Hong Kong

Hong Kong consists of a peninsula and 236 islands on China’s south coast and is enclosed by the Pearl River delta and South China Sea. Before I got here I wondered how they managed to fit over 7 million people into such a small space and now I know. That’s why they all do Kung Foo to clear a space for themselves to walk anywhere. They are so small; I haven’t stopped tripping over people and treading on them since we got here. Do you remember Hong Kong Phooey?

When Chinese people come to England over 99% of them work with something to do with the food industry. It’s the same over here, there are over 10,000 restaurants here in HK and we only have three days to try them all. I’m not sure if that includes all the street vendors as well. Mind you we haven’t seen many bars around yet. See these funny little dogs. Are they dogs? They might have been crossed with a kangaroo or maybe they have just made a dish consisting of front legs and are keeping the rest preserved without having to buy a fridge. What’s going on? If it was one, you would think that it had an accident; but two!?

The Hong Kong Dollar is worth about 7.75 pence so that 100HK$ is worth about £7.75 or roughly three quarters divided by 10 to do it quickly. Some of the islands use different money again but I think they still accept the HK$ as well. That’s a little bizarre if you think about it, it’s like London having its own currency that is different from the rest of England and Peckham having a different currency again. I wonder if they accept the HK$ in the rest of China?

Check in was great but we had about 90 minutes delay in the airport and that was sitting on the plane so it increased our time on the plane to 13.5 hours. We shared a taxi with Steve and Jan which was convenient and the drive went across country and it only took us about 90 minutes so we ended up having 4 hours to kill before even getting on the plane, no wonder we are so knackered now. The flight and service was fabulous with the hostesses bringing free small bottles whenever we wanted. I did manage to get about 2.5 hours sleep plus a few minutes here and there while Claire managed about 5.5 hours somehow; maybe she had more wine than me.

The hotel is lovely we have great views of the beach, harbour and sea from our room with floor to ceiling windows on the 10th floor. It’s very posh at our hotel even the dogs have to wait until they get to the toilet. We tried the restaurant for lunch but wont bother again as it wasn’t up to much but I have never seen so many weddings! We have witnessed at least 7 at our hotel and noticed others when walking around. We got the shuttle bus downtown but it’s not for us; I would rather shop around Milton Keynes. Let’s hope we like it a bit better tomorrow after some real sleep.