Hong Kong was quite a while ago now, but seeing as I never got round to writing about it, better late then never!

The plane from Auckland to HK was pretty long and we were all shattered. Mel and Anna got some sleep however I didnt manage to and so pretty much passed out when we finally got to our hotel. Luckily the transfer was really easy to sort out so it wasnt hard to get to our pre-booked hotel Metropark Kowloon. Anna and mel took the chance to explore HK, get some food and do some shopping in the night market.

Our toilet blocked up and I woke up at about 4am and wondered about the hotel in pjs looking for a bathroom desperately! It was so odd to think about the small hostels we'd been staying in in comparison to this massive hotel. For example Lion's Den in coromandel was so small that there was no way I could have spent half an hour trying to find a toilet! However it was really nice to have our own beds and an ensuite with towels etc provided - even if it wasnt quite the hooper hotel. The Hotel was actually really lovely with a gym and rooftop swimming pool and we were on the 11th floor.

All the buildings in HK are so so tall. We passed a primary school that was a skyscraper. The streets are buzzing and the weather was hot, slightly stuffy but not unpleasant at all. The next day, i woke up very early and managed to catch up on blogging while anna and mel slept in. Its safe to say our sleeping patterns went a bit crazy but we got up in the end, headed to the Ladies Market to get some serious bargaining on.

Mel had a giant list from home of things to get and even though i wasnt planning on buying much, everything was so cheap that I couldnt help myself! The markets had a lot of fake designer bags, jewellery, electricals etc. and pretty much every random thing you can think of! I would say my best buy was the penguin shaped toothbrush holder I bought - this is not just what i thought at the time, but a month on I still think it's brilliant for the 50p i paid for it!

Mel and I almost got a massage that we didnt really want being dragged through the market by some crazy chinese woman. I also got slapped by a market stall owner who called me crazy after asking me what i would pay for this necklace I didnt really want and definitely didnt want at the price she was offering! It was a shame that we werent staying longer because theres a few other things we could have done such as the Wonderfish! or go up the cablecar... we decided to do things closer to us due to the lack of time. HK is quite big!

We also managed to hop on some ferries to see the beautiful skylines of HK which we glimpsed on the bus to the hotel. There are so many lights and buildings that it really was a great thing to do at night, and cost us next to nothing. We took the metro to the night market that anna and mel had visited the night before which was really easy to do (and again cheap) and we ate dinner in the same place too. Its one of these crazy outside restaurants where anyone sits anywhere and the food is brilliant! You get so much for your money and it really was yummy.

The nightmarket is quite crazy too, its just the market running late into the night with the same atmosphere, we noticed slightly different items. We had a lot of fun and did a lot of shopping. Leaving HK almost as soon as we got there, I would definitely want to go back!

The plane journey home consisted of photo copying, films and sleep with a bit of nostalgia when we made our Best Of New Zealand list... we made nominations and drew little pictures... it seemed like a nice way to end the trip. Although we couldnt really believe it was over, we were really glad to get back to our families and other friends, I was looking forward to my exams very much (!) and that, i believe is the end of another long blog and another successful trip!