When we got to Hong Kong, we were overwhelmed at first by the size of the airport. Thankfully it was around 10pm so it wasn't packed with people. We had our first experience of their train systems just travelling to the baggage pick-up section of the airport! This photo is of us being overwhelmed, tired, excited... crazy... Then we had a luxury bus experience, where the shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel had big polished wooden armrests and leather seats. We were suitably impressed. Then excitingly, our hotel room was upgraded, so was nice and new, albeit kind of tiny. Like many things in Hong Kong...The time difference was about 5 hours behind NZ so didn't take too long to adjust to. But the currency in Hong Kong is around 5.7 X the NZ dollar, so it did take a while to figure out if things were cheap or not. There is a huge variety of prices that you can come across - there are a lot of designer shops down Nathan Road - the main road in Kowloon, and where our hotel was, where you pay through the nose, and then of course the markets where you can haggle down to very small prices.
When we arrived it was quite late so we didn't get out and about till the next day. We just explored round where we were staying to start with.
Going down Nathan Road is an experience. Indian men line the street at about 5m intervals, popping out and thrusting cards at you as you walk past - they say "Suit for you Sir?", or "Watches?" or "Pretty dress for you maam?". You quickly learn to shake your head slightly as you come up to them and avoid eye contact. The streets are extremely crowded - which was good for getting used to what London was going to be like. The East Asian games were coming in December, so the streets were extremely clean and there were little workers all over the place sweeping and cleaning. There are subways everywhere for going under the streets. The drivers are pretty mad so you don't want to be crossing any main roads.
Down the end of Nathan Road is the Harbour. There is a kind of Boulevard called the Avenue of Stars - like in Hollywood. There are stars and sometimes handprints for Chinese film stars and directors like John Woo, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. There are also great sculptures, all very popular with people carrying cameras... These are just a couple of the photos we took here:
Every night they have an amazing light show, with lights shooting up from the big buildings across Victoria Harbour, on Hong Kong Island.
There is a Space museum there too, with the history of space travel worldwide - very interesting, and free. Rob came across this poster there and just had to take a photo! Nothing really to do with space but come on - a Chinese Dame Edna?
That night we went to the night market on Temple Street, which sells all sorts of knockoffs and we picked up an ‘authentic’ copy of the Michael Jackson movie This Is It (complete with Russian subtitles and the odd person in the cinema it was recorded in popping out to the toilet). We got some dinner there, but we bypassed the alive sluggy things and went for beef instead...
The next day we were going to go to Ocean Park, but when we got to the ferry terminal, we were accosted by a pretty Scottish girl who got us to fill out a survey then had a scratch card as a reward. Surprisingly, I got 3 stars, which only 5 lucky people would get! And it meant we got a great prize!
To claim the prize we had to go to "The Gold Coast" which was a wonderful resort with golden sands, and they would pay our taxi there. She shooed us into a taxi and off we went. On the way, Rob had qualms... When we got there, the lady paid our taxi, but while she was off getting change we wandered over to a line of people waiting for a shuttle bus and - shock horror! They had also won the 3 stars! And they had had to sit through a 90 minute presentation on buying a condo there (only $20000 per year for the next 38 years)... and the prize was not a laptop, or video camera, but the dream holiday which was basically a voucher to stay in one of their hostels for a week. So we hopped straight back on the shuttle and since it was too late to go to Ocean Park we went to Lantau Island instead.
It is really easy to get around Hong Kong - there are buses, trains and ferries and you can get an Octopus card that you just scan at each place and it takes the fare off it. On Lantau Island we went to see the Giant Buddha - but almost got waylaid when we got there by the amazing 4 story outlet mall at the bottom of the cable cars... Eventually we took the cable car, and got a glass bottomed one, which we were extremely pleased about when we realised it was about 5 km of cables, travelling over amazing forest and rivers.
You go up and up and up and eventually get to the top of some hills, then there is the Giant Buddha. Which you still have to climb a huge flight of stars to actually get to.
There is also the Po Lin Monestry up there which is amazing.
While we were up there the cloud closed in pretty damn quick and we could barely see 1m in front of us... As we were walking back to the cable cars all of a sudden we realised there was a large shape next to the path which resolved itself into a cattle beast, chilling out by the path! Rob wanted a photo but at the same time didn't want to get too close - just in case...
When we got a bit further along, the bull's mates were there in a paddock with an incomplete electrical tape "fence", and they decided to put on a show for us.
It was very eerie travelling back on the cable car as the cable seemed to just disappear into cloud. Also there was no daylight savings so by the time we got back it was pitch black. Lucky the outlet mall was open till 9pm...
Friday we fulfilled my wish to go and see the pandas at Ocean Park. This is a big theme park at the bottom of Hong Kong Island. We got the ferry to get over there which took no time at all. We met some friends on the ferry...
Travelling to Ocean Park on the bus took a bit longer...
We saw An An, an 8 year old panda, first thing, who was sitting contentedly munching on bamboo only a few metres away. The glass seemed like no great barrier.
One of the staff took a photo of us with An An in the background. After this we saw an amazing acrobatic act by the "Sky Dancers"
- I had some fun with the Sky Dancer clowns -
then we ventured off to the bottom half of the park - the bit with all the rides! This is the view of the bottom part of the park, taken from a big rising tower ride on the upper part of the park: 
We rode on the roller coaster, the wild river ride (and got drenched), the ferris wheel, the abyss (where you are lifted 100m in the air and then plummet to the ground)and the eagle - I could've done more but we ran out of time!
They also have a marine show 3 times a day - being the only white people in the audience we got picked out to "play" with the sealions - we got to make them wave, salute and clap... Very cool! Of course - we couldn't take photos ourselves, we had to buy the official ones! But that was the only real touristy thing we bought, so it was justified...
The dolphin show was very impressive, and we both felt very jealous of the trainers.
The rest of the time we were in Hong Kong we pretty much spent wandering around the shops and markets - we went to Hong Kong island again also and went to Stanley Market. This area of Hong Kong is where all the ex-pats hang out so compared to everywhere else we went there were lots of white/Europeans.
Rob's favourite part was the Electronic market, where there is an area devoted to electronic shops. We decided to buy an i-phone there as they are unlocked and in the UK you have to buy them with contracts and it works out more expensive - as well as there only being 2 networks that have them... Funnily enough every shop seemed to be out of them! Only one little backwards shop had them, and even then we had to wait for about 30 minutes for them to run off and get one from another shop. Luckily it all worked out OK and its very cool, and has come in extremely handy in the UK when it comes to finding out where we are, what tube to catch and for playing games on the tube. I also bought a laptop with a webcam so I could Skype people. Big thanks to Matty for his advice via text on which one to buy!
All in all Hong Kong is a city of contrasts. East meets west, modernity meets tradition, shopping districts with Armani, Gucci and Prada and street markets where bargain hunters thrive. We will definitely be going back
We were sad to leave Hong Kong, but excited at what the next leg of our journey would bring us! Stay tuned for London adventures - coming soon...
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