26th - 29th June
We arrived in Hong Kong on Tuesday 26th June, the relief after China!! Even though Hong Kong is still technically in China but a separate administrative area it's completely different. The people are just lovely and really friendly!! They didn't get the Chinese rule book on how to deal with tourists thank god!! English is very widely spoken and all signs are in english due to the english occupation for years so that made it instantly easier to get around and communicate! All toilets are westernised and not a squatting toilet in sight!! Although it did feel a little like we were cheating as it definitely wasn't a place for backpackers and was more like a weekend away in New York. It reminded us of pre-recession Ireland with coffee shops charging €20 for coffee and pastries!
HK isn't a cultural centre but there was still loads to do and we spent most of our time either on boats or at markets! We went on the longest escalator in the world -all 800m of it. Ronan was so excited to see what was up the top so imagine out disappointment to reach the top after 20mins to find ...... Nothing except a footpath and a road! Turns out its actually a method of transport rather than tourist attraction!! Who'd have thought?!
The top attraction in HK is to take the cable car to Victoria Peak. The bible, aka Lonely Planet guide book, suggest doing it at night to take in the lights and colours of the city. Imagine our dismay when we arrived at the tram to find about 200 Chinese people pushing and shoving through the queue. With our newly honed skills of queue skipping and forgetting our manners, we eventually boarded the tram. Not sure how we are going to adjust to being back in civilisation and orderly queues so might be best to avoid us for the first couple of weeks after we are home in case we end up elbowing you out of the way.
Anyways when we got to the top of the mountain our mood wasn't brightened by being greeted by 1,000 or more Chinese people all crowding the viewing point. After about 20mins and countless photos of the backs of people's heads we gave up and went back to the tram, joined the queue with literally hundreds of others. So after assessing the situation and realising it was going to take us more than an hour to get through this queue, we decided to head off looking for alternative transport. Miraculously we were one of the first in a queue for a bus and got back into the centre in 30mins! Basically it was a nightmare evening of queueing before we had even had dinner!!
We ended up having to fly to Hanoi rather than get a bus because of Visa issues. We were warned to be at the airport 2.5 hours in advance which we were, only to be told we were delayed by 3hours so we had a long time to kill hanging around the airport. We started to get concerned when we realised the reason for the delay was a cyclone which started as a Stage 1 when we first arrived and gradually climbed and climbed. Then an hour before our flight was due to leave we said we had better eat something and then head to the gate. Unfortunately they didn't think it was important to tell us how long it would take to get to the gate - we ended up needing to get a shuttle bus and there were hundreds people waiting on the shuttle bus (noticing a theme here?) including about 100 kids of 6-10 year olds in matching orange uniforms!! Ronan sees the queue but still strolls through the crowd up to the top blatantly skipping with me behind, red as a tomato, muttering sorry sorry... Then the bus arrives and as is customary for around these parts, chaos follows. The little orange fuckers starting darting on the 2 buses from every which way, pushing and shoving so they are obviously taught young! It's ok though, our new skills do extend to blocking the paths of kids also so we made it onto the bus just at the time our plane should have been taking off but it was delayed for longer and we eventually took off after a 4.5 hour delay. I don't recommend flying through a cyclone, spent the first 10 mins of the flight in tears as the turbulence was so bad! It was the worst flight either of us were ever on! But we got there despite the weather's best attempts!!
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| A few days away fom backpacking |
HK isn't a cultural centre but there was still loads to do and we spent most of our time either on boats or at markets! We went on the longest escalator in the world -all 800m of it. Ronan was so excited to see what was up the top so imagine out disappointment to reach the top after 20mins to find ...... Nothing except a footpath and a road! Turns out its actually a method of transport rather than tourist attraction!! Who'd have thought?!
The top attraction in HK is to take the cable car to Victoria Peak. The bible, aka Lonely Planet guide book, suggest doing it at night to take in the lights and colours of the city. Imagine our dismay when we arrived at the tram to find about 200 Chinese people pushing and shoving through the queue. With our newly honed skills of queue skipping and forgetting our manners, we eventually boarded the tram. Not sure how we are going to adjust to being back in civilisation and orderly queues so might be best to avoid us for the first couple of weeks after we are home in case we end up elbowing you out of the way.
Anyways when we got to the top of the mountain our mood wasn't brightened by being greeted by 1,000 or more Chinese people all crowding the viewing point. After about 20mins and countless photos of the backs of people's heads we gave up and went back to the tram, joined the queue with literally hundreds of others. So after assessing the situation and realising it was going to take us more than an hour to get through this queue, we decided to head off looking for alternative transport. Miraculously we were one of the first in a queue for a bus and got back into the centre in 30mins! Basically it was a nightmare evening of queueing before we had even had dinner!!
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| HK at night (a rare picture without the back of someone's head!!) |
We ended up having to fly to Hanoi rather than get a bus because of Visa issues. We were warned to be at the airport 2.5 hours in advance which we were, only to be told we were delayed by 3hours so we had a long time to kill hanging around the airport. We started to get concerned when we realised the reason for the delay was a cyclone which started as a Stage 1 when we first arrived and gradually climbed and climbed. Then an hour before our flight was due to leave we said we had better eat something and then head to the gate. Unfortunately they didn't think it was important to tell us how long it would take to get to the gate - we ended up needing to get a shuttle bus and there were hundreds people waiting on the shuttle bus (noticing a theme here?) including about 100 kids of 6-10 year olds in matching orange uniforms!! Ronan sees the queue but still strolls through the crowd up to the top blatantly skipping with me behind, red as a tomato, muttering sorry sorry... Then the bus arrives and as is customary for around these parts, chaos follows. The little orange fuckers starting darting on the 2 buses from every which way, pushing and shoving so they are obviously taught young! It's ok though, our new skills do extend to blocking the paths of kids also so we made it onto the bus just at the time our plane should have been taking off but it was delayed for longer and we eventually took off after a 4.5 hour delay. I don't recommend flying through a cyclone, spent the first 10 mins of the flight in tears as the turbulence was so bad! It was the worst flight either of us were ever on! But we got there despite the weather's best attempts!!
crackin tshirts... spot the tourists
ReplyDeleteFirst time we have been able to access the blog in weeks! The tshirts are ridiculously touristy alright, we ran outta clothes and both had to buy new ones when our stuff was in the laundry!!!
ReplyDelete