Arrived in Hong Kong 2 days before the start of my China Hike & Bike tour. Arriving in Hong Kong airport and getting to my hostel was a breeze. The airport express and metro services are so easy to figure out and use. My first impression of the Chinese people here are that they are friendly, helpful and they take pride in their city. I booked into the Ah Shan hostel which was on the 8th floor of an apartment block. I had a private room with a private shower. It makes it easier as I don't have to keep worrying about locking my stuff away. I decided to go for a walk around and ended up having sushi for dinner with the local people. Was really good and love mixing with the locals. Walked around the markets and managed to get to an internet cafe. As a result I got a few photos posted up to my albums. Also managed to burn a CD of my latest photos. The day after I took the tram up to Vistoria peak to get a birds eye view of Hong Kong. It was a bit polluted but I still managed to get some nice photos. The city scape is very impressive with all the huge skyscrapers. I reckon these guys know a thing or two about building. Afterwards I spent the afternoon visiting one of the oldest temples in Hong Kong, having an expensive all day breakfast in Soho before going for a boat ride in the bay. I caught the Star Ferry which does a 2 hour trip of the harbour and at 8pm they stop as their is a light and music show on both sides. they use a dozen or so of the buildings to create a light show. It was ok, nothing spectacular although it was amazing to see all the buildings lit up. So they skyline is spectacular, but the light show a bit boring ;-) The next day I made my way to the meeting point hotel for my tour. I just dropped my bag off in the morning and then headed off to Ocean Park. This is on the south side of Hong Kong island. Its a pleasure park but also has an aquarium, a jelly fish exebition, seal and dolphin show, bird park and panda reserve. Although I only figured out when I left that I had missed a whole second section of the park. This was were they had the panda enclosure. I was a little disappointed about that. Got back to my hotel and met my roomie Justin. He is a Pom and lives in Twickenham, just down the road from me. We had our opening meeting and it turned out that we have 4 Aussies, 1 Pom, 1 Irish, 2 Germans, 2 Swedes, a Fin and me. It seemed to be a nice group of people and the ages range from about 27 to 65. We went out for dinner to one of the local restaurants which was really good. I decided to have a steak as I thought that it was probably going to be the last time I would be able to order one for a while. The group seemed to get on very well from the start which is always a good thing. Anna, Justin and myself decided afterwards to go for a drink at a local bar and wait for Anna's friend Hans to join us for a beer or two. Hans eventually turned up and we were quite amused as it was a kareoke bar. But none of us felt inspired to go for a sing. It might have been that the words were in Chinese. Later that night Anna, Hans and myself went for a quick tour around the promenade as they had not had time to do so suring the day. But most of the lights are turned off at 12 and it was past 1am then. We had an early transfer the next morning to the harbour and caught the fast ferry from Hong Kong to mainland China at Zhaquong. The ferry ride was 3 hours long and was not to rough as the ferry was a catamaran and went pretty quickly. The last 90 minutes was spent going up one of the rivers.