Hong Kong to China 15 Nov - 20 Nov.

We arrived at Hong Kong International airport a bit later than scheduled and joined the long line of seemingly hundreds of people making their way very slowly through Immigration. Once on the other side we waited a short while for my Dad to arrive - he was joining us for 4 days in the city after some last minute arrangements - and soon we were all in a taxi whizzing towards the Kowloon side, our cab driver chuckling absently to himself as we went.

The first evening we left our bags at Dad's hotel and headed out for dinner. The local streets did not disappoint, immediately providing the sort of "Hong Kong backdrop" we had expected - the buildings were tall and imposing, with colourful neon-lit billboards jutting out from first floors, pulsing and flashing with adverts in Chinese script - we were finally somewhere that felt well and truly foreign. Amusingly, considering the food in Vietnam hadn't thrilled us, we found ourselves at a little Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. Through a drawn-out process of point and mime we ordered some dishes to share - the food was actually pretty good and we washed it down with a never-ending glass of tea, which got magically topped up each time it started looking a little empty. Tea is a culture all on its own in this part of the world - they drink it before meals, during meals and after meals as a way of cleansing the palate and easing digestion. Drinking tea at mealtimes is different to tasting tea, which is done at ceremonies and special occasions. That's when they get the good stuff out, but otherwise the tea which gets freely served up in restaurants can be anything from a pleasant refreshing Jasmine, to something that looks and tastes like yesterday's dishwater warmed up.

Later that evening we met my friend Megan who I know from my university years. Megan and I lived in halls together, studied music together, got trollied together … all the usual stuff plus an unhealthy appetite for vodka, tea and toast. I hadn't seen her for ages though as she had taken the plunge and moved to Hong Kong 4 years ago to try out life in the city where her family are from. Happily our plans to hit HK meant that I would get 2 nights of catch-up with my friend and 2 nights free accommodation (thanks again Megan!) before she returned to the UK for Xmas. That first night we were all tired but Megan and I had 4 years of gossip to cover - Dean sloped off to bed when it became clear there was some serious jaw-wagging to be done and Megan and I chattered into the small hours.

The next morning we caught the bus and metro with Megan to Hong Kong Island, she helped us buy a very handy Octopus card each (like London's Oyster card but which you can return once you're finished with it), before she went off to work and we visited the Chinese Embassy to submit our visa applications. The weather on the first day was relatively clear, so on Megan's advice we decided to do Victoria Peak straight away. We walked through the shiny high rise façade of HK city, marvelling at the tall thin blocks stacked so closely together, and boarded the creaky Peak Tram which clattered slowly up the steep incline. Once at the top we emerged into somewhat hazier weather than we had expected from the ground, but the views were still stunning. From this height the huge Hong Kong skyline looked like a toy town. Dean went to work with the camera, Miniature Effect at the max and a little while later we got back on the tram and drifted back down to the city.

Back on the ground we set off walking through the city and reached Statue Square. The Square which is now owned by the top dog at HSBC, was disappointingly devoid of statues and instead filled with some sort of Winter Wonderland arrangement. As we stood around looking bewildered I was approached by a Chinese woman holding a baby, her husband and younger child waiting nervously behind her. The lady was holding a camera and a moment of confusion ensued where first I thought she wanted me to take a photo of her and the baby, then I thought she wanted a photo of herself and the baby with me. Wrong on both counts I was left gawping when she suddenly thrust her baby into my arms and stood back, to take a photo of a strange foreign woman holding her baby in Statue Square. Dean and Dad fell about laughing as I stood awkwardly holding the rather large baby whilst blushing furiously (Dean says he's never seen me go so red before). The mother of the child happily snapped away whilst I looked first at Dad and Dean roaring in the background and then at the plump child in my arms - who looked at me as if to say "who the f**k are you?" Thankfully, after what felt like a lifetime the child was removed from my arms, only for it to be returned to me so that my own father could also take a photo … by which time the kid knew there was definitely something not right about the situation and after a last confused look at me, promptly burst into tears. Dad has a photo of me looking like a wild woman, holding a bawling Chinese baby, arms outstretched towards someone off-camera - maybe not one for the mantelpiece… But the Chinese family seemed very pleased and not bothered at all by the fact I'd made their child cry.

Once Dean and Dad had calmed down enough, we carried on our way. Unfortunately it was all made even funnier because only hours earlier I'd taken great joy in relating to Dad the incident of Dean having his photo taken in Vietnam by 2 young lads… Talk about karma.

We wandered through Lan Kwai Fong, which Megan had described as similar to Soho - lined with department stores and fashion shops and crowded with suited and booted Westerners, you could almost forget where you were. Eventually we broke away from this and started making our way up the steep backstreets, lined with curious stalls selling anything from souvenirs and religious trinkets to household supplies and cheap purses. Eventually we left the steep alleys and followed a road to Man Mo Temple, dedicated to the gods of literature and war. Crammed between the modern buildings on either side, Man Mo was quite small and simple in design, the silence only broken by the huge extractor fans working overtime to try and suck out some of the incense smoke which burned everywhere. The ceilings were dripping with huge spirals of the fattest incense we've seen and the air was thick with the perfumed smoke. We watched as the locals bought packets of different coloured paper … once opened the pieces of paper are laid carefully one on top of the other, until they resemble a large multicoloured flower. Each paper will either contain a prayer or represent money. The pile is then thrown into a furnace where it burns, releasing the prayers which are carried off to the gods, or passing the "money" on to ancestors in the afterlife.

Eyes stinging from the smoke we walked along Hollywood road and followed a trail of antique stalls and shops. There was a fascinating array of things on offer, from shops packed full of huge ornate wood and jade carvings, to car-boot sale style stalls crammed full of knickknacks and trinkets: old cups, spoons, watches, cigarette packets, posters, porno mags, records, combs, pipes, religious ornaments, jewellery, coins, carved boxes, compasses, chess sets… There weren't many people around and we could have lost many hours wandering in this curious little pocket of the city.

Back into Lan Kwai Fong to meet Megan after work and she took us off to a typical Chinese restaurant where we were the only Westerners! The place was brightly lit and tightly packed with large round tables, with locals eating noisily and talking noisily. The AC was on way too high and we were all rather chilly - something Megan told us is frustratingly typical of the restaurants in Hong Kong. She ordered various dishes for us to try, the chicken was particularly good and we asked her endless questions about life in Hong Kong as we ate. After food, Dad went back to his hotel whilst Megan took us for a drink along a steep road (maybe Shelley St?) lined with western bars, cafes and restaurants and which has an escalator running up the middle, carrying people from the lower levels to mid levels.

The following morning we packed our bags, boarded the bus again with Megan and waved goodbye as she went to do a few hours work before catching a plane for the UK and we went to check in to our hostel in Causeway Bay. This all done we returned on the metro to Tsim Sha Tsui to meet Dad. We exited the subway onto Nathan Road and were immediately accosted by one Indian after another, offering copy watches, copy bags, suits, bags and drugs - it got pretty tedious, pretty quickly. Finally we found Dad (every metro stop in HK has about a million exits and if you don't specify an exit for a meeting point you can be wandering around for quite a while!), and wandered around until we found a suitably grimy-looking covered market which seemed to have closed up for the day, save for the food market at the back which was doing a roaring lunch trade for a hungry-looking crowd of Chinese workers. Keen to introduce Dad to a "street food/market" experience we plopped ourselves down on some greasy plastic chairs and ordered some bowls of noodle soup and rice from the owner of this 2m square patch, who seemed happy enough to have the only 3 foreigners in the market eat at his gaff. Although nothing special, the food was tasty enough, cheap and a good local experience in the otherwise very westernised Hong Kong. We were only slightly nervous about what the later effects might be as we exited the market through the dirty cramped "canteen", trying not to think about things like hygiene and cleanliness.

That afternoon we had a brief wander through peaceful Kowloon Park before a quick stop for a much less Chinese coffee and cake and on to visit Tin Hau Temple. The temple itself was similar to the previous day, the air heavy with burning incense - but to our delight we witnessed a dragon dance outside. A local troupe was being filmed as they performed a couple of different routines, accompanied by a small band. Next we visited the Jade Market, which was filled with stall after stall selling - you guessed it - jade. Jade jewellery, jade carvings, jade rocks… You have to really know your stuff if you want to buy anything. We watched a couple of locals seated at stalls, dozens of bracelets laid out in front of them to inspect. There seemed to be a long process of discussion and examination involved before a sale was made. Jade is very important in Chinese culture: the Jade Emperor is one of the most important gods in their traditional religion and for the Chinese jade represents many important qualities such as nobility, good fortune, beauty, so it is traditional to have a jade heirloom in the family and in particular the women will often have a jade bracelet which is passed down from mother to daughter.

After all the walking around we were feeling a little jaded (HA!) so Dean led us back towards Nathan Road where he had earlier spied an Irish pub, Delaneys and we escaped the bustle of the streets for a while to relax over a pint, before making our way to Temple Street Market. We'd expected great things of this market, but sadly it just seemed to be selling a lot of tat, cheap versions of stuff we didn't need, so we eventually gave up on it and settled instead on eating at one of the interesting little street-side restaurants which were scattered along the way. We enjoyed some good deep-fried seafood whilst trying not to watch the locals who were all crunching away on shelled seafood or bone-y meat, noisily working it round in the their mouths before spitting bones and shells onto the table next to their plates. Later we surveyed the damage left behind by the couple next to us - 2 big piles of gobbed-out bones on the table, which the waiter swept away, half into a big bin with a dirty rag, half onto the floor. Charming.

The guidebook had promised us amazing food from Hong Kong, (as it does about most places, provided you know where to go for it!), but there was one thing which I was desperately keen to find whilst we were here … Dim Sum. So on the third day, which also happened to be my Dad's birthday, we hopped on a bus destined for Aberdeen where Megan had told us there was a floating restaurant which did brilliant dim sum.

As we made our way to the bus stop we were amazed to see the pavements lined with hundreds and hundreds of women, surrounded by huge cardboard boxes, wrapping tape and piles of clothes that they were packaging up and carefully labelling - every single box was addressed to the Philippines and we soon realised these were the "Filipino maids" which our guidebook had told us about. You're nobody in Hong Kong if you haven't got a Filipino maid at home doing your cooking and cleaning. Sunday is their only day off and on this day they gather in large numbers around the city, hanging out, catching up on gossip … or if it's the week before Xmas, packing up big boxes of clothes to send home to their families. The noise from the crowd was fantastic - a constant female chatter, similar to the noise a flock of geese makes but much, much louder, at times reaching a dense roar that just washed around you. We stared in amazement before dodging our way through to the bus station.

Aberdeen was another high-rise town of tall buildings crowded along the waterfront of a channel running between Hong Kong Island and nearby small Ap Lei Chau. We wandered along the promenade, enjoying the sunshine, before deciding that we weren't going to find lots of floating restaurants as we'd assumed, but instead we should just aim for the one massive floating restaurant which we had initially ignored. We got in a sampan for a 30minute tour of the channel (essentially a watery parking lot for fishing boats, floating boat-homes and yachts) which finally delivered us to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant. After some further confusion about which floor we should aim for, we got given a ticket and told to wait until our number was called. After not too long we were finally seated, all of us starving and excited to get started on some dim sum. The food was fantastic, we had soup and dumplings and steamed buns and delicious little puddings of fruity glutinous rice, all accompanied with pots of hot jasmine tea. My dim sum craving was sated and we rounded it off with a coffee and some free chopsticks for Dad once the waiter realised it was his birthday.

We took the free ferry boat back to the mainland and were quickly back on a bus to the main city - Wan Chai district. Here we wandered round the old town streets, stumbling upon a large fresh produce market, consisting mainly of grocers and fishmongers. The fishmongers were something else - nothing like the sedate affair of a London shop. Here the fish were swimming around contentedly in polystyrene buckets, before being suddenly snatched out, smacked down on a chopping board, one quick blow to the head followed by a broad knife blade stroke behind the gills - these fish were still flapping as their scales were scraped off and their insides gutted. Not for the fainthearted, the market was a veritable bloodbath, with blood and fishy bits splashed all over, rows of fish heads and innards on sale. At one stall we stared in morbid fascination at a row of still-beating fish hearts, freshly wrenched from an owner who was already making his way home for the evening meal. It was fascinating to watch but, fearing we might get splattered with something undesirable, we eventually moved on.

We wandered through another large market, this time selling all sorts of normal inanimate objects, before briefly visiting the Old Post Office, the Old Blue House (which seems to only be famous for the fact that it's an old house, painted blue) and another temple. Later we ended up in a slightly sleazier part of Wan Chai, where the roads were lined with tacky bars and seedy-looking nightclubs - we darted for the safety of yet another Delaney's Pub and enjoyed a pint before getting the Metro home.

Our last day in Hong Kong was also Dean's birthday, so we decided to get out of the city properly for the day and enjoy some fresh air over on Lantau Island. After a queasy ferry ride we boarded a bus which took us across the island to Tai O Fishing village - a very picturesque little place, with narrow windy roads and stilt houses (weirdly built from metal sheets and corrugated iron - they must be roasting in summer!). It was a relief to be away from the hustle and bustle, but we still had to dodge the odd bicycle as the locals sped round the tight village corners. Back on the bus we rode to Ngong Ping, home of Po Lin Monastery and the largest seated bronze Buddha in the world. The initial entrance to the sights was a bit like a tourist theme park but the monastery was peaceful and set in beautiful grounds. The Buddha was indeed huge, seated at the top of a steep hill - at the top the views of the surrounding island were stunning. After attempting to visit the teahouse but finding it not only closed, but looking quite dilapidated - the guidebook had promised tea brewed from home-grown tea leaves in a tranquil setting, but all we could see was a ramshackle building surrounded by overgrown gardens with a few freaky "scarecrows" dotted about - we decided to ride the cable car back to the Tung Chung, enjoying the views as the sun went down.

A quick ride on the metro brought us back to the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, where we positioned ourselves on the Avenue of Stars to watch the Symphony of Lights, a daily light show set to music. The views across the harbour of the Hong Kong Island skyline at night are incredible - they are certainly not concerned about their carbon footprint here as every office block, tower block, building of any sort is lit up like a Christmas tree with slogans and adverts blazing in brilliant neon colours. Several of the buildings "take part" in the lightshow which was very entertaining - lasers shooting out into the night whilst colours streaked up, down and across the building facades. Dean became fixated on one building in particular which he was convinced looked like a giant version of the Tardis materialising.

A birthday pint at yet another Delaney's was followed by a mad dash down Nathan Road in an effort to find a restaurant recommended in the guidebook for Peking Duck. We finally found a stairwell which seemed to lead up to the restaurant … we were greeted quite enthusiastically and encouraged to order - only to be told a few moments later that they had run out of the famous duck … Dean was very disappointed. We'd ordered plenty of other interesting food though so we sat and waited, admiring the scene around us - there was only a handful of Westerners in this otherwise typical Chinese joint. More large round tables crammed together and a steady roar of activity - people chattering, slurp-y eating noises, waiters whizzing by … that is until the room promptly emptied. In a space of only a few moments, one table after another upped and left the restaurant. We nervously joked to each other that we'd said or done something wrong to make everyone leave, but soon realised the restaurant was in fact approaching closing time. Damn those Chinese and their early eating habits - eventually we were the only people in there, still with a table full of food in front of us. I felt quite uncomfortable as one waiter in particular came to our table and, ignoring the plates of food still being consumed, removed all the condiments and later came back for the pot of unfinished tea. They were closing up around us and it didn't make for a relaxed atmosphere. Finally we admitted defeat - we'd ordered too much food and although it would have been nice to sit and relax for a bit, the waiters were eating their own dinner at the next table and clearly waiting for us to leave. We got our leftovers packed up in takeaway boxes and exited, feeling slightly bewildered by our Peking Duck-less and badly-timed dining experience. No free birthday chopsticks for Dean I'm sorry to say.

Tuesday morning saw us up bright and early in order to beat the queues at the Chinese Embassy - happily after only half an hour of faffing we exited with our passports and visas all in order. We met Dad for one last breakfast before he waved us off at East Tsim Tsa Shui station - we were headed for China whilst he had a flight back to the UK that night.

An hour long tube journey brought us to Lo Wu on the border, where we were surprised by the simple process of continuing straight through Security and Immigration whilst still seemingly in the underground metro system! Before we knew it we were in Shenzhen on the China side, where another long tube ride brought us to the airport. We boarded a flight for our first proper stop in China, Xi'an, with Xmas and New Year to look forward to and only 3 weeks left of our trip!!

Katy x