Dear All Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, Dads, Grandparents, Aunties, Uncles, Cousins and Friends; do not worry, our trip is now being published! Sorry it has taken us a while to get on with this, we have been in Kuala Lumpur since Friday and have managed to find ourseleves pretty busy. But we will start with Hong Kong! Scroll down to see a map at the bottom of every story we write. There are two photo albums of Hong Kong and some videos on youtube (link under the profile picture on the home page)
As soon as we came out of the airport express staion in Hong Kong it didnt fail to impress. It was early evening and dark so we could see across the harbour at all the lights. It really is the most impressive skyline - you can see why people go on about it. The first thing you cant help but notice, however jet lagged, is how efficient the Chinese are. As soon as we stepped off the plane there were people pointing us in the right direction. Not once getting out of the airport were you out of sight of a Chinese worker there to help. We were pointed down walkways and shown into escalators and then easily bought tickets for what they call the airport express train. We found the platform easily (all within the airport building) and then got on this train to Kowloon. The train was sparkling clean, spacious and looked brand new. It had plasma screens and huge luggage areas and even a map to show where you were headed with little LCD lights that lit up. We pulled into Kowloon airport station and were asked where we were heading. We said we were trying to get to the YMCA so we were showed onto a free hotel shuttle bus that stopped at The Peninsula Hotel (next door). We hadnt booked any accomodation in advance so decided to try at the YMCA first because a few people had recommended it and we thought it would be a safe option for our first night. Luckily we got there fine and they had space so we booked into a dorm room each (single sex). There were 2 bunk beds in each room, a little clean bathroom and then each bed had assigned a full length locker. The lockers were great - fitted our backpacks in there easy. There was a Chinese girl in my room (lottie) and george had his room to himself. The Chinese girl was nice - dont know her name - but we had a few struggled conversations in what she knew of English. She was only there one night of the five. Had the room for myself then until the last two nights when three american girls on a business trip for college stayed. George had his room to himself the entire time!! All felt really clean and safe considering we were bang in the middle of the city. We were so glad we were staying in such a nice place when we walked past the other hostels and Chungking Mansions. There are few big falling down grey buildings that they call mansions (for some reason?) in Hong Kong. *There will be a photo up in the gallery. And they are packed full of tiny dingy rooms belonging to privately owned hostels all within the one building. We then managed on our 2nd night to extend our stay there for the full 5 nights we were in Hong Kong which was great. Got a 10% discount with some cards that we had ordered before we left so they have already more than paid for themselves.
We did alot of walking everyday when we were there and on our last couple of days we used the MTR which is their underground transport system - which is again, really efficient, easy and clean. We loved the street markets and the shopping centres were impressive. My favourite trip was to Nan Lian Garden. I had read up about it so we decided to head over there - the New Territories part of Hong Kong. I also read they had a vegetarian restaurant there so that made me want to go even more. Chinese put meat in everything and its definitly not nice meat. It was sooooo nice *photos in the gallery. And we found the vegetarian restaurant in under a waterfall. The food was great and the service felt like you were in a 5star hotel or something but the price was not more than youd pay for Nandos or Pizza Hut. It was a four course meal and even George agreed it was nice without meat. All we are going to say for now so please have a look at our photos and am just trying to upload some videos.
Love to all x
