I Love Hong Kong

After 2 flights (having to fly back to Delhi, to then catch our flight to Hong Kong) we arrived at 7am. Mind you we were quite happy to be on those flights and wouldn't have complained if they had lasted longer. Our first flight to Delhi was faultless and possibly the best 1 hour flight we've ever been on. Our ticket said we got an inflight snack. Thinking this would be a tiny pack of peanuts like usual where after about 2 mouthfuls they're gone; we were hit back with a big surprise! The flight attendants start handing out chicken tikka and malai kofta for Sarah!...and as if that wasn't enough they were handing out free beer! Chicken Tikka washed down with a can of ice cold Kingfisher! heaven. After our "snack" we looked out of the window to be greeted by Mount Everest, and before we knew it our empty beer cans had been taken and replaced with full ones!...'3 free beers each' apparently!...Sweet!! We had our own televisions, with cable tv, so I sat and watched the Championship play-off final whilst Sarah watched Friends....what an awesome flight.
The second was just as impressive and you still got your 3 free beers, or you could trade the beer in for a whiskey and coke for example or as Sarah opted for; a glass of white wine! real wine...not local wine!! real white wine!

Anyways as we collected our bags, we made way for the phone to wake Nick up and let him know that we had arrived and were going straight to the 'hotel' to get some sleep but would meet up with him and the others later that evening.
We got to our hotel, the 8th floor with a window overlooking the main Nathan Road so we couldn't complain, it was hot, humid and dry. Once we stepped out of the building into the main street, it was chaos, and that's when it hit me...."Shit"...I had that feeling I got when I first went to Manchester...All the buildings are really tall, everyone seems to know where they're going and then there was me, feeling way too small for this big city, not having a clue which way to go, too busy dodging to get out of everyone's path....I felt lost and wished I was back in India or Nepal where over the past 2 months I had felt in my comfort zone. I guess Hong Kong was like stepping back in the modern world again, so as we stood in the middle of the path taking it all in, we decided to walk down towards the harbour. Everywhere we walked, it always seemed that we typically were walking against the grain, making each step that bit harder trying not to walk into anybody!

Over the 10 days of being in Hong Kong we had got the hang of it and slowly started walking with the grain....so much easier!! We headed down to the Harbour where we walked along the avenue of stars, also giving you the amazing view of the famous Hong kong Skyline, and it really was AMAZING!! Then we had the fun of looking for a cheap chinese restaurant down a few backstreets where none of the menus were in English so we had to quickly learn cantonese to get some noodles! Luckily a lady came out and showed us what each one was with a picture! so as soon as she pointed to the noodles, we nodded and our order was placed.

After we had settled in to Hong Kong we rang around to see when we would meet up with our old disney friends. I got through to Fred and he told us that a table was booked for tea and everyone was meeting at 7. The restaurant was a bit swanky! but surprisngly the price was right! We ordered all kinds of things, that I can't remember the name of, and the others ordered dishes of typical chinese food so we could try. Jellyfish was one of them, which tasted a bit strange! and then I found out I had ordered pig's skin, Vicky decided to tell me this AFTER i had eaten it!!
We had an amazing evening, and had arranged with to meet them all on the weekend where, on saturday we planned to go to a traditional chinese lunch in central and then meet up with everyone else and go to the peak before heading for some tea. and sunday we had been invited to go to a beach BBQ on the beach of Shek O on Hong kong Island. We couldn't wait!

The following day we decided to catch a ferry and head to Lantau Island and see the largest outdoor buddha in the world as well as the Po Lin monastery before heading to Tai O, (Venice as Fred reffered to it haha) a little fishing village, where all the houses lined a river, on stilts around a market full of seafood. It was amazing and so was the weather, really really hot. As we arrived to Tai O we were stopped by a lady who wanted us to help with her daughter's English homework assignment. We checked over the grammar and changed it so in theory she should get 100%... hah yeah right.
As the lady thanked us for our help she then told us she didn't think we were English and thought we were German!!!! if she had said that before we had helped her I would have chucked the assignment back at her and told her where to shove it!

The weekend came and we had been looking forward to it! So we met with everyone and they took us to a traditional restaurant for lunch. It was heaving!! so we had to share a table with some others! Me and Sarah thought this was a bit weird, opting to wait until they had finished but they just laughed! it's not a problem to share tables apparently, that's what they do over here!! The menu was also an experience!...trolleys go round, each trolley containing a different dish to the other and when that trolley passes your table you either let it pass if you don't want that dish or you call out for it to stop if you do want it. Exchanged with a stamp on your bill with what dish you had!
It was pretty cool! a pretty awesome experience we would never have known about if it wasn't for our friends! They then showed us around Hollywood road, where we found Man Mo Temple which we stopped in. After learning about their prayers, the sticks in the jar and how to do it, we lit some incense and gave it a go! It was good fun!
We headed to Times Square and then decided we would head towards the peak. The rain had come unfortunately so we turned back and went to the space museum before heading to the hotpot restaurant! When they mentioned a hotpot I was expecting a nice english lamb hotpot! instead we got a stove in the middle of the table full of soup, then on a trolley they bring all your ingredients, such as chicken, pork, meat as well as all your vegetables which you put in the soup and cook it yourself! We had one bowl of Fish soup, another of chilli soup for those who were feeling a bit wild! and then a tomato soup to add all the ingredients to! We were there until 11.30 and ate the whole time we were there so I'd say we got our moneys worth!

The next day was the beach BBQ!! :) We met at the station next to Wing's home, went to buy the meat and vegetable and then caught a bus to the beach. Although it was spitting with rain, our bbq was covered so we didn't get wet. We got the charcoal, lit the fire and the started preparing the food! It was like being at a campfire. You each have a BBQ fork and put whatever you want to eat on the end, and then hold it in the fire to cook it! once its ready you then paste it with honey and then eat it...SO SO YUMMY!!! Pork chops were beautiful! The beach itself was really cool, not to mention I could actually play football for the first time since we left, and had someone to play with! what more could I ask for!! It was great! We stayed at the beach until around 9 o clock before we had all eaten too much and were ready to head back.
We had had such an amazing weekend, but all our friends had to get back to work the next morning.
Wing and Nova thought I looked like David Beckham which was a compliment considering the day before Sarah was calling me jimmy Neutron!! Jimmy to Beckham overnight can't be bad!!....Although Fred and Nick explained why they thought this...."They think you look like Beckham, like when you see chinese people from the back, you probably think we all look like Jackie Chan!?"......I replied..."noooo!...not at all!!!" hahah he'd nailed it!

We picked up our Chinese visas from the embassy the next day after booking our tickets to Beijing for friday! (we decided to stay longer as we were lovin it here, and didn't want to leave any sooner than we had to!) The next few days we met Bonnie every evening who would take us to different places for tea, as well as order for us! We were slowly getting the hang of chopsticks and were verging on being pro's when it came to eating dry noodles! not those in a soup though, that was a different kettle of fish!
On wednesday everyone had rung in sick for the afternoon so we could continue to play in Hong Kong! We met in Mong Kok, where they informed us, was the best place for markets and shopping in general so we headed to the famous Fa Yuen street, the Ladies market and the goldfish market! Sarah was in heaven! grabbing a bargain in Fa Yuen and the Ladies Market, and then looking at all the different fish tied in plastic bags and hung up for you to pick which one you wanted to buy! It was pretty impressive!
We then got some noodles from the street, where i could try pig's ear and headed to a mall to take some sticker photo's with us and our friends!!..some of the poses were a work of art!! We finished off another great day in another rather swanky restaurant!

On our last day we went back to Mong Kok as Sarah had fallen in love with it the day before to walk around, and also found the Tim Ho Wan restaurant which was the cheapest michelin star restaurant in the world! When we got there, there wasn't as many people queing outside as we had expected, so we went for a closer look, and found a sign on the door; 'Register closed until 4pm'. Those people waiting had already got their tickets, number 63 was in having their meal and these were number 107!! and if we wanted to get a meal there we would have to wait an hour and a half just to get a ticket and then probably wait a few hours more before we even got in! so we were happy to take a menu for our diary and get a picture outside of it, before heading back to the markets and having a cup of tea with honey chips!! We then made our way back to Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) to get ready for a last meal with our friends. We went back to the swanky reataurant from the first night and this time we could use our chopsticks!! without them waiting on us, taking hours to eat our meal! We also picked up some cantonese so we could join in...a little bit!! We had taught them some english slang! and we could also order food and know what we were getting....a bit different to that, 10 days ago. I decided to go for chicken's feet to give that a try...not too bad!! if you forget you're eating a foot and tell yourself its just chicken, you get through it!! The evening was a great laugh and we didn't want to leave.

To end our time in Hong kong we all went down to the 1881 heritage and got a 'pro' photographer to take a picture of us all, which took a long time until we had perfected it!! Then we said goodbye as everyone parted their own way home. We will miss our Hong Kong friends a lot and had an amazing 10 days.

P.S. We are currently writing this on our train to Beijing, which i must say is a step up from those in India! similar as there were still 6 beds per cabin and sadly back to the squat and drop toilets!! On the other hand we got probably the comfiest bed we've had in all 11 weeks, with an actual duvet!!! Our first impression of the chinese people is a good one, after the lady stayin in the same compartment as us bought us each tea, and the people in the compartment next to us gave us some of their orange!! We had deja vu from the trains in India where everyone would go out of their way to make sure we were having a good journey and weren't going without anything.