Hong Kong - the first chapter...

 The 11.25 hours flight seemed very long (for those that were awake and couldn’t sleep!) Our descent into HK was fantastic. I couldn’t believe we were actually here! There were just masses and masses of skyscrapers and lots of water!

It was fun trying to sort how we would get from the airport to the hotel. We had loads of luggage plus the 5 of us so wasn’t sure if we could fit into one taxi. There was a shuttle bus to the hotel but this didn’t correspond with our landing time. In the end we got a taxi, a big red one and the drivers are already fully equipped with elastics to tie their boots up in the event of families like ours who bring far too much luggage! Oliver felt like the air was really thick and he couldn’t breathe and felt asthmary, it was very heavy and humid, and warm. But this was something that we got used to after a while.

The taxi took us to the New Territories, one of the islands which makes up Hong Kong. The hotel reception told us our 2 rooms (which we are required to have for 5 people) weren’t interconnecting but …”they are on the same floor!” … no good for us, so after a few stern words with them and clarifying that we had requested these rooms to be interconnecting months ago, they finally magically found inter-connecting ones! We had a view of a river from our room that was really nice.

DAY 1

We didn’t have a great nights sleep because of the 7 hours in front time difference in HK, we were awake for about 2 hours during the night and Oliver even played on his PSP he was so wide awake!  We finally woke up at 11.35am and had to wake the kids up at midday! Hong Kong is made up of a series of islands and we were staying at a place called Shatin in the New Territories. We planned to go to Hong Kong Island today and go up The Peak, the highest mountain in HK. We got there via the MCR – the tube system. What stood out most for us in this country is how clean everything is, no graffiti, no chewing gum on the ground or any litter. There are heavy fines for litter dropping.  In fact they seem obsessed with cleanliness and there are signs on the escalators in the tube stations which says that the handrails are regularly treated with antibacterial solution and there are people cleaning all the time in shopping centres, etc., not to mention people wearing masks over their nose and mouth! The people are really friendly and respectful though – a refreshing change!

 When we came out of the tube station, we were met by tall skyscrapers and the place was buzzing. This part of the city is very busy with both people and cars and also very hot and humid.

  

The views from the top of The Peak were amazing and we spent about an hour up there just admiring the view. A bonus which we hadn’t planned for was that as it was quite late in the day when we got up there, day turned into night and all the lights lit up the skyline which was fabulous!

After tearing ourselves away we headed for the night markets.

These markets are really popular as well as selling the run of the mill stuff there is also a goldfish market, electrical market and a ladies market. We had some unusual street food for our tea as we walked around!

DAY 2

 Not such a late start at 10am this morning and we headed out for breakfast. That was an experience! Choice for us Brits was a bit limited and mainly consisted of noodles and some stodgy stuff that reminded me of my childhood days of ground rice and had blobs of funny stuff in - eugh! Oliver and Emily were happy with this though!

We then headed for Lantau Island where we were planning on going to NGong Ping, a mountain where there is a massive Buddah at the summit which you access by cable car. It was very steep and took about 15 minutes to get to the top with stunning views.

  

There was an area of eating places before walking up to the Buddah so we stopped here and had a Subway! There was wifi internet up here and bizarrely we were all speaking to my mum and dad on skype on top of a mountain in Hong Kong which seemed weird!

We then walked up to the Buddah which was up loads of steps, I could hardly breathe when I got to the top!

We went to the goldfish market at night which was a bizarre experience. It was quite upsetting though because the fish were so crammed into the tanks they didn’t have room to swim about and there were other creatures too, most upsetting was a large turtle in a small confined space with hardly any water, you felt like buying it, smuggling in your suitcase and taking to Australia with you to put back in its natural environment. There is obviously no government control with stuff like this which lets this fab country down.

DAY 3

As this was our last day in HK we spent some of the morning packing and after depositing cases with the concierge we headed out to Kowloon Island to take a photo of the Hong Kong skyline over the harbour. There was a lovely promenade called ‘Avenue of the Stars’ where famous Chinese actors have their handprints. It was so funny though, people started randomly taking photos of Daisy, then when we stopped to have a family photo, people would stop and take one of us, then we had a small crowd round us. The a lady asked `oliver, Emily and Daisy if she could have a photo with them! It was a bit disconcerting and we felt we had a very small taste of what the Beckhams might feel like!! Every one has taken to Daisy here, one lady on the MCR said she was like a little doll. I think its probably the fact that we have 3 children , blonde hair and don’t look Chinese one bit! We didn’t see many English people or anyone other than people of Chinese ethnicity.

A quick visit to Temple Street market and then time to dash back to the hotel to catch the taxi to the airport for the start of our 2^nd leg of the journey to Hamilton Island – Australia……