After staying the night at the coolest hotel i've ever stayed in (http://www.yotel.com) I met up with everyone from BUNAC at the check in desks at Heathrow. Everyone seemed nice enough and i get along with them all fine. The plane journey to Hong Kong was horrible. The first 3 hours of the 12 i was in the air werent so bad but the rest were horrible. I was so uncomfy and I couldnt sleep. I ended up watching 5 films in a row to pass the time, thankfully the plane had awesome entertainment facilities. Slumdog Millionair is well good, you should all watch it.
12 hours later we arrived in Hong Kong. It was 7am in the morning there and i was so jetlaged. We met up with the woman who was to be our tour guide for our stay in Hong Kong; Lyon(lee-on), she had a boys name. It was a really really misty morning so the views from the bus went as impressive as they could have been, not bad none the less. An hour later we arrived at our hotel. I was expecting somewhere pretty cheapy so was pleasantly suprised to be staying in a very decent hotel. We chucked our bags in our room and Joe, who was sharing with me and who i was soon discover was a very "get up and go" kind of guy, suggested we go and see some of the spots that Lyon had reccomended to us. We asked Polly and Amy who were staying in the room next to us to come along for a bit of company. All of us are around the same kind of age and we all get on pretty well so this kind of become our little group for going around Hong Kong.
First off we headed round the back of our hotel where we heard there was a market. Hong Kong street markets are insane, nothing like you see back home. Whole streets filled with stalls full with massive bundles of fruit and veg, every cut of meat ive ever seen hanging up, fish; some live in tanks and some being cut up and gutted by a scary man with a huge cleaver on a wooden board, birds feet, pig trotters, cooked geese with the head still attatched, whole dried fish and other yucky yucky stuff that they like in Hong Kong. Everything seemse really fresh and if i was going to cook over there, I imagine this is where I would buy most of my ingredients.
We left the market and decided we were going to go see a big Buddah statue that Lyon had mentioned. We figured the easiest way to get there would be taking the subway. The public transport in Hong Kong is awesome, really easy to use, on the subway you touch the station you want to go to on a map thing, the price comes up on the screen, stick your money in and youve got your ticket that you scan to get into and out of the train platforms, really cheap and reaaaaally clean. The whole place is really clean infact, especially compared to the UK, they make a real effor to keep it that way too, there are pretty hefty fines for spitting and dropping litter and stuff.
So 25 mins later and we were at our station. We then found a cable car called 360. It was the fastest way of getting up the huge where this Buddah apparently was. Unfortunatley it hadnt cleared up much since I arrived so our views from the cable car were limited. Up top we finaly saw this Buddah we had waited for. It was pretty huge, not that exciting though. There was also a monistary in this little village on the hill which was pretty cool. They only allowed vegitarian food on the grounds and there was a vieggie resturant which i would have tried if i was hungry. When we were fed up of Buddah we headed back down. The weather had turned pretty bad, it was so foggy we couldnt see anything atall out of the cable car, we were freezing and being blown about everywhere. Luckily by the time we reached the bottom it had all cleared up a bit.
We jumped back on the subway and decided it was time for some munch nomnomnom. We went to a cafe just across the road from our hotel which was supposed to be good, it wasnt haha. I ordered noodles with vegetables in which in Hong Kong obviously means noodles with vegetables and chicken in. Thankfully Polly had some noodle soup with veg which was terrible but didnt have any chicken in it, i dont think..., so i ate that. We were given some form of tea with it which tasted like hot water from the bathroom tap, yumyum.
By this time I had been for ages and was really tired but Joe was pretty keen for checking out some of the city so we headed towards the main street; Nathan Road. The built up city area of Hong Kong looks exactly how you imagine it to be. Loads of huge buildings, narrow side streets full of pepople and loads of big signs everywhere with Chinese writing. As it got dark all the signs and builidngs lit up giving the city a completley differnt but equally as impressive look. Sturggling to keep our eyes open we headed back to the hotel and got some rest for the days ahead.
