Hong Kong

Hong Kong by night
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We flew from Lijiang to Hong Kong on Shenzen Airlines. What started as a pretty normal flight turned into one of the most hilarious we've ever taken when the air hostesses began ten minutes of group exercises. The entire plane began copying the stretches to left and right, twirling of ankles and waggling of wirsts. As the only non-Chinese we began laughing before Dave joined in the exercises and Fi proceeded to laught til she actually cried!

From Shenzen it was a relatively easy couple of busses and a border crossing before we got to Hong Kong. We were immediately hit by the differences between HK and the rest of our trip. Where Kunming had been a step towards organisation and sophisticated cities, HK completed the transformation - tightly packed skyscrapers everywhere you looked with barely a tree or plant in sight. It was a bit of a shock to the system at first but also a luxury after the real 'Asia' part of the trip, helped by the fact we were staying in a pretty nice hotel (which, thanks to the British Airways website cost the same as the YMCA hostel!) and the temperature wasn't hovering around zero.

Back to the modern world, Asia style

The next morning we travelled on the Star Ferry to Kowloon (the first of many such trips) and headed straight to Dave's tailor (found on his visit with E&Y in 2005) to order suits and shirts. Turned out to be quite an operation with thousands of fabric and design choices, all based in a chaotic room in a basic shopping mall. That said, the fact that Dave's original suits still look as good as new speaks for itself.

We spent the afternoon getting over our culture shock by wandering around the city, including visiting the bird and flower market before heading up 'the Peak' by tram in the evening. Having not booked a restaurant we weren't too surprised when all the window seats in the best restaurant (i.e. those with an absolutely stunning view over the city) were all reserved but asked to be told if one became available, without getting our hopes up at all. Our luck must have been in though as just as they served starters we were offered probably the best window seat in the entire place and ended up having one of the best meals of the trip in easily one of the most fantastic settings!

We spent a fair chunk of the next day in the History Museum, which was absolutely fantastic - one of the best museums either of us had ever been to and thoroughly recommend it to anyone visiting HK - before heading for a suit fitting. Given that it had only been 30 hours it's amazing how far they'd got. The shirts were almost finished, trousers tacked together and jackets made in terms of the body at least, one arm was tacked on each with paper and chalk lines to show where the tailoring and buttons would be. In the evening we visited Temple Street Night Market. All pretty touristy but fun, and we did manage to pick up a painting we both liked - at about GBP10 we barely bothered haggling!

On the Thursday we headed to the nearby island of Lantau to visit the big Buddha statue there and then Disneyland! Dave had never been to any Disney before and the different 'lands' and variety of kitsch and people dressed as cartoon characters was a lot of fun, even though the only ride that was anywhere near 'adult' was Space Mountain (a roller coaster in the dark). The park was bizarrely empty (schools hadn't quite broken up for xmas holidays) so we were able to go on the decent rides straight away with barely a queue, and even got to see the Lion King dance show and the Cinderella Castle fireworks display - who says we have to act like adults all the time?!!

On our final full day we collected the suits and shirts (all fitting perfectly and less than half the price we'd have paid in a good shop in London, never mind a tailors) before meeting a Deloitte friend of Fiona's for lunch in the Marriott (huge bars of every conceivable ingredient for salads, grills, noodles and deserts - you just selected your plateful(s) and they cooked it for you - absolutely delicious!).

We travelled by tram and had a go on the mid-levels escalators (which are outdoors and bring people living on the nearby hillside into the main business area) before heading to the Sheraton for an evening of cigars (Dave) and whisky (both), reliving Dave's E&Y trip of 2005 once again!

On our final day we were both feeling a bit citied-out so headed round the other side of the island to Shek O and had a relaxed few hours on the beach (including a bad game of mini-golf), amazing what a different world it feels only 20 minutes by bus from the city centre, before heading to the airport.