Hong Kong

I had a wonderful start to my trip, catching up with Nicola and spending a week in Hong Kong. The city really exceeded my expectations. Most people just stop there for a day or two on their way further and say, "I already did Hong Kong, I've seen all there is to bee see", which I find hard to believe, since Hong Kong has so much to offer. Hong Kong is like New York meets China and the combination is great! It has that big city buzz and the way the expats lead their life is oh so sex-and-the-city, but then you walk along the markets, enjoy some great dim sum and you feel like you could be in anywhere in China. On New Years day we were walking in the city center and I though to myself that isn't this a pleasant city, with hardly any people on the sidewalks and I was wondering why I had imagined Hong Kong a lot busier.. well the quietness was only that people were recovering from New Years, since the following week, the pavements were so crammed, you had to be careful not to get stomped on.

I landed in Hong Kong on New Years Eve and was worried that I'd crash before midnight because of the jet lag and the lack of sleep lately, but I'm happy to report that me and Nicola (my fantastic travelling companion) partied till 8am! Looks like we haven't lost our touch :) All in all, the night was amazing, hard to think of a better place to spend New Years than Hong Kong. We started of the night my having dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, me, Nic and about 20 expats and their friends. After dinner, we got on a rented boat and enjoyed the magnificent views of the Hong Kong harbour. The high skyscrapers with their light shows were pretty impressive. From there the night continued being awesome and I won't bore you with all the details, but we ended up in a bar called Dusk till Dawn, a great Filipino band was playing there and we danced to our hearts' content, till the dawn..

One thing that surprised me about Hong Kong was the nature. I somehow had imagined it to be only a city with lots of building and a few parks, but it has all this beutiful landscape and dozens of trekking opportunities. Our hosts (Nics friends from England, who are currently living in Hong Kong) love trekking, which was great and they took us to "Dragons back" this two hour trek with great views and easy enough path, which was good since I wasn't up for any hardcore trekking on New Years day. After the trek we went to the beach, it was bit too chilly for a swim, but I'll get to do plenty of that once in Australia. The parks in the city are also nice, my personal favorite being the Hong Kong park, with a walk through aviary.

The rest of the week we did touristy stuff, just wandered around the city, went to different sites to admire the city (from the peak, from across the river, from a high rise building..) and met up with the other expats. We also went to a theme park, Oceans park. There's also a Disneyland, but we decided that Oceans park is more original (and the Hong Kongers apparently prefer it). It was amazing being on the rollercoaster, almost above the water with the skyline of Hong Kong in front of you. They also had cute pandas and other Asian animals in the park, so I definitely recommend a visit! One day we spend visiting the markets and it really did take us the whole day since there are so many markets to see. There's bird market, flower market, goldfish market (yep, a market that sells only goldfish!! okey, to be honest, they also sold turtles), womens market, temple street night market..

So you see, there is lots to do, so next time you're planning to do a quick stopover in Hong Kong, think again and book a few days more to explore the great Asian city! And nope, the Hong Kong tourism board isn't giving me any money for saying this :)