Computer Centre where, inside, there were many small stores selling laptops and computer equipment, on each of the 5 floors in the building. We lucked out with our first stop in the building as we found a salesman who really knew the products and also gave us a great deal, since he realised we knew exactly what we wanted and the price we would pay. We really were happy that we didn't buy the laptop we found in China; the one we bought in Hong Kong not only had manuals in English, but it also had a UK and US power cord as well as the new Windows Vista software in English (another thing that the Chinese laptop did not have, we would have had to settle with Windows XP).

Once the laptop purchase was out of the way, we spent the rest of our time in Hong Kong enjoying the sights as well as meeting up with friends, which we told you above. We headed a bit off the beaten path one afternoon by taking the metro north of Mong Kok to Diamond Hill station, where Chi Lin Nunnery was located. The nunnery was closed when we arrived but we were able to see the beautiful gardens there. Diamond Hill was very picturesque behind the nunnery, as you will see in our photo album for this journal entry.

One administrative task we had to take care of in Hong Kong was to send a fax to French Polynesia, in order to secure a flight we had booked to take us from Tahiti to Bora Bora in September later this year. There was an Accenture office in Hong Kong and Kyle used his connections to send the fax from there; we also got a great view from the office, which was on the 23rd floor of a building right in the middle of the island. This, added to the free coffee and free internet access in the office, meant we enjoyed a couple of hours admiring the view and checking emails.

Everywhere we turned in Hong Kong, there was excellent shopping, so we ventured through many markets and into many different shopping malls. We mostly window shopped in the malls as the modern city offered much that we could find back at home, and at similar prices. One thing we did purchase, which we have used massively in China since buying it, is a small Lonely Planet Mandarin Chinese phrasebook. It has been a lifesaver and, without it, we would never have survived on the mainland.

Five days into our stay in Hong Kong, we had to bid farewell to the city for a week. Taiwan was calling our names, and we went to visit a friend of Kyle's from Accenture named Vivian. She had a great week planned for us and you can read about it in our two Taiwan journal entries for Hualien and Taipei. We left on a Monday morning, flew on Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, and returned the following Monday around noon.

When we arrived back in Hong Kong, we had a couple of days before moving back into mainland China. On one of the days, we chose to visit Macau. If you read that journal entry when it comes out, you will learn a little bit about the old Portuguese colony and also that Kyle's luck playing blackjack was not just limited to the UK!

Back in Hong Kong, we stayed at Hong Kong Budget Hostel again, as it was a nice place in a good location. The main plans we had included riding the tram up to Hong Kong's Peak, to gain a view of the skyline. We wanted to see the skyline by day and night, so we ended up relaxing in a cafe on the peak for a few of hours working on the travel journal (see, the laptop was already paying off!), waiting for the sun to set. The view was spectacular and it was a great way to finish our trip there.

Before we finish this journal entry, we should mention that our stay in Hong Kong was the first time on our trip that we felt really exhausted. We had been travelling for nearly four months solid when we arrived in the city, and travelling up through Vietnam in two and a half weeks before spending our first week in China, where we did quite a bit of travelling as well, meant many early mornings and a whole lot of hard work. Since Hong Kong, we have been really tired in several places we have visited, but writing the journal now (which is actually three weeks after leaving Hong Kong), we have each found a new burst of energy as we come upon the home stretch of the Asian exploration segment of our year-long trip.

When you look at our travel journal, you may get confused when we talk about our next destination being Xiamen. You'll see the journal entry for this Chinese city after the two Taiwan ones we mentioned, so be patient. To spend an extra day in the coastal city of Xiamen, we ended up leaving on a morning bus from Hong Kong instead of an overnight bus. We could have stayed in Hong Kong much longer, but it was too expensive for our backpacker budget and we had so many more places in China to visit. Hong Kong will be a destination to which we will both return one day - absolutely!