Shiny City

Hong Kong Island from across the harbour.

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I have to say I'm a little surprised. I quite like Hong Kong. We left Bangkok at 3:30pm and arrived in Hong Kong 7:10pm. As we descended through another layer of clouds I realised we were in fact very close to the ground. I thought we were heading into a foggy evening in Hong Kong but I was later to realise that this was actually a dense layer of smog that blankets the entire region. (more on that next post) After immigration there were no touts and the information attendant spoke fluent english. He directed us to the bus ticketing desk where the attendant also spoke english. The bus was comfortable and whilst we were staring wide eyed and open mouthed like a couple of country bumpkins at he the huge buildings and bright lights a friendly local let us know that we were near our stop. We were met by one of the only touts in the city as we got off the bus who, coincidentally, just happened to be holding a card for the exact location we were trying to get to. It was just all too easy. We stayed in the infamous Chungking Mansions, a building which is Hongkongs version of Koh San Road in Bangkok. Our room was dingy, had no outside windows and suffered from the beginnings of a roch infestation. This didn't bother us too much though as it was cheap and we could find somewhere better tomorrow. For now, we had a city to explore!

Fist of Legend!!

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Mt Victoria was our first destination. We left the rooms and made our way to the neon lit, bright as day streets and headed to the famous Star Ferry terminal. For over a hundred years the Star Ferry Terminal has served as a transport link between Hong Kong island and the mainland. It wasn't until 1978 that the tunnel and later a rail connection was made to the island and so for the longest time it was also the only public transport route to the island. The ferry trip itself was short (6 - 7ish minutes) and gave good views of the surrounding city. We found an open topped double decker bus which provided closeup views of the colossal towers as it lead us to the (also kinda historical) tram leading to the summit. The tram was scary.. it was so steep I think at times we were traveling upside down. That's just me though, I imagine it's quite pleasant once you're used to it.. The views offered from the summit were spectacular. I even overcame my fear of stupidly high building heights and ventured to the edge to take some photos. Even with the wind.. evil.. evil wind.. After a long nights sleep I was feeling quite refreshed and began to wonder when the sun was coming up. After checking the time and finding that it was 10:30 we suddenly realised that the window lead to an internal air duct that never saw the light of day. We hastily got up and packed our bags to make sure we didn't miss the checkout time. No more roch filled rooms for us. We moved little up the street to the Mirador Mansion where on the 12 floor we found a small but clean room in the rather busy Cosmic Corner guesthouse. The owner was friendly and helpful and gave what would otherwise be a rather plane place some quirky charm. She also managed to sort out our visas for China on the same day (we thought we'd need to wait 3) for a good price.We stuck round the city for another 2 days but I won't bore you with the details of everything we did. It was pretty much a case of general city sight seeing like watching some tai chi exercisers in Victoria Park, riding the level tram for kicks, (also cause it went where we wanted) and taking a walk down the Hong Kong cinema walk of stars. (Like the Hollywood one but for Hong Kong.) I have a photo of my hand where the mighty fist of legend once was! awesome!

So Hong Kong was a very pleasant place after the madness of Bangkok. (Don't let our experience fool you into thinking that Thailand isn't a tops place to visit, that was just bad luck. I still highly recommend it.) Warm but not hot weather, nice people, interesting surroundings and, for a big city it wasn't devoid of culture. Oddly I think I enjoyed the ease of the place which is the very reason that I thought I wouldn't like it. However Hong Kong is a VERY expensive place and it was once again time to move on. From Hong kong we made our was to China heading towards Yangshou (soon to be known as tree, pagoda, tree, tree.)

There should some photos there now but they are a bit stink cause I needed to resize them and that's pretty difficult if you cant read chinese.. Also I had to leave some of the better ones out cause resizing them turned them grainy..