Day 2

Daley - "What do you want to do today, Steve?"

Steve - "Don't you worry my friend, I've got a brilliant idea!"

So, we're into our second day and the weather here is absolutely scorching. So hot in fact that even the locals can't bear it. You may now be thinking 'today would be a good day to keep in the shade, Steve, maybe go to a museum or something?' and you would have been right. Genius here decided it was a perfect day to go traipsing all over Hong Kong Island.

We took the MTR in to Tsim Sha Tsui and then boarded the Star Ferry for the short journey across the river to Hong Kong Island. As the ferry was docking, the rope used to keep the ferry secured to the harbour snaped, you should have seen the worker's face. Absolute panic stations. Having finally been allowed to disembark the ferry, we wandered around erratically taking photos of that famous skyline. I'm getting a sense of deja vu here...

After that, I remembered Dad mentioning Hong Kong Island having the longest escalator in the world, and we had heard that it went from the bottom of the city to the top, so I suggested we rode it. I can tell you all now, it doesn't go to the top, in fact, it doesn't go anywhere near the top AND there is no escalator back down. Just thousands of unforgiving steps. It took us about half an hour to walk back down, by this time our legs felt like jelly and i'm pretty sure even my finger nails were sweating.

In desperate need of food and water we joined the queue at a restaurant heaving with locals and, being the multi-linguist that I am, attempted to order two bowls of hot and sour soup with shredded pork. What arrived was a long way from what we were hoping for but, sticking to our 'when in Rome' mentality, we went for it and it was damn good. A little too good in fact. There was one ingredient we couldn't identify and on enquiry we discovered it was pig's stomach lining. That was the moment, my friends, when even the luminous chicken at the Royal Thai sounded like heaven.

Late in the afternoon we headed back to the hotel and Daley went for a swim, while I slept. In the evening we went back to Tsim Sha Tsui for dinner and had an early night as we were move in to our first hostel in the morning.