Destination : HONG KONG


WELCOME TO HONG KONG!!

We did make it to HONG KONG....in fine style. After 9 hours flight..I was air sick and exhausted. I kept depositing nice warm sick bags to the stewardess after a while she refused to empty them anymore, so I passed them to Steve to remove. We both skipped dinner because I couldnt keep mine down and well Steve couldnt eat next to a vomit gromit! Thankgod for the chinese and their herbs.. JASMINE tea anyone?

AS for the weather well when we landed it was muggy and hot and sticky at around 10pm. Hong Kong is NOTHING like you have ever experienced before.

A few observations about HONKERS :

1) They just build anywhere they like! Need an extra road or ramp? We'll just build a concrete slab above the shopping district! SERIOUSLY! Right next to THE NOVOTEL : HARBOURVIEW, the street they originally built the place on you look out the window and then there is this ridiculous concrete ramp! God knows where it starts..I almost compare it to a rainbow, with no end and no beginning! WOW. .. Still run out of room? Just build a high rise on the side of a mountain..amazing really.

2) The bridges here are amazing! There is a much bigger version of the BOLTE bridge and what seems like a million tunnels.We went through two tunnels on the way from the airport, one that went through a mountain and the other under the sea. The city part is just high rise after high rise built again with about 1mm of space between.

3) Those of you from Melbourne who THINK MELBOURNE Taxi drivers are mad, the one's here in Hong Kong are ermmm madder! They don't seem to have indicators built into their models of cars *chuckles* and sitting about 1mm from the other cars backside is standard protocol and then when you FREAK out..they say "Dont worry, this is normal" I wasn't in any condition last night to be catching a train or a bus to our hotel. We caught a taxi for a set price of $400 HK dollars which I hear is Okay, compared to the prices listed at the airport. They do however have an excellent transport system, with trains which run right up to the airport as well as around between the islands, they also have LOTS of double decker buses and trams!

4) I've discovered that they are a very westernised and english culture. The have english signs on everything as well as the traditional chinese script. The telly in our room has cable and some english channels. I've got SPACE COWBOYS playing in the background. From our room window you can see a big mountain with some tall buildings built on the side of it, a road winding around the side of it and some poor people walking in the wet with their umbrella's trying to get to wherever it is they need to be. Our hotel is in the western district of KENNEDY TOWN...and not too far from the ferry terminal.

Today the weather is ermm.. pretty ordinary. It hasnt really stopped raining... WELCOME TO MONSOON SEASON...and its been thundering most of the morning.Its currently approx 11:20am and its still raining. We might go out for a walk later squashed under an umbrella. ..Stay tuned for the next rivetting chapter!

Pictures for this part of our trip can be found at : http://picasaweb.google.com/hillsj/HongKongHKIsland

Popular posts from this blog

Paris : Le Tour Eiffel!

Image
Paris : Le Tour Eiffel! On Tuesday morning (18th September) Steve and I checked out of our hotel at Garè De Nord and migrated our belongings to our new home for the day/night at a hotel near Garè De Lyon. On arrival we discovered that the dècor in our new hotel was particularly girly... purple infact! LOL.. oh well after a few hours I figured we wouldn't even notice the colour of the walls! After a little rest in our new hotel room, Steve and I set out on foot for our daily dose of exercise and a visit to the Eiffel Tower. That particular day Paris gave us some nice cool weather (after our drenching the night before), I found myself rugging up in a couple of layers. After the nice sunshine we had in Paris until then, feeling a bit cold was a bit of a surprise. Steve and I walked along The Seine River for what seemed like FOREVER to reach the Eiffel Tower. We passed the Museè D'Orsay (which we had been told to visit and was apparently well worth a visit!) and eventually found ...
Read more

London - British Museum

British Museum! On Saturday (9th June), Steve and I after a nice lazy lie in which is an Australian tradition on Saturdays.. *yawns and stretches* we took ourselves to the British Museum! Obviously, this post is a bit out of date, but to keep the time line real of when we actually went, I'll keep the date of this post as the 9th June. Right, so we finally made it to the museum around 2:30pm in the afternoon, giving us 3 hours before they closed their big doors! We were first overwhelmed by its architecture just from the outside, we hadn't even made it inside yet. In 1794, the museum acquired something called Montagu House, in Bloomsbury and it remains on this site today. The Great South Front of the museum, was designed with inspiration from Greek Architecture by Sir Robert Smirke in 1823, but not completed until almost 30 yrs later. Since then, there have been numerous additions to the museum to accomodate its expanding collection (and what a collection it is!) Indoors, we wer...
Read more

London - Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus!

Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus! On Wednesday (the 6th June), Steve and I found took ourselves to Covent Garden for a pre-arranged meeting with another mysterious internet friend. Turns out Joel wasn't so mysterious after all and really friendly! After some confusion on my part on the tube, we made it to covent garden late and really HUNGRY! Covent gardens being an area we were not familiar with, Joel took us to the market square for lunch, which is really rich in fabulous places to eat. Opting for Italian Cuisine, Steve and I ordered our favourite dishes and before I had a chance to blink my eyes, Steve's plate was empty! ;o) It was very busy in the Covent Garden market square, they had several stalls relating to their promotion of Malaysia Week 07. They had some lovely cultural stalls with Malaysian made traditional clothes, jewellery, and some ladies weaving big rugs of sorts. As well as this, there was a fashion parade displaying current fashions in th...
Read more