After a rainy week in beautiful Guilin we were ready to head for Hong Kong. We couldnt get a train straight there so we had to get the train to Guangzhou. We didnt book early enough to get a sleeper AGAIN, so we had to settle for a hard seat - oh well we've done 22 hours 12 hours is a piece of p**s!! That was the mentality anyway!

12 hours later, we arrived in Guangzhou. The train wasnt too bad this time, but the woman at the train station had booked our seats at different parts of the train so we were nowhere near each other! great!! We managed to swap with a chinese lad who was on his own and we daren't move after that! We let a woman and her husband and baby sit on our side of the seats, so the baby could sleep. We thought it was better for everyone as the baby had the classic chinese no nappy - just a slit in their jeans! The train was still packed full, stinky sqwat and drops and no sleep, but it was only for half the time than before, so we felt lucky!! We were nealy there and the baby opposite had woken up and we were on edge, for the last hour hoping we wernt going to get peed or pooed on!! Unlike the poor old chinese man next to them - who was ocd about his perfectly pressed pants anyway and then the baby went a peed all over him!! I finished my last fifty shades book too :(

We got to Guangzhou mid morning, and jumped on the subway to find our "hostel" - we only needed a stop over here and matty booked this place late at night not reading the description and presumed it was a hostel - once we arrived, after following a drawn out map they had scanned to us - which looked like Thomas or Jack had drawn, we stepped into a deadly silent flat on the 10th floor of a huge building in a high rise building complex. We were greeted by an over friendly, softly spoken chinese lad, who looked like he had just woken up. We're are we?? It was a guesthouse! That explained alot! It was one of the most strangest places we have ever stayed. There were 4/5 rooms around 1 living room and we all shared one bathroom. We got chatting to a young lad staying there while we waited for our oom to be made up and we were quizzing about Hong Kong as he had recently gotten back from there. He asked if we were staying in a place called Chunking Mansion, which we were like "No mate Apple Hostel we are staying at" he told us Chunking Mansions was horrible and he's glad we wernt staying there. We decided to head out to grab some lunch and found the nicest food we had tried the whole time in china, we got some pork and chicken herby dumplings and water spinach! So nice!! We went for a a walk and ended up in our first chinese tescos. It was totally different from Tesco's in Bidston. They had huge tanks with live fish in everywhere, with everything from massive cods to tiny shrimps. You could pick which ever fish you wanted and they would kill, fillet and bag up for you there and then. There was also a huge tank with hundreds of live frogs in, just jumping round, without a lid. You could literally buy anything there. There was a chicken stand, like a pick n mix of chicken with the head, to the lungs, heart, feet, intestines etc! We decided on a few beers and a big bottle of water and walked back to the guesthouse. On our way out of tesco's there was a woman with a dead frog in one plastic bag, and a bread roll in the other, lovely!! We had a few beers in the living room with the other people stayin there and watched some crazy chinese comedy gameshow, that the people who lived there seemed to love and told us it was the most polpular show in China! We headed for an early night after not sleeping much on the train.

The next morning the young lad who seemed to run the guesthouse wrote down the train which we should get to Hong Kong, in chinese so we could hand it to the ticket window. It was pretty easy to get our tickets, we were expecting huge ques but we got our tickets in no time. We went through customs and waved Goodbye to China! After nearly 3 weeks we've seen so much we've loved it!!

We arrived in Kowloon, Hong Kong, a coulple of hours later and we were only one stop from our hostel. We followed another drawn out map and we were stood outside "Chunking Mansions" the place the guy in Guangzhou had warned us about. But yep this is where we were staying. If Birkenhead Market was in India, then this is what Chunking Mansions was like. We walked through and there was only 1 lift that went to the floor our hostel was on. The lift could only fit about 4 people in, and there was a que of 20 people every time to get into the lift. As we waited for the lift it came down and the doors opened with a chiense lady squashed inside and the whole lift was full of bin bags stuffed with rubbish from floor to ceiling. It was hilarious! It took her about 20 mins to unload the lift and there was a man waiting with us who looked like Wesley Snipes on steroids, he told us to hold our nose when we got in. We checked in and a crazy spanish lady showed us to our cell, i mean room! We knew we wern't going to get much for our money in Hong Kong but we wer only staying for 3 nights so we wernt really too bothered!! We went out to get some lunch and stopped at a small local restaurant where we shared a table with a chinese lady, we ordered what she had it looked so nice! It was braised beef brisket in a noodle broth and some other thick type of noodles we hadnt tried before also with beef and some veggies. It was really cheap too which is good we were expecting everything to be twice as expensive! On the table next to us there were a group of men who were preparing pork and shrimp dim sums at lightening speed with chop sticks.

We went for a wonder stuffed, and stumbled across Kowloon park. It was mad inside. We didnt realise how multicultural Hong Kong was, compared to China! It was Sunday so obvioulsy alot of people who live in the city come here at the weekend to chill out. There were alot of groups of muslim women wearing berka's covered up from head to toe, having pickings. There was a massive fountain with hundreds of people all sitting round the edge playing bollywood music and dancing. We bumped into Wesley Snipes from Chunking Mansions too! There was an outside pool, loads of different gardens, statues etc. It was really nice. After a couple of hours we decided to head down to the river to see the skyline. We ended up being filmed for an evian advert on the way and we won 4 magnets and a bottle of water! Cashback!! Along the way there were so many designer shops and gorgeous shopping centres and hotels! Its deifnately a place to come if you were rich!

The waterfront was amazing, it was late afternoon and the weather was gorgeous, the sun had just started to go down so it looked so nice down there. We walked all the way along the promenade and took some really nice pictures and the camera battery died :( We headed back to charge the batteries as we didnt want to miss anything, and we were back at Chunking Mansions within 5 minutes! We didnt realise just how close to the waterfront we were. That one massive positive about Chunking Mansions, even thought its not very nice inside, you probably cant beat the location it was brilliant and right next to the subway station. We caught up with Mal and Luce on skype while we charged the batteries for the camera and then went out to get some tea in a Sichuan restaurant round the corner. Which was reeeeally nice! In the every restaurant we've been too in China and Hong Kong they always ask if you want your beer warm or chilled... hmm hard question! haha

The next morning we were up and out to see the Big Buddha on Lantau Island. The subway was so quiet and clean and had amazing views once you were out of the underground. We arrived in Tung Chung and followed the signs towards the Big Buddha. We knew we had to get a cable car up there but we didnt realise just how high it actually went. It took about 20 minutes and we were up sooo high the views were so good!! We could see the Buddha in the distance about 15 minutes into the ride. I was so scared though i didnt really enjoy it especially when Matty was rocking the car! The cable car dropped us at the top of a mountain with a small village you walk through up to the Buddha. It was boiling and there were a millions and one steps up the the Buddha, but we made it! It was so peaceful up there and you could hear the monks chanting from the monestry at the bottom of the hill. The peace was soon broken when Matty pointed out that the Buddha's ears looked exactly like mine and couldnt stop laughing. We had a little walk to a temple next to the Buddha were people where lighting insense sticks and saying prayers. We saw a family taking pictures so we offered to take it for them and presumed they were getting a picture with monk, so we asked for a picture too and it turned out 'she' wasnt a monk and they were just taking a family photo so she was a bit confused whe we asked for a pic, but we were so embarassed we quickly got a pic and walked off laughing our heads off.

After a long day we went and got few beers and sat and watched the light show on the skyline - were they light up all the skyscrapers across the river and they move to music, with lazers and strobes. They do it every night at 8pm it must cost a bomb. It was a nice way to end the day! We went back to home sweet home Chunking Mansions and got an early night ready for DISNEY the next day :D

The alarm didnt go off - but as Matty pointed out I didnt need an alarm anyway, 1 minute past 7 I shot out of bed panicking incase we had slept in. We got dressed and while I did my hair Matt went and got us a McDonalds breakfast! There was a connecting line on the same route as the subway line we took the day before to the Big Buddha, we got off at a stop called 'Sunny Bay' and a disney themed train picked us up on the other side. I was nearly wetting myself at this point. We got there nice and early so it wasnt busy at all when we arrived. We managed to go on loads rides without queing up which was good. They had a new ride there called Grizzly Gruch which is like Big Thunder Moutain but goes backwards half way through, we got straight on which was lukcy as the que was 2 hours long later on and they eventually stopped the ride about 5pm because there was a storm. The park is quite a bit bigger than paris but not as big as Florida but it felt like we were in America, it was so hot!! The parade they have is a water parade so that was really good. All the characters have water guns and soak you as it goes round. We were stood on a bench with an old chinese couple who had their brolly up but still got soaked we were having a laugh with them. It was probably the best parade Iv ever seen everyone was laughing their heads off and it was nice to get wet after being hot all day. I think we did everything there was in the park which was nice, we had the whole day to spend there so we just took out time going round - we even didnt a drawing class were we learnt how to draw Donald Duck! - Mattys favourite part of the day! haha! We had just come off Space Mountain and a storm came, it absolutely poured down. We wanted to get to the Lion King show on the other side of the park, so were the chinese people stayed inside out the rain, we asked for 2 plastic bags, ripped them in half and stuck them on our heads like hats and walked through the rain. The chinese people looked as the though it was the funniest thing they had ever seen they were crying laughing as we walked across Main Street. When we got there the show was full :( so we walked back and got some tea while we waited for the rain to clear! It was soon dry again and we went on a few more rides while we waited for the fireworks. We watched the fireworks from Main Street and they were so good! - Dont shout at me disney guys but they were just as good as Wishes!! haha We had such a nice day, it felt like a proper treat to do something like that on our small budget! So we defo made the most of it!!

The next day we had to check out as we were flying to Bangkok that night! We loved Hong Kong, if we had more money we definately would have stayed longer, you definately need 2 weeks to see everything there. Its definately a place to go with money for all the nice restaurants and shops!

So that was our China adventure. After spendin all this time in China and Hong Kong we were so excited to get to Thailand and experience a new culture, new food and most of all to chill out on a beach!!