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After having a fantastic 6 weeks in India, we set off to HK via Singapore.Including the traveling time in India and the short stay at Singapore airport, we were on the go for more than 24 hours so you can imagine how nice we smelled!We did find a little machine at Singapore airport that massaged our feet though, so all was not bad!
Having arrived in HK, our first impressions were pretty good - lots of English signs everywhere (convenient for us English tourists who can't be bothered to learn local languages) and quite clean.We were going to take the easy option of getting a chauffered Rolls Royce to the hotel but thought that we wouldn't really be back packing if we did that, so thought we'd try out the underground trains instead.HK underground is everything London underground isn't…fast, clean and little lights on the side to tell you which station you're at and which side to get off on - how cool!
Then came the subways…it seems like the walking subways spread for miles around so it's always easy to get your destination.When we finally surfaced and headed to the Intercontinental hotel, we saw what real HK was like…pretty amazing!The buildings were huge, the traffic super fast and all the pedestrian crossings made funny drilling noises with little green men disco dancing.We staggered up the steps to the Intercontinental entrance walking past Bentleys, Astons and Ferraris, thinking that maybe we've arrived at the wrong hotel!Dripping with sweat, not having showered for two days and carrying our dirty big backpacks, we checked in at the reception desk in this super posh hotel, with everyone staring at us - how funny is that.
We were quickly ushered to our hotel room so as to not make the place look untidy.As you'll see from the photos, this has to be by far the most luxurious hotel ever…the bathroom was bigger than my bedroom, and we even had a 'Butler Call' button on the wall - we definitely landed on our feet booking this place, especially given that the hotel was actually in the Harbour as opposed to overlooking it.We even used the old honeymoon blag so got extra special treatment such as strawberries and chocolates.
The bed was so comfortable and we were so tired, that we actually slept for two full days…yes that's right…two whole days!But, when we finally made it outside, we realized that HK is just one great big tourist attraction…bright lights and millions of things to do…we spent the next day trying to work out what to see in our remaining few days.
We started with a walk along the Avenue of Stars outside the hotel…what a view of the harbour!Along the way, we checked out a statue of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan's hand prints, and did the touristy thing by getting our photo taken.
The next day, we ventured with our 3 day underground pass outside of Kowloon, and got the tram up to Victoria Peak.We checked out HK Madame Tussauds and the EA Games center where Rupal lost every single game that we played.View from the top was pretty amazing although it got a bit misty during the afternoon.After that, we wandered into HK Park - a weird metropolis in the middle of this congested city where people come to do Tai Chi and stuff…really nice place to chill out, and check out the view of the HK skyline including the infamous Bank of China building.We ended the day by checking out the local supermarket for the weird and wonderful things you can buy in HK and had a walk down Nathan Road, which has so many lights, that you don't actually realize that its night time…
Next morning, we decided to tackle Ocean Park - a giant theme park with yes you guessed it, aquariums and stuff. This place is right next to the sea and is fantastic - you get to check out dolphin and seal shows and the rides are pretty scary too - we felt like little kids again!There's even a cable car with superb views over the coast.They had this Halloween thing going on while we were there which was pretty cool too (check out our pics).After a long hard day having fun, we headed over to the Harbour for a ferry trip to check out the Million Dollar lightshow.This was not before a well earned Haagen Daazs though where Rups ended up talking to some guys from Columbia that looked like drug barons (you can't take her anywhere!) …PS don't ever try Green Tea flavour ice cream…it is rank.It was a bit smoggy that evening but the light show was pretty impressive…it was almost like the buildings were dancing in time to the music!This is definitely a must see if you ever come to HK.This was unfortunately our last night in the Intercontinental and tomorrow we were transferring to a more down to earth hotel to meet up with our China group, so we thought we'd make the most of it and stayed in to watch movies on our huuuuge plasma screen.Rupal thought it would be good to take some souvenirs from the chamber maid's trolley…she didn't realize that a member of staff was standing right behind her though…better luck next time Rups!He was quite polite about it though and asked her if he could be any of any assistance in her attempts to steal…I guess that's the extra service of a 5 star hotel!
The next day was a hard core shopping day…we thought it would be rude not to do a bit of shopping in the shopping capital of Asia, and ended up in Times Square (15 stories of pure unadulterated shopping!).Having promised ourselves that we wouldn't spend too much, we ended up buying a new camera (was a bit of a bargain though after some tough haggling)… hopefully you'll see the results in our next lot of pictures.We also got loads of cool one off t-shirts which we'll hopefully bring back to the UK.We missed our group meeting that night we were so busy shopping, so headed to this Indo China fusion restaurant called Spice - some of the best mocktails and food we've ever had…would highly recommend.
Well that's all folks from HK and onto China we go…. We don't think we even did half the stuff we wanted to in HK, including Lantau Island, the beaches, the green parts in the North and of course, Disneyland…so HK is now on our list of places to definitely come back to.If we had to sum it up, HK was like one giant computer game…a bit surreal really.We're going to miss the variety of things to do, the shopping, the Intercontinental, and the choice of restaurants…and strangely, we're going to miss all the grumpy people in HK (eeeeeeveryone in HK is grumpy for some reason…even our guide book says so).
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