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Travel to Hong Kong was pretty cramped, we boarded our high speed train with high expectations which were quickly dashed when we realised we were sharing bunks with 4 other people! You could barely roll over in your bed, we were in the middle bunks and there was not enough head room to sit upright resulting in 20hours lying horizontal.To top things off the bottom bunks were occupied by a Chinese couple whose extended family seemed to use our cabin as their eating quarters, a very noisy affair.
We decided that in Hong Kong we would upgrade and stay in a good hotel and it was fantastic. When we arrived we had our rucksacks taken to our rooms, we had mentioned on our booking that we were on our honeymoon, so we were upgraded to a room with a harbour view and given a complimentary bottle of Champagne. In hostels, this kind of service is severely lacking!!
That night we met up with Rachael Pollard, who was in Kim's year at school and has been living in HK for 3 years. She was fantastic at giving us an itinerary and took us out to a nice Thai Resturant in Lan Kwai Fong.
During the next couple of days we saw the sights which began with the view from Victoria Peak over the harbour, we headed to a very unusual bird market, where people bring their birds in cages for a walk! The evening was spent watching the city light show and we had a couple of classy cocktails in The Aqua Bar which overlooks Victoria Harbour. The view was spectacular and the cocktails were mind blowing…..or was that the price. We both agree that for any cocktail lovers out there this is probably the best bar we've been too……big statement I know.
Rachael had advised us that there's more to HK than the city so we headed to the "New Territories" for a 10km hike to a beautiful beach, which can only be reached on foot or by boat.On our last day we took a ferry to Lamma Island, one of the outlying islands, where we hiked across the island before having a delicious seafood lunch.Hiking in the HK humidity is a very sweaty affair!
HK itself was a refreshing change in that all signs had English, the majority of people speak English, and there are a lot of expats there so we didn't feel like the only foreigner. It's a very easy city to get around and the fact that a beautiful beach or some hiking is less than an hour away is impressive. We also managed to meet up with Kay and Alex who are Peter and Louise's friends for a drink. Alex also took us to his work on the 67th floor of the International Finance Center for another cracking view.
The last night was spent on a bit of a messy pub crawl around SoHo, it was great to have some locals with us to show us lots of great pubs hidden down little alley ways and we hope Rachael made it into work OK in the morning
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