Hong Kong

We loved Hong Kong! We had four days there, and used it to unwind after our time in China.

The feel of the place struck a real chord with me; it felt like a really happy cross between China and London, which makes a lot of sense. They even have double-decker buses!

It's really hard to put your finger on exactly what we did in Hong Kong that was so great; we're always so enthusiastic about it, and it's often one of the answers we give to the question "where was the best place you went", but when we try and describe it all it never sounds as good as it was. There was just something about the whole feel of the place which we loved.

Walking the streets, or taking the tram on Hong Kong Island, as well as the Star Ferry across the harbour to Kowloon are great ways to soak up the atmosphere.

There's every sort of restaurant you could want, including great streets packed with Chinese restaurants with live crabs and fish in tubs and tanks in front. There's some great shopping both on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon.

In terms of sight-seeing, we took the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria Peak, from where you get a great view over much of Hong Kong. We had to queue for something like an hour to get on the tram, so it's worth turning up early for this. The best attraction in Hong Kong for me was the Hong Kong sound and light show (see review), which I think is a must for anyone going there. We also did a Sampan ride around Aberdeen harbour, which was an interesting mix of old and new: motoring slowly around the harbour in a small wooden boat, looking up at modern buildings and expensive yachts.

And we took a trip to Stanley beach, where we paddled in the water a bit, and marvelled at the warnings about shark attack! We had also planned to go to Lantau island, to a temple where there's a large bronze Buddha, but we ran out of time (see below).

We stayed in a small guest house in Mirador Mansion, in Kowloon. We wanted somewhere cheap to stay, and ended up in quite a horrible room, but it was only about HK$150 a night. The mattress smelt of things you don't want to contemplate, and filled almost all of the room. There was a small bathroom in the room as well; so small that the shower was directly above the toilet, and, if I sat on the toilet I couldn't close the door because my knees were still outside in the "bedroom"! The guesthouse got raided one night be the immigration department, which was quite scary.

Luckily they didn't come into our room, but we were woken up by what sounded like someone trying to break down the metal shutter on the front of the apartment where our room was located. We barricaded the door and hoped for the best. When we checked into the place the lady at reception wanted a deposit in our home currency (not sure why). We didn't have any, so she said she'd take anything to value of US$10, so we gave her one of our useless left-over 10000 togrog notes from Mongolia!

Next door to Mirador Mansion is another old apartment block which contains a number of Indian restaurants. You can't miss it because it's impossible to walk past the front without at least four touts from competing restaurants getting in your way an thrusting leaflets into your hands! We went to one of the restaurants in the end, called Everest.

The food turned out to be really very good. The walk to the restaurant was a little weird though: we were led by the tout, through the building, which is a maze of corridors and stairwells, passing one enormous cockroach on the stairs, and then we stepped through an anonymous-looking door and suddenly into a fully-appointed Indian restaurant; it reminded me of moments as a child at Christmas when you step from a department store into Santa's grotto!

Foodwise we also loved finding branches of Delifrance in various places. We were able to have pate sandwhiches, another of our favourites which we'd been missing in China. (We were very disappointed when we got to Singapore a few months later to find that Delifrance in Singapore has a different menu, and is devoid of pate).

We found it hard to get Internet access in Hong Kong (we'd been finding it difficult in China as well, but occasionally we'd come across a place). You could get basic access for browsing in the Pacific Coffee Company (which meant that we had an excuse to sit drinking coffee as well), but we were forever looking for places where we could upload photos. On our last day we discovered that the library (which is near one of the Star Ferry terminals on Hong Kong Island) has free Internet access, as well as a printer, which we needed for printing out our e-Ticket for our flight to India.

On our last day we'd planned to go to Lantau Island for a final day of sight-seeing, until I suddenly remember that we'd booked our flight to India for that day (we'd had to move it one day back, and then had promptly forgotten that we'd done that!).

We had to really rush to pack our bags and check out (we only had 5 minutes to avoid paying for another day), then rush to get the Star Ferry, to get to the library so that we could print out our e-Ticket, then rush back to Kowloon to pick up our bags and get the bus to the airport. We managed to get there with just enough time to grab a burger before boarding our flight!

Hong Kong airport is fantastic; eveything runs really smoothly, and the staff are genuinely polite.

If you have a few days, or you're planning a stopover, then I'd definitely recommend Hong Kong.