Hong Kong

We arrived in the sweltering and somewhat oppressive heat safe and sound. Investing in Octopus cards and with Janine's expert guidance we made the bus to town. Naturally Janine was also underimpressed with my repeated immaturity! Seeing Kok's and Fook's everywhere was really funny for me - less so for others.

Our arrival coincided with the National Day holiday week - there was loads of cool lanterns and lights and a 'fire' dragon. I have captured some wonderful pictures of the back of various heads and other people's camera's - it was an enormous scrum of people getting very excitable about a lad on a low tech illuminated shopping trolley banging a drum. Also had lots of chaps carrying a lot of lit jos-sticks attached to a dragon shape. Couple with big balls (if you'll pardon the expression) to represent the fire.

Jet lag kind of consumed us the following day and we were very slow into action...we visited the bird, flower and goldfish markets and sought beads in vain. Ended the day watching the light spectacular and riding the Star ferry - can't say the light spectacular was truly amazing but we were amused by a French woman assaulting various Chinese nationals who had the nerve to impede her view of the harbour. She really laid into one poor woman.


Day three in the Big Budda house and we had a cool ride in cable car gondola up to the Budda and temple. It was pretty big - suitably named we thought. Unfotunately it's succumbing to Hong Kong's push to commercialise everything. It was like the entrance to Alton Towers at Ngong Ping 'village'.

Later we were also a little underimpressed with the monstorsity of the giant Wok on top of Victoria Peak. The tram ride was fun - with the usual scrum and argy bargey with the hordes of Chinese tourists. Seems there idea of a day out is superglueing a Canon or Nikon to their foreheads or hands and looking at the view of the world through a lens (Janine might say I did the same - did get a bit excitable with the camera at the Harbour) then generally getting in the way before settling down to whatever shopping/cafes are within 50m. We didn't try Tony's Hey Yu joke though did consider it.

Highlight for a geek like me was the MTR - how cool that is...it's just so clever!

Copy watch requests - 27
Fine Tailor suit requests - 13
Copy handbag for the lady requests - 900 (or so it felt)

Purchases made - 0 (but Harbour City was only discovered with less than two hours before we had to be at the airport - success I'd say! Again, view point may differ.)