We were awoken by our alarms during the middle of the night ready for our taxi to pick us up for the airport. We arrived at the airport with our eyes hardly open but were soon on the plane and on our way to Hong Kong. After take off we tried to get some much needed beauty sleep but something woke us up...the smell of FOOD! This was the first flight since our flight from NZ where we were given free food and as you can imagine we were both pretty excited! We landed in Hong Kong and took the train across to Hong Kong island where we were going to be staying for the next few days with a family friend of mine Bill. After the train we caught a taxi up to where he lived in the hills of the island, we even managed to pronounce the address in chinese and the driver understood first time!

We arrived at Bill's and made ourselves at home by trying to get some sleep after getting up at 2.30am. A couple of hours later and feeling refreshed we took the advice of the note Bill had left for us and headed into the city. We were once again quite gobsmaked when we got into the centre to see so many people, so many high buildings and so many lights everywhere, it made us very excited to see it all at night! We wandered around some of the big shopping centers and looked into the windows of shops we unfortunately could't afford. After a while exploring we hopped onto one of the many trams and sat upstairs to get a better view of the city. Along the way we saw so many buildings such as the HSBC buliding, the bank of China, ICF, all looking very expensive and very posh. We took the tram all the way to a place called Western Market, which had very cute little boutique shops and cafes. It was then time to make our way back to Bill's as he was taking us out for a night on the town in Hong Kong.

It was great to see Bill when we got back to the apartment and we chatted about our travels for a while before heading out on "Billy's tour" as he called it, to an area called Lan Kwai Fong (apparantly it's the cool, trendy area of Hong Kong). We went to a few different bars, one of which was down this tiny alley and served the nicest mexican food we have ever eaten. We then moved on to a few other places, one of them being Al's Diner, a cool American diner bar which played amazing music! Bill then left us to carry on partying in Lan Kwai Fong but we ended up only going to one more bar before heading home. We loved the night in Lan Kwai Fong, it had a great atmosphere and definitely made me jealous of people who live here!

The next day we were meeting Bill down at Hong Kong Football Club to watch the Hong Kong v Japan rugby match! We spent the afternoon cheering on Hong Kong and getting into the spirit of the match with lots of Bill's friends. We were both suprised to see that the whole of the Hong Kong rugby team, apart from one, were all Western, as were all of the spectators and we realised how many people have moved out here and are living the life. Bill and his friends told us how good Hong Kong is and how safe it i,s we saw so many children here and hoped they realise how lucky they are to grow up in an amzing city. Still feeling tired from our previous night we left the rugby club and everyone else with plenty of beer left to drink and headed back to the apartment. It is in the hills and luckily has a rooftop, so we looked out at the incredible view of the skyline with lots of modern buildings and also were surprised at how many mountains surrounded the island too. The next day was our last day of the trip so we got up and headed into central, watched the ferries going over to the other islands and had a long walk around the city debating whether we are happy or sad to be going home. We couldn't decide as we have had the most amazing trip with too many highlights to chose from and we will definitely miss being free to do whatever, the weather and the sights we've been lucky to see. We have though missed home and family more than we expected and need a good roast dinner, I'm sure when we arrive home after a week we will need to plan another trip as we both have got the travel bug now.

We're currently just waiting in Hong Kong to fly to Heathrow, our 12th and final flight.

So after 10 countires we will be arriving back with plenty of stories and pictures from the best trip of our lives, see you very soon.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lots of Love Amy and Meg xxxxxxxxxxx