The Urban Jungle - Hong Kong

us in a dirty window reflection

sweet job...

evening cityscape

tall buildings!!!

poor wee lizards!

Night time lights

mmm, this looks good, smells good too!

one of the many shopping streets

We were sad to leave Europe after such a good trip and lighted the plane almost not keen to see Hong Kong as home was calling. We arrived at Hong Kong in the morning which for our body was about 1am in the morning and fumbled our way through customs, not telling whole truths to be allowed into the country while still feeling unwell and managed to somehow find the correct bus, with all our luggage and both of us in tow (a minor miracle). The bus trip took around one hour as we crawled our way through the urban jungle of Hong Kong and its massive amounts of traffic. Andrew and I had never seen so many high rise buildings in such a small area and gazed in wonder throughout the whole trip. We managed to find our correct bus stop on the very long Nathan Road, Kowloon Island and stumbled onto a busy street. At this point, unsure of where exactly our hostel was located as there were over 20 different hostels/ hotels/ guesthouses in each large apartment block in the area. Seeing our confusion the hawkers began their advance… we were offered rooms every-which where, we were pointed in many different directions (all wrong) and even at one point sent away from the building we needed to be in by another hawker wanting our business. After much deliberation, searching and hair tearing we finally found our building and floor number (a very big miracle) and headed up to check in and have a much needed nap, this was not to be the case… We arrived at our hostel only to find that we had arrived two hours too early and that we were only allowed to check in at 12pm. So leaving our luggage, the two tired and forlorn travellers were once again out on the street. This time we were bombarded with hawkers selling us fake bags, watches and wallets, tailor made suits and blouses, drugs, massages and everything in-between…. this would continue on for the rest of our trip…
To escape the crazy street we found a park close-by and sat on a bench watching passers by before walking around the park to look at all the crazy birds, turtles and other animals that were caged for park goers to enjoy. Still having time to kill we checked out a few shops before heading to our room. After seeing myself in the mirror I was very surprised that the shop assistants even served me, I looked like a crack addicted hobo after 24hrs of no sleep and a plane trip to boot!!
After a long and much needed sleep we headed out had a traditional Chinese meal before embarking the first of our many late night shopping expedition in the city that never sleeps… honestly we were up pretty late some nights and we still did not find out when most of the shops closed!

The next day consisted of us sleeping as I (Sharon) woke the two of us up at 2am in the morning (having gone to sleep around 12pm), wide awake and coughing up a storm… fun, fun (Andrew was not impressed). So not sleeping during the night we finally fell asleep again at about 8am and then did not wake again until 2pm! When Andrew told me what time it was I thought it must be a joke, but no it was the afternoon… good old jet lag… So we headed out to check out the sights and try to tire ourselves out so that we could sleep that night. We looked around Kowloon Island for awhile, stumbling upon the very cheap ferry over to Hong Kong Island and decided to see the main city. We crossed on the ferry, were sold a cheap bus tour package for the next day and then went up the mountain on a funicular to see the city at night. The skyline at night has been rated the third most impressive city view in the world, so what a sight it was, buildings touched the sky and the whole city was illuminated with thousands of signs, windows, beams and coloured lights… stunning… Not wanting to wait in line (huge lines for everything in Hong Kong) Andrew and I decided to not worry about the $2.50 we had paid to catch the funicular down and use the trusty waiwai express instead… it was a lovely walk, except if you account for the fact that the track was horrendously steep and actually turned out to be a very long walk so to this day I still have sore bottom muscles… but like I say lovely, with pretty views and the feeling of walking in a jungle. We took our ferry back home and had dinner at our local restaurant before another late night shopping and bed… Yes sleep did come however once again Sharon woke up coughing and spluttering at 2am only to get back to sleep about three-four hours later after much trying and some ‘I give up’ you-tube watching.

We did not sleep so long this day as we set our alarm in expectation for a whole days sightseeing on our ‘hop-on, hop-off’ bus tour. We spent the day trekking around the city, shopping at markets, sadly looking at the huge amounts of shark fins, dried lizards, sea horses and other poor things that we felt should not be killed, dried and put out for sale. We gagged as we walked along the smelly ‘dried meat lane,’ shopped and got lost in ‘the shopping district’, and were suitably unimpressed by the ‘historical’ sights, that after Europe were not very old at all! Our tour finished about 8pm then we headed back to freshen up before heading out to the late night market on Kowloon Island. Both Andrew and I really enjoyed this market; it had everything one could wish for on sale. We both found items that we wanted and made a great team haggling with the store owners over what we would in New Zealand consider already very low prices. We spent a good long time enjoying the atmosphere and craziness of the night market before eating dinner at a cute little Indian restaurant that one of the many hawkers had recommended to us. After a very late night shopping we got to bed and Sharon once again woke up coughing in the night… argh… sleep was slightly easier to get back to this time and this was lucky as we had to check out the next day.

We checked out and left our bags at the hostel for us to pick up later that day (flight only leaves Hong Kong at 9pm). We navigated our way through Hong Kong city for the last time to find a little stall that we had seen the previous day and that we wanted to buy some presents from, brought these and then wandered around shopping and looking and taking everything in until it was time to once again depart on the last leg of our trip…

And so 24 bus trips, 7 plane trips, 6 train trips and 1 boat trip (excluding local transport) we have one plane trip to go until we are back home… It’s been one long and crazy and fun adventure, hope that you have enjoyed reading all about our travels we sure have enjoyed having them!