A lot has happened between my last update and now, so apologies for the lengthy delay.
Part four - When the big hand is on the 12, and the little hand is on the...
I may have mentioned before that I am jetlags ......
When I left you last, it was 4am and we were both awake and looking at the ceiling. This was not good, it would bring the day to a premature end. However, after a few of hours of trying to get back to sleep, failing, dithering about, looking up what to do that day, we gave sleep one more attempt at about 8am - and was woken up by the maid at 12.30pm. Whoops...
So, as is traditional with our first day somewhere new, it was time for orientation. Our plan was to walk to Kowloon station in order to change up the vouchers we'd bought on the plane for 2 airport express passes + 72hrs unlimited use of the MTR (Quick sidenote here - it says in the literature with these vouchers that you have to go to an Airport Express station to exchange them - this is not correct, turns out most MTR stations can do it. Naturally we found this out AFTER we'd walked to Kowloon). So off we headed.
As mentioned previously, there were people EVERYWHERE. I've been to a lot of places around the world, and never thought I would see anywhere that beat the sheer volume of people as Mumbai, but Hong Kong seemed to beat it. I have no idea if this was due to the forthcoming Chinese New Year so there were a lot of people on holiday, or if it's just always like this - maybe someone that's been there more frequently can answer?
One thing we particularly enjoyed was that here we were in late January and it was lovely and warm. And just think, we would have been shivering in New York instead...
Blue skies and everything!
Although while we were warm, we noticed almost everyone else was wrapped up in heavy coats, hats and scarves - eventually it occurred to us that when the locals are used to 30-40 degrees C in the summer, 18 degrees is going to feel a bit sharp. The 2 degrees we'd left behind in London would probably be the end of them...
We found ourselves on the other side of the road from Kowloon station, which is directly underneath these buildings
Unfortunately on that road was one of the biggest construction sites I have ever seen (and I lived in Docklands when they were ramping that up), where a new terminal for an inter-Chinese railway is under construction. As with nearly all construction sites I've encountered (far too many for my liking), it smelt like a sewer. Having successfully navigated our way through it - as it's still a functioning roadway that you can walk along - to the station, we collected our travelcards and headed into the shopping center for some lunch.
Speaking of shopping centers, there's a lot of them in Hong Kong aren't there? Couldn't move without tripping over one. And the shops! Good lord there's some money over there!
With Chinese New Year fast approaching, there were a lot of clues as to what animal the year to come represented
Can you tell what it is?
We took a walk back down towards the waterfront as the sun fell away, aiming to get there in time for the symphony of lights, grabbing a few more shots along the way
Don't go towards the light...
Oddly, given how popular the show was supposed to be, and how well lit-up the opposite shore was, it was strangely deserted round there, which we just couldn't figure out. Still, gave us time to capture some snaps of the wonderful scenes in front of us
Yet there was still almost nobody around, and there was no light show going on - what was happening? After all, it was past seven o'cl... Ah! We got the time wrong - it had just gone 6pm. Rather embarrassed, we headed to the nearest bar and had a very large drink, before returning at just before 7pm, where it seemed like the population of a small country had packed themselves along the waterfront. The drums rolled, the trumpets blared and we were off...
And, errr, that was about it. Think we may have hyped it up a little, but even so it was a pretty poor showing.
Still getting our bearings a little, we headed back in the direction of our hotel, taking in various markets and braving some street food - the Lobster balls I had were rather on the hot side, and that's coming from someone that loves a curry! Ended up back at the Langham at around 10pm, which was a welcome oasis of calm following the bedlam outside and had a couple of drinks in the bar as the tale end of jetlag kicked in, before heading off to bed at around midnight.
6am wakeup the next day - not too bad!
Coming up next - Mountains! Trams! Poxy fear of heights!
Stay tuned, be back soon