We arrived in Hong Kong after a 10 hour daytime flight feeling jetlagged and tired. We were immediately met by a helpful tourist information guide who advised us on how best to get to our guesthouse (bus), gave us a very large map (pointing out our guesthouse and other important sites) and told us about must sees such as free museums on Wednesdays. After consulting several other people regarding directions (a big airport), cash machines, etc en route we boarded the A21 bus in a bus terminal that felt and looked very English and off we went down a dual carriageway that also seemed very English. The only thing that really set it apart was free wifi on the bus (come on rest of the world, what you playing at). After about 40 minutes we reached our stop (no. 13) at which point we found the building but were totally lost as to where to go - it was massive - never mind a map of the city we needed a map of the building. In the end we were escorted to the lift and given directions by a very helpful local - we were grateful and relieved. The room itself was tiny (about 7" by 9" including bathroom) but it was functional, clean and quirky. Better yet the wifi was super speedy - after the pretty poor offerings in the USA and Fiji, it felt like rejoining the 21st century and afterall, we had/have Thailand to plan.
The rest of the day was a bit of a write off - the jetlag made us both snappy, grumpy and sluggish. We retreated to our room with a McDonalds (a cop-out we know) for an early night.
The next day we went exploring. Hong Kong is manic - so many shops, shopping centres, people, restaurants, cars - just manic. We were swept along with it just wandering the streets and browsing shops and stalls. The next day, we decided to take full opportunity of the free museums and ventured into the Space Museum and the Art Museum (didn't really stay long in either). We had a walk down the "Avenue of Stars" (much like the Hollywood Walk of Fame) - we only recognised 4 names which were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chew Yun Fat and Jet Li. There was even a statue of Bruce Lee. We also had a walk to Temple Street - a more traditional area via the Jade Market before watching the world go by in Kowloon Park. The street market down temple street was weird food, drink, fruit and veg, including durian fruit and some monster carrots.
The food was definitely more of a challenge. In the first Chinese restaurant we ate in, there were delicacies included beef viscus (basically tripe), pork cartilage and skin and sea urchin. We struggled to find fairly normal fare but we managed more by luck than judgement and even found an Irish bar that did a good take on an irish/english breakfast and bangers and mash. We even managed at one point to construct some cheese sandwiches from ingredients bought in a fairly western style super market. Never under-estimate the humble cheese sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps!! We finally came out of the jet lag only to have to be up at 4:30am for our bus to the airport for Beijing via Shanghai.
This would be our meeting point for our Gap adventure across China to Bangkok. Kelly and Mike