I am disgusting. I am sick and dirty. I am the lowest of the low. I am not worthy of being called a backpacker, nor am I fit to scrape the dirt off the feet of those who are. I am all these because of three horrible words. McDonalds. Loyalty. Card. Yes, I actually possessed one of these things while I was in Hong Kong. In my defence, I had a semi-good reason. Food here is very, VERY expensive. McDonalds is not. The coffee is cheap and the Oreo McFlurrys are addictive. I am weak and defenceless against these two mammoth forces and I save money each time I bought them together. So I caved. Pick up your stones and aim them somewhere towards Bangkok. Maybe one will hit me and I'll get what I deserve. I digress...

Hong Kong is a strange fusion of Chinese and Western life. You get ridiculously expensive Irish bars in Kowloon, boutique shops and gold-plated hotels mixed with cheaper Asian restaurants that serve any style of food under the sun and innumerable McDonalds (see above). It's modern, vibrant, mostly unaffordable and it's great. On the first day here, we saw the waterfront that shows the skyline of Hong Kong island. It's mighty impressive. We got our rude awakening of food prices at lunch time and prepped for a shock when we went out for our final meal that evening. A shock I got, too, though not a monetary one, when a cockroach flew onto my shoulder to say hello. Leon had taken us to a bit of an "authentic" eatery. The monetary shock really came when we were shown to an Irish pub for our final drinks and the price of a pint was about 70 dollars (around 6 quid). We cancelled that and called our evening quits, saying various goodbyes to the group.

The next day we lugged our bags from our final hotel to the infamous hellhole that was Chongqing Mansion. Now, "Mansion" is certainly not the right word, but neither is "hellhole" which is what we'd expected. It's a bit like walking through Bombay market on the ground floor (Hong Kong has ground floors, China doesn't as the floors there all start from 1 - I don't make the rules up) but once you disappear into the lifts you can find some really nice, if a bit poky, hostel rooms. I shared a nice twin room with Max and we headed to Hong Kong island on the ferry. This is where the aforementioned McDonalds incident occurred.

Anyway, I'm boring even myself so I'll give you edited highlights. Small fish ate my feet at the top of Victoria Peak, and the trip up/down in the peak tram is brilliant. The light show at 8pm is certainly worth seeing. We grabbed a cheap beer and listened to the corniest, catchiest music I've heard in a long time. Max and I went to the giant Buddha the next day, carefully avoiding the extortionate cablecar fee and taking the bus for some good views around Lantau Island. We bumped into Angela up there, which is becoming a habit of ours.

We met Angela the following morning to go to Lamma Island. I had next to no money at this point but I packed my bag with existing snacks and got by. The walk was nice, and so were the beaches, even if the giant looming power station did its best to spoil the background. And to be fair, it succeeded. With so little money I left Angela and Max eating in an impressive vegetarian/vegan restaurant while I ate noodle soup that smelled like Shredded Wheat in a local cafe.

For some reason we had to run for the boat. The pier was packed and our boat was full until an identical one arrived. So we missed out on a potential 45 minute wait. My last evening in Hong Kong was spent with Max and Helen after a dinner of an egg and ham sandwich and some cans of beer.