Day 6

Today we took the metro up to Mong Kok, an area reknowned locally for it's thriving market culture, but I'm not so sure that we found the right place, as I was left hugely underwhelmed by stall after stall of identical goods, and at times it felt like being in a scene from Scooby Doo, where Scooby and Shaggy are chasing the suspect down a corridor and the background keeps repeating itself.

Unsurprisingly, with all that cheap tat around, Daley's Hong Kong dollars were burning a hole in his pocket and he ended up paying roughly £3 for a paper mache mask, similar to this one. I'll leave you in no doubt, it's absolutely crap. On the plus side, I did have a cracking lunch of pork and enoki mushrooms in a satay soup. One-nil Steve.

After the markets, Daley suggested that we tried to find Kowloon Park, as there was an outdoor swimming pool and the humidity was becoming unbearable. At the time, it sounded like the best idea either of us had had since we arrived on the Island. Shame our sense of direction wasn't quite so good, however. It took us THREE HOURS to find the park and arrived just in time to see them closing the pool. Worse still, the bloody place was literally two minutes from our hostel!

In the evening we found a bar in Kowloon to watch Everton battle valiantly to a 2-2 draw against Premier League juggernauts, Hull City before moving on to a more respectable looking establishment, where a helpful Nepalese barman told us about an area called Lan Kwai Fong, which was supposed to have the best nightlife in Hong Kong. So we got a taxi over there and ended up back in Soho HK, exactly where we had been the night before and two nights before that with Sean and Alan.

Somehow we found ourselves propping up the bar at a Reggae night, then moved on to see a live band and finally ended up in a karaoke bar, which was fantastic. We didn't have a go ourselves but did give one guy some much-needed encouragement by joining in with his rendition of 'Endless Love'.