Travelling Post No. 9 - The rest of Hong Kong

Day 2 of Hong Kong started and i felt really rough (not because of too much drinking,) I could barely speak and swallowing food was difficult, so morning was a further tour around the area near the hotel in search of a chemist.

The chemist was great, i told him my symptoms and he gave me three lots of pills, one of them was Amoxycillin, which I am sure you can only get on prescription in Britain. Anyway, it is such a better system than at home, one it is quicker, and two no Doctor to sit their and judge you for being ill or for waiting to long to come and see them.

A further search around what i think was the North East of HK island still did not reveal my imagined image of HK, I saw glimpses of it but still I wanted my metropolis.

The afternoon was time spent on a tour, with Lyona, the eccentric tour guide from yesterday. We visited, Victoria Peak, Aberdeen Fishing Port, Repulse Bay, Stanley Market and ended up at one of the buildings with a rotating restaurants for tea. Although we didn't go in the rotating restaurant, which was disappointing. In fact so was the meal, but I am getting ahead of myself, back to the start of the tour.

Repetitive anecdotes abound came from Lyona, much to everyone's dismay. Some of it was quite interesting information, she explained on why Cantonese is the first language of HK and not Mandarin, which is the first language of the rest of China, how Maggie Thatcher had an important role in shaping the HK of today, why HK has it's own currency. All interesting enough but coming from Lyona, repeating herself over and over again, it was almost too much to bare.

Our first stop on this whirlwind tour of the South of HK island was Victoria Peak. Although we got about 10-15 minutes to look around and didn't go to the very peak. Some nice views of HK were to be had but it was all too brief a view.

There looked to be a visitor centre but we did not have time to explore. After photo time there was a stop on the path down to buy a keyring and postcards (I have written only two a week later and i have decided i don't like writing postcards) and then onto stop 2 Aberdeen Fishing Port.

At the port we got on a boat and had a relaxing 30 minute tour and took a few photos. Below is just one, this is of a floating restaurant.

Many thought this to be the best stop of the day, mostly because it got us away from Lyona for half an hour. I enjoyed the relaxing time but I think I preferred the hustle and bustle of our last stop Stanley Market. In between Aberdeen and Stanley though we visited Repulse Bay Beach, apparently the best beach in HK, it was nice but a rather pointless visit as we got off the coach, took some photos and then got back on. I did find out that it wasn't always called Repulse bay, but was renamed in honour of HMS Repulse, the British ship which defended the bay from the Japanese.

From left to right, Eleanor, Alison, Sam W, Sam K, Ed, Brendan and Paul, some of those on the Work Australia trip with me. Missing from the photo are Stacey and Emma.

And then (a favourite phrase of the dear tour guide) it was off to our final stop before tea, Stanley Market. Here i bought a stamp with my name in Chinese engraved on so now if you get stamps on your postcards you'll know why. Stanley Market was very busy with people offering deals and 'Rolexes' to you as you watched buy. Part of the market was like any other market in Britain, offering clothes etc. but much of it was geared up for the tourists. We had an all too brief half an hour to look in and around the market before it was tea time. Given longer time there, i think i may have enjoyed it so much more, just to relax and take it all in, much like the boat trip at Aberdeen Fishing Village.

Oh the tea, it was, well.. an experience. Lets just say i am recovering from trying new Chinese foods, and may be recovering for a long time to come. I don't think a person enjoyed it and then the desert turned up - Sweet Green Bean/Pea Soup.

Doesn't it look delicious

I was told it was good for your throat and so i tried my hardest but I couldn't finish it even after holding my nose to numb the taste buds. You can see what i got at the bottom.

At this point I couldn't continue

If you thought that was some sort of icing on the cake you were wrong, after eating half of it Lyona said 'Well aren't you brave.' and the point of coming here and eating it was...

And so it was the end of day 2 after having an enjoyable day ending with an awful meal i had two drinks in the hotel bar and was in bed by 8.30pm, suffering with a cold or man-flu as those females like to call it.

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Day 3 begins, feeling a little better after a good nights sleep, but still not being able to speak properly (already people were happy about this and I've only know them for three days... worrying isn't it!) After breakfast I looked on the map and decided to get the tram to a green part on the other side of HK and this was it, I found my Hong Kong, the Hong Kong on postcards and television the Hong Kong which is a powerhouse in world economics, the Hong Kong Kong where nearly every building is a wonderfully designed glass skyscraper.

Just one of the many skyscrapers we saw.

After walking around and looking for the green part that was on the map (HK Park) we came across St. John's Cathedral - I've seen more impressing churches and then it was onto HK Park - in a word or three, pretty damn amazing. The park was more impressive than anything i had seen in HK to date, and possibly the most impressive park I have ever been in. Why we didn't get told about this I don't know.

A view from the park.

Ed, Sam K, Sam W and Paul looking at fish in one of the ponds in the park.

We didn't really get much chance to look all around the park as we had to get back to the hotel for the final tour which, like yesterday was disappointing. I shan't go into as much detail as nothing really stands out from that tour, we visited a park that used to be a built up slum estate, interesting but not really spectacular, we went to a small Buddhist temple and then onto a jade market. Of the brief afternoon tour, the Jade Market was the most interesting, it was like a smaller version of Stanley Market and you could tell those who knew English got the tourism trade. We spent a whopping 40 minutes there , 15 would have sufficed, then it was off to the airport for a bang up tea at Spaghetti house then a long flight to Sydney, Australia on which I didn't sleep a wink oh well.

A final view of Hong Kong, all 10 of us eating tea at Spaghetti House in HK Airport.

To add, nothing to do with HK, but pictures of my Surf Camp experience are now up on my bebo site. http://rhino-rob.bebo.com

Travelling Post No. 7 - I went to Hong Kong... Hi-Five! (now reading a bit better)

After leaving home at around 3.10am I arrived at Hong Kong at midnight our time, 8 am there time. The flight was awful and dragged, i got very little sleep as the bloke in front decided to recline his seat, which was nice of him, and this gave me even less leg room than the ridiculous amount they give you normally. When we arrived in Hong Kong, all 27 of us (9 were continuing with me to Australia and the other 17 were heading out to New Zealand). It was a big relief, although the tour operator was late and we had to wait around 20 minutes until she arrived. Then we had a further 45min-1hr coach trip to the hotel.

The coach trip to the hotel was made worse by the tour operator, Lyona. She was quite informative (well about some things but not others, which i'll explain in a later post) but she repeated her self over and over again, but without explaining anything in a different way, she was annoying and her repetition made her boring and hard to listen to. The coach passed by the third largest cargo container storgage port in the world, that's right the third, not in Hong Kong, not in Asia but the world after Rotterdam, the first; San Fransico the second and Hong Kong, the third largest cargo container storage port in the world. Although it was very big i wouldn't be quite so proud of it as Lyona seemed to be. We also drove across the only bridge in Hong Kong, then passed by a couple more bridges, and two trees that were being preserved because they were so old -100years?!?! She was an interesting person just in the wrong way.

My first impression of Hong Kong was that it was different to what I was expecting, there seemed fewer modern Skyscrapers and the landscape was mostly filled with high rise flights, we weren't shown the rich city that is as strong a force in the world's economy as many countries.

The South Pacific Hotel, where we stayed was really nice, I was expecting something a little less modern and a little less.. well classier, but this was a decent 28 storey building with a really fast lift. I was sharing a room with Paul and so after being delayed until 11 before we got into the room (after arriving shortly after 10am) it was bed time. I orginally wanted to stay up and tour the city as we were only there for three days but i was too tired, ill and jet lagged, so much so that I had to be woken up around 3 or 4 times by Paul at 2pm when we getting up to go out.

And so now I eventually start writing about things I got up to, about 3 of the New Zealand group joined, I think, 8 of us Australian lot, and we wandered for about HK island for around three hours. The first thing we came to was a fish and vegatable market (below) just by the hotel, this was more bustling and a little more like what I thought areas of Hong Kong would be like. There were also live fish and fish heads that had been chopped off so recently that they still moved. A few people, but not I, were rather fascinated by this.
















We then wandered to one of the many harbours which stunk so much that I was almost physically sick, admittedly I was already ill and my man-cold was only getting worse, but it felt as though you could catch an infection from breathing, it was putrid and i could taste the air. We wandered along the side of the port for a while before coming to Victoria Park. This was a really surprisng find as I didn't expect to find a park so big in amongst Hong Kong. It was well kept and very busy, there was an path solely for runners and a number of courts for football, tennis and other such sports of which most were being used. We then headed back to the hotel with me still wondering where i had got this idea that Hong Kong was a modern metropolis of glass skyscrapers.

After making plans to meet at 6 - myself, Paul, the two Sams (Aus lot) and Mark (NZ) went to the top floor bar to look at the view (i still didn't see my metropolis) and ended up staying for a drink. Safe to say we were still there at 6.30 and after having missed the meet with the others we decided to go to tea. The restaurant we went to was incredibly cheap, for five of us, a dish each and a drink it only cost around 28pound between us. Being in a different part of the world I decided to experiment upon my choice of food and went for the battered crab option. Although a bit salty it was very nice. After the restaurant it was off to the european thremed bar. Although it was themed like a British pub but there were some very subtle differences such as waiter service, no queueing at the bar and efficient staff. Next it was back to the hotel bar for a quick one before going back to sleep - which ended up being a few drinks and off to bed at half midnight after having a fun, long day and taking the below view of Hong Kong from the bar.















Gotta run now, times up, I will finish this post tommorow (after note - in a few days) and ensure it reads correctly - which i know it doesn't now (after note - it should now) but I wanted to give you all something for now. Safe to say I'm having fun though.