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In bad timing typical of Hayley and Mike we managed to fly into Hong Kong the evening of the Rugby 7's Final, so not only did we miss all of the action but we also discovered that there was limited accommodation however learning from past experiences we had booked ahead at the no thrills 'Ann Black Youth Hostel'. Our first day in HK was mostly spent queuing with a few hundred other foreigners all trying to get Visa's for access into China. After spending 4 hours waiting in line we were a little annoyed to discover that the next day would be similar as we would have to queue in order to collect our Passports. Anyway once we finally escaped the Visa Office we spent the rest of the afternoon hoping on and off the metro and exploring the city. Later that evening we were grateful to receive a text from Andrea inviting us to her place for a bit of home cooked food which was delicious and a welcome change to rice and noodles. Following the advice of Andrea and Linda the next day we jumped straight onto the metro and headed across town to visit the Sik Sik Yeun Wang Tai Sin Temple which is where all of the locals and tourists go to have their fortune read. We had a go at shaking a pot of numbered sticks until one fell to the ground which was then taken to the fortune teller who would reveal our fate... Hayley was told to burn her number 24 as it was bad news, although Michael received a better fate from his stick, number 34. We're not sure just how accurate these readings were as the majority of the time we struggled to even understand what our fortune teller was actually saying although the phrase 'no worries, no problem' was often shouted at the end of each of her sentences. After our future had been determined we felt it was time for some lunch, so we darted across the city to the famous Dim Sum restaurant at City Hall. This was an interesting experience as we didn't really have any idea as to what we were actually eating however it was certainly delicious! Next it was back to the Visa Office where we were happy to discover an extremely small queue and we were out of there much quicker than expected. To celebrate being allowed access into China we decided to go for some afternoon tea and in true Hayley and Mike 'Traveller' fashion we hit the fabulous Peninsula Hotel. High Tea was served in traditional English Fashion complete with cucumber sandwiches and Hayley was in her element as she found herself surrounded by all sorts of delicious cakes!That evening we met up with Andrea again where she took us on the mid level escalators up to trendy Soho to meet her work colleagues (which included the Director of Disney Land HK). Andrea generously treated us to a wonderful dinner and we had a really good evening mixing with the HK locals.On our last day we went out to the suburbs to see the 10,000 Buddha Temple, which we found hilarious as there were hundreds of Buddha's lining the pathway up to the Temple, each with different poses and facial expressions. We had so much fun mimicing the poses and taking photographs that 1 simple 10 minute walk took us nearly half an hour. That night we went to the Aqua Bar which was on the 30th floor of the Peking Building as this was supposed to be the best place to watch the nightly light show (symphony of lights) unfortunately it was too cloudy to see anything so we just enjoyed some cocktails instead! We then headed to the famous Temple Street Night Markets where we picked up a few souvenirs, and the next day we took a taxi to the train station to board our train over to mainland China.
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