It was quite a week in Hong Kong! We stayed in the Mong Kok area with all its delights - constant drops landing on you in the street from the air conditioning units and mixed smells of rubbish, meat that has been sweating in outdoor stalls for hours and bus exhaust fumes. Initially, I was quite overwhelmed with what met all my senses - not surprising when you think that Mong Kok is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth with some 120,000 people per square km. It kind of makes you feel pretty insignificant!
As far as the language goes, Hong Kong was not as daunting as Japan as there are signs in English everywhere although as a result I didn't find it quite so much fun trying to communicate with people. Still, there were moments of confusion. Like one lunch time when we entered a restaurant on Hong Kong Island. After realising we were the only people in the queue without a ticket, a man explained to us that we needed to pay for the food before seeing it. This resulted in Robbie getting spaghetti bolognese instead of the Chinese delights he had been awaiting. As we left, saying goodbye to a friendly couple from the island with whom we had shared a table and who happened to love Japan and showed us all too familiar photos on their mobiles of temples we had just visited, we wondered if anyone was still waiting for their spaghetti bolognese which Robbie had nicely polished off.
What I quickly learned in Hong Kong was that the whole place looks a lot better in the dark. As drab sky scrapers are transformed into multi-coloured illuminations, the "Special Administrative Region" takes on a whole new character. And when you get to watch something like the opening ceremony of the Olympics projected onto an outside wall with the illuminated waterfront as a backdrop or look down at the lights from The Peak, you start to appreciate how spectactular it all is.
The determining factor in planning what to do each day was the weather. When tropical storm Kammuri got close to HK on Wednesday, raising the Typhoon Alert Signal to 8, we soon learned how important it is to be able to enjoy one's own company when confined to a small space. All museums and most shops were closed, the buses were not running and, somewhat blissfully, there were very few people on the streets. After all attempts at finding something to do failed, we returned defeated to our hotel room. It was only when we ventured out of our hotel room hours later, being drawn to the lights of a shopping mall, did we find out what most of the locals had been doing during the typhoon whilst we were trying to teach ourselves Backgammon from reading instructions in German ... they were all bowling!
Eager to make up for lost time, the rest of the week was full on: a day at Disney Land, a ride in a cable car over misty hills to see a huge Buddha (apparently the world's largest in bronze I think ... to differentiate it from the world's largest stone one or something which we saw Japan not long ago!), a visit to the old fishing village Tai O, a ride up the world's longest connecting outdoor escalators (just to get HK's numbers up in the Guiness Book), strolls around Soho and the Botanic Gardens and, when we hit "Rain Storm Alert Amber", visits to the Science and Space Museums (along with half of HK's school children). From dusk til dawn, we seemed to flit from one mode of transport to another (be it the metro, busses, ferries, cable cars or trams) and we never ceased to be surprised at what appeared to be cooking in the pots on the pavements.
The biggest surprise, however, was one my Never-Tell-Me-A-Secret-As-I Cannot-Keep-Them travelling buddy Robbie cooked up. On returning to our hotel one evening, I could never have guessed what I was to find in my room ... the one and only Ciara Barry, a friend (and domestic goddess) from Kufstein! Two worlds suddenly met in an instant. Delighted and utterly confused, I hugged her and then let go quickly, remembering I had been out for the day and probably stank - she was perched elegantly on the bed in a beautiful Chinese dress. Seeing her did wonders for the soul, despite it being only just over 2 weeks since I left for this trip. We had a wonderful night with her, dining at a Vietnamese restaurant to get us in the mood for the next destination, and a fun Sunday exploring Lamma Island and getting scared by some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen. Ciara even braved the shark infested and polluted waters and continued to eat fruit she bought from a street stall despite finding maggots in it. From now on she will be known as Courageous Ciara.
We left Ciara in a wet and misty Hong Kong Monday morning to get our flight to Bangkok. As I have now found out on arriving in Bangkok, the smells from Hong Kong are ones that may start to haunt us throughout Asia...
