Saturday 13 March 2010

Hong Kong - Summer 2009


So we planned to travel to indonesia (Me, the ex and her friend Lizzy) to see my mate, and Hong Kong was really just an extended stop off on the way.  Just 4 days and to be fair 4 days was all that we needed.  We kept the 4 days busy with early starts to make sure we did everything touristy in Hong Kong.  Interestingly, Disney Land wasn't on our list of things to do.  We arrived at about 5pm, greeted by a lady that worked for our hostel and followed her through ChungKing Mansion to our hostel (in Tsing Sha Tsui).  The walk to our hostel was horrific, ChungKing is not known for its beauty and i was beginning to question whether cheap hostels are really worth saving a few quid! however, after a clostrophobic lift journey followed by the dirtiest, stinking flight of stairs iv ever climbed, we arrived at a rather pleasant, clean hostel.

We headed straight out, after refreshing from our 19 hour flight, and took the traditional Hong Kong landscape photo (top) and ate a traditional Hongkonese meal (right).  I had the best honey roast pork that was oozing with sweet, sticky, fatty juices and was soooo blatantly bad for you yet tasted faaaar too good to care even slightly.  I absolutely loved the food in Hong Kong, my freinds however would tell a different story.  To be fair i wouldn't blame them as there were times when i was very grateful for my strong stomach.  Below left was a beef soup with various parts of a cow in it including stomach, tendons and intestine (aptly named "floor scraping soup" by Jess and Lizzy) and below right was... well im not sure, some kind of deep fried sparrows on a skewer!?...
The second day we woke up early and caught a ferry to Hong Kong island.  We were reccomended to take a free lift to the top of some skyscraper to get a good view of the city.  Then we walked around the city for a bit and to my greatest shame, ate lunch at McDonalds.  2nd day in and the girls were sick of the local food.  The same day we visited a botanical garden that had a load of animals and plants.  Vaguely interesting... but not so much.

The next day we went to visit the Giant Buddha (left) taking a ride on a pretty impressive cable car (Ngong Ping) to get there.  There were some goodlookin temples (below right) and gardens there with fountains and terrapins but once you've seen the Buddha and travelled Ngong Ping, there was not really much else to do.  In our short time left we climbed Victoria Peak, shopped the temple street night market (below left) and sun bathed on Lamma Island.  The temple street market was a great experience which i recommend as a deffinite thing to do in Hong Kong.  Everywhere seemed to be serving a "turtle shell tea" that was supposed to be good for the male anatomy.  For some reason, i didn't feel the need to taste it.  Lamma Island was also great and felt a million miles away from the busy Hongkonese life with old shacks for cafes, unspoilt beaches and spiders the size of my fist (above right).  4 days were easily enough to see the best of Hong Kong and by the time it came to leave, we were more then looking forward to seeing Indonesia. :o)