Currently at the airport waiting for our flight to New Zealand. Have really enjoyed our trip to Hong Kong and China and would definitely recommend a visit.

Early start this morning. Taxi arrived at 4.30 to take us back to Guilin airport. Typically this was the first morning the builders across the road decided not to start work at 3am, as has been the case so far. Not sure if the early starts are to make the most of the cooler temp or because they want to get the building finished ASAP. The road was surprisingly busy at that time and at one stage we hit a long queue of lorries waiting to get through the toll gat...

Typing this 100 floors above Hong Kong. At 490m the International Commerce Centre / Sky100 is the 4th tallest commercial building in the world - although tiny compared with the 828m tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai! Only took 60 secs to get from ground level in the high speed lift. Amazing experience - even if a bit smoggy! Got to head back to hotel in a mo and head off to China.

Headed over to one of the other HK island today (Wed 17) - Lantau Island near the airport. Bit smoggy for our trip to the Big Buddha and Po Lin monastery on the 6km cable car trip. We also headed to the coast where we visited a fishing village built on stilts (Tai O - see photo). By the time we turned back the mist / smog had lifted and we got a really good view over the airport and the countryside. Heading off to China tomorrow so looking forward to another ...

First full day in Hong Kong today. First stop was the Japan Travel Agency to apply for our visas for China. We somehow managed to overlook this completely and didn't apply for them in advance! Fortunately the process has been quite easy and getting them here seems to have saved us quite a bit of money. We then headed off to the harbour and caught the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island (only 20p each!) so that we could catch the Peak Tram up to Victoria Pea...