I’m not sure how I’ll do this, perhaps I’ll do it backwards, starting with Hong Kong...

The obligatory tourist snaps, all with cheesy grins, and cheesy poses



The photos we like, the food, the eating, and we especially like it when the food that we eat are ones that we don't have to pay for! :)

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What I like about Hong Kong:

- The MTR, very clean, cheap and easy to use and impressively efficient and on time with lots of space for peak hour. Love it.

- Shopping, shopping and more shopping!

- Food, eating, more food and more eating!

- Looking like one of the locals and not standing out like an outsider (until we start speaking, then we really feel like outsiders….)

- The relatives paying for all our meals and transportation costs, it definitely saves us a bundle

- HK Airport, efficient, enormous, huge variety, clean, friendly and great customer service. Europeans can learn much from HK Airport. You can be fast, efficient AND FRIENDLY! You really can.

What I don’t like about Hong Kong:

- the lack of space. I hate feeling cramped, I hate having so little personal space, I hate being so close to so many people on the streets, I hate having such a tiny little bathroom because it is strange to have a shower curtain constantly sticking to my body while I shower.

- Did I once mention that I didn’t like Rome cos there were just too many people and too many cars there… well… you ain’t seen no crowds until you’ve been to an asian country when a sale is on, then we’re talking crowds! There were so many people packed onto the streets and in the shops you just couldn’t walk at your own free will, we were literally carried along by the crowds, I swear that at one stage my feet did not touch the ground yet I was still moving forward! We were just moving wherever the crowd wanted to take us, which funnily enough, was where there were more people and even bigger crowds. It made me feel really claustrophobic and faint and I was becoming very disoriented. I hate crowds.

- Smokers! You can not imagine how much more I hate smoking after this trip. Nearly all my cousins smoke, the house reeks of ciggies, my clothes absorb it, my hair absorbs it, my lungs absorbs it, I hate it.

Things we did:

- When we arrived in HK, nobody came to pick us up at the airport :( All our relatives were busy…. So we had to make our own way to my aunty’s place. Now that was interesting… in Europe, we had a guidebook to help us, there were maps and info on how to take public transport and where to find tourist information offices… in HK, we had nothing. We knew nothing. We (stupidly) relied on relatives to help us, but didn’t expect them to be busy! We had no map, no had no idea how to take public transport, not a lot of money on us, we didn’t know where to find a tourist information office, we were tired, jetlagged and we had a large broken suitcase.

I called one of my cousins, she gave me directions on how to get to my aunt’s place, but keeping in mind that I was jetlagged and tired and naturally absent-minded and forgetful, I had pretty much forgotten the directions 20 seconds after hanging up the phone.

- But we made it, we didn’t get lost, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. Next time I’ll be more prepared, next time I’m not gonna solely rely on relatives or friends

Po Lin Monastery and the Giant Buddha at Lantau Island

It was a cold cold day in HK that day… cold and wet and foggy and windy, a plain miserable day it was. For me, it was miserable in more ways than one for I had come down with the sniffles as well and the cold, wet, windy day didn’t help at all.

We must’ve looked kind of frozen cos the lady the ticket counter offered us her own personal pieces of clothing to keep us warm while we made the long trek up what seemed like millions of steps to see the big Buddha. Now that was a nice lady. We were eternally grateful for her generosity because I’m not sure we would’ve made it all the way to the top without some warm clothes. We were just not prepared for how cold it actually was that day, the weather forecast said 22 degrees... well, let me tell you, 22 degrees it certainly wasn’t!

When we left Lantau Island, just to make ourselves feel better, we went shopping

Avenue of Stars & the HK Light Show

After so many days of fine fine weather, of course we had to choose the one day of miserable weather to go see the light show and the Avenue of Stars. The one day when I felt so bad, so sick and looked so miserable was the one day we chose to do an ‘outdoor’ thing.

I mean, I still had fun, I still enjoyed myself, but I could’ve enjoyed myself a lot more had it been a better night, and had I not been so sick, but that’s the way things happen sometimes…

Chinese New Year Flower Market

I was so excited when one of my cousins said he’d take us to the Flower Market. Not just any old flower market, no sirree, this one only happens during Chinese New Year and we don’t get anything like it here in Melbourne. It’s a strange thing for me to get excited about flowers, but I guess to understand my excitement, you have to grow up with knowing about it and hearing about this flower market but never having the opportunity to actually see it. It’s not anything spectacular, it was just a market with 3 main types of plants: Lillies, Cumquats and Blossums, but imagine hundreds and hundreds of stalls selling exactly the same stuff.

Of course, just to add to the festive atmosphere, there was a whole other market selling novelty balloons, like the ones they sell at Moomba and the Show, the big hammer, the big baseball bat etc, except in HK, they are way more inventive, anything and everything you can possibly name has been made into a big novelty balloon, and of course, this year being the year of the pig, there were no shortage of novelty pig paraphernalia. I must admit, I was laughing and giggling like a silly school girl every time I saw a new balloon… you’d think that after you see one, two, three, perhaps even four different kinds of balloons, I’d get over the whole thing but I didn’t. I was continuously surprised and amazed by everything, absolutely everything. You’d think I’d been living under a rock my entire life.

That's really it, there's not a lot to do and see in HK... you shop, you eat, you shop some more then you eat again.