Hong Kong, Day 19

Today has been pretty darn awesome, we arrived in Hong Kong about 8pm last night after almost 36 hours of nonstop travelling. Having decided we wanted to break free from the tour after travelling overnight from Lichang and had passage to Hong Kong arranged, we took an hour minibus ride to GongCheng station where we had a brief wait before boarding a bullet train to Guangzhounan. Our train went 307km an hour!! Not even kidding! I’ve the blurry photo to prove it, DUDES China is awesometastic about getting stuff to run on time and super fast with it!

After two hours of speeding along we arrived in Guangzhounan some 429km away and had our 9 millionth big mac of the month I KNOW RIGHT WHAT IS WRONG WITH US, anyway it was nice so whatevs and then we boarded yet another lovely clean and fast bullet train to Shenzenbei, just across the border from Hong Kong. When we arrived 40 minutes later we grabbed a taxi to the border check point which is upstairs, no lifts, thanks China for making it especially hard to leave. Once up them you pass through Chinese Immigration, then cross a really long bridge and voila! You are in Hong Kong! They check to see whether they want you to come in, of course they were happy to see us as we had JHubz aka the Pretty with us and we were soon buying octopus cards to travel on the metro into downtown Hong Kong. You’d almost think we were grown ups it was so easy ☺️.

Sadly our hotel is gross, no surprise there, it is after all still a G Adventures chosen hotel and part of the prepaid tour, the amount it cost we were not going to waste the money but after changing rooms once have cleaned this one ourselves taking before and after photos as we’ve gone. Anyway enough of that because HK is fantabulous!

J spent a very painful night, he’s super sensitive to mould and this hotel has its share so we were up and out early with the goal of finding a laundry, buying sim cards and having breakfast during which we would plan our days. There’s an awesome cheap laundry across the road and on the way to the 7-11 to buy tourist sim cards we found a tasty breakfast place, where we had pineapple buns with a variety of fillings while we plotted a course through everything we want to see and do, so flipping easy it’s awesome!

After breakfast we wandered up through the crowded streets to the jade market where we were immediately set upon by the traders trying to put bracelets and necklaces on us. It’s hard to see anyone wanting to buy anything like that but I guess it must work on someone, else surely they wouldn’t do it. We just found it annoying and after a brief look through the treasure filled stalls wandered off in search of the goldfish market. I’m not sure if we found it but we did find streets filled with shops displaying dozens of types of fish in little plastic bags for sale before continuing on to Ladies market which was great fun, selling everything from panties with pussycats on to portable speakers and silk kimonos. We browsed the long street for a good hour picking up some souvenirs and knick knacks as we went. Everyone seems very friendly here and English interchangeably used with Chinese, I try and learn some basics in any country we visit and China was no different, the usual please, thank you, hello and goodbye but also learning numbers has been the handiest thing over the last few weeks and was again today with all the barter, barter, barter!

After a pit stop for ice cream we grabbed the metro out of town to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum where they currently have a Bruce Lee Exhibition that J was keen to see. It was pretty cool displaying many of his original costumes, props etc, and equally cool was the jaw dropping ancient pottery they had on display elsewhere in the museum, well worth the trip out to it with the insanely reasonable entrance fee of $10HK each, about one pound.

Filled up on culture we headed back to the hotel for a little rest before once again jumping on the metro to the waterfront to watch the 8pm Samsung sponsored lightshow, meh! honestly don’t bother, if you’re walking by and happen to catch it fine but so not worth making a special journey for, someone should save up and buy them lasers in more colours than green, the one is Kuala Lumpur at the Petronas Towers is a million times nicer.

J’s stocked up on sinus and all sorts of mould fighting goodies so hopefully he can get a good nights sleep because tomorrow is his birthday and we’re off to explore Hong Kong Island, woohoo!!

ps it’s super nice being back in contact with the world Xx