20081102–0817, originally uploaded by grean04.

I finally sent my Chinese photos to snapfish to get printed, along with my Kangaroo Island holiday photobook. The China holiday was in 2008 and KI in 2007!

I can’t think if it’s lazy or busy… we’ll go with busy.

We woke up around 5am, I guess our body clocks are in tune with 7am Adelaide time. I watched some telly and went to the Gym at 6am downstairs on the 9th floor (ground floor was the 7th). This was a habbit I was determined to stick to.

I met kylie back in the room at 7am and we went for breakfast, it was a very relaxed traditional western breaky, with a chef cooking fresh golden eggs the way you liked them. I had about 10 rashers of bacon, 3 slices of toast, some hash browns, 2 small round waffles, a small croisant and finished off with some fruit (geez I was wondering how I put on so much weight!), I think I hit my high score of 90kgs!!!

After Breakfast we met with the hotel provided tailor, he had some really nice fabrics and I later found out that he did a really good job. Unfortunately the slumping Aussie dollar didn’t justify a purchase.

We scuttled onto the hotel shuttle bus to head into Nathan street (a main shopping district for Kowloon), we tagged along with Tim and Renata Elliott (we didn’t know anyone!) to have a browse and check out prices of a few electrical items, I really wanted a video camera, and they wanted a new camera.

There were heaps of shifty retailers that scam the tourists, loads of the other retailers told us about them and even showed us newspaper clippings to prove what they were saying, it was very reassuring once we knew what to look for, as the Hong Kong tourism bizo gave stickers with registered numbers to those that sold legit goods.

It was daunting to come across so many Indian hawkers on each corner and everywhere inbetween following us (mostly Timmy, I guess they thought he needed to scrub-up a little) and trying to get us to come and check out their copy watches, copy handbags, or tailored suits. After getting harassed for a couple of hours we found the shuttle bus and made it back to the hotel before lunch.

NEXT STOP THE PEAK TRAM -

Peak Tram Shield

By now we were tired and somewhat sleepy just from Nathan Street. I was nearly asleep from my workout.

We made it to the Peak Tram on Hong Kong Island, it was amazing! – sometimes it felt as if we were going up the mountain on a 45degree angle. The view when we made it to the top was amazing.

From the top

We all piled back into the bus to head onto the Stanley Markets, we weren’t impressed, there were hundreds of of people down a tiny little alleyway of no more than 1.5m wide. It was really hot, silly us forgot to get some money changed, so we couldn’t even buy a bottle of water.

Stanley Markets

The guides finally found us and threw us back on the bus and headed for Repulse Bay & Deep Water Bay, then to Aberdeen – the floating village for fisherman. We jumped onto a Sampan and cruised the harbour, it was amazing the way the fishermen lived on their boats or a tiny little niche that they cut into the bank and created a dock/house for themselves.

Fisherman Docks

OMG this day was packed, we went to a factory/sweatshop to view how they created fine gold and Jade jewellery. It was ridicuously priced and the salespeople were obviously on commission, they kept following us around pulling everything that our eyes paused on for more than 2 seconds – it was really hard to not be rude, when they are so nice, it really gives another word to ‘hard-sell’.

We finally got back to the Hotel & died on the rock hard bed that felt like heaven, before waking a half hour later to jump back on the bus and head back down to Aberdeen to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, where we had a welcome dinner on the top deck – with drinks, and dragon/tigerman thing, and heaps of drinks to keep us awake! – I’m pretty sure I fell asleep and somehow drifted back to my rock hard heaven bed. 

Jumbo as we were approaching

Tiger Dragon Man

Welcome to Hong Kong

That was the most excited I felt in a long time.

We woke up nice and early ready for the long day of travel ahead of us, Kylie was up around 4:30am with excitement dripping from her pores, her repetitive “are you ready Regan?” didn’t rip me out of bed until after 5ish. We got to the Airport at 6:30am. We were standing in line for about 10mins until I realised I left my ID at home – I called Heidi (Kylie’s sister) to find it and bring it to me – until Heidi said “can’t you use your passport?”, the stupidity eventually left me and I got on the plane a little embarrassed.

We didn’t get seats next to each other on our way to Sydney, but we were together for the rest of the trip.

We were smack in the middle of the plane going to Hong Kong, Kylie on one side and someone else on the other… we were fairly early onto the plane at the Sydney airport watching people fill the seats around us. I was dreding the person I had to sit next to – out of all the people it could have been, it just had to be a cute Asian! Kylie just laughed at me.

This girl next to me changed her clothing and re-applied her makeup about 3 times during the flight, I felt a little weird that maybe I should be getting changed too! I managed to get into a very comfy position and watched some movies before falling asleep and snoring/snorting for an hour or so, before my seat entertainment system broke and none of the manginas could fix it.

We finally arrived into HK, I managed to steal a glimse or two out the windows – the skyline was amazing, I was starting to feel excited about the trip for the second time.

We boarded the bus and headed for the Hotel where our group had a brief itinerary review about what was going to happen during the trip. I seriously don’t think anyone listened due to the 11 or so hours of travel that some of us just barely survived through.

Apparently we were told about some markets that weren’t far away that we should head to (Temple St, Markets). I was dead tired, I needed some sleep, We went for a walk through the mall that was attached to our Hotel searching for some dinner – we were really excited when we stumbled across a food court (I think I drooled a little)! That was until we walked around and saw that everything was the same, and written in Chinese. We ended up finding a parknshop (a small supermarket), hit some beer, Doritos, & chips for dinner mmmm, I still remember how hungry we were and being able to see a McDonalds logo from the balcony near the reception, but we were too tired to do anything about it – and a little scared we would get lost.

We got back to our room, I remember I half passed-out with one hand in the chips and the other on my half drank beer. That’s how I stayed for a good few hours until I was too uncomfortable to stay asleep.