Hong Kong

I guess I'll start with the flight - well, it wasn't too bad. I was sitting next to Barry. Barry was from Christchurch and was flying onto China for business. When I asked him what he did, he said "I buy and sell things". Right. Anyway, Barry wasn't a bad stranger to sit next to. He didn't elbow me too much and didn't get up and down all the time.

I managed to watch 3 movies on the plane 'Miss Potter', 'The Holiday' and 'The Freedom Writers'. I had been wanting to see the first two for ages, so I was pretty happy. My viewing of The Freedom Writers was interrupted when the guy behind me spilt his cup of cold water down the back of my shirt... Luckily I had taken my old hoody onto the plane, as I had to get changed because my T-Shirt was soaked. Luckily there was only about 3 hours of the flight left, and luckily it was just cold water - it would have been much worse if it was hot coffee, coke, wine, beer, rum.. the list goes on.

Once I arrived I had to wait about an hour to get the shuttle to the Hotel. I wanted to go to the night markets, but wasn't quite sure seeing that it was about 10.45pm by the time I got to the hotel! However, after seeing heaps of people (including females by themselves) walking around when I was on the bus, I decided to venture out and have a wee look. I came back to the hotel with 2 small oil paintings on canvas, which I think cost me about $8 NZ. I've been doubling the prices then dividing the answer by 10, I think that is the approximate conversion! After that, it was time to hit the sack (or really hard small bed).

This morning I went on a mission to see the Man Mo Temple on Hong Kong Island. The subway was pretty easy to use and just like South Korea so that was great. I hadn't been able to find much travel info about Hong Kong before I arrived at the airport. Whakatane Library didn't seem to have much, and neither did the travel agents. I'd seen pictures of the spirals/coils of incense suspended from the roof at this temple and they looked really cool, so I decided to check it out. Had to go up a street called Ladder Street (it was just a big staircase). Took quite a few photos at the temple, but can't plug the camera into this computer (they've hidden everything except the screen, key board and mouse) so you will have to wait a while to see them.

I also have photos of the bamboo scaffolding, a Hong Kong survey Benchmark (BM 3 apparently) some stormwater grates because the holes are diagonal not parallel to the sides, and Dad, a photo for you - new way of delivering gas bottles - get an old bike and secure at least nine 9kg bottles round the side and an extra two or three larger bottles on the front. Not sure these people would get a Dangerous Goods license?!

Carina, I know you will be wondering if I took any photos of people, and yes, there are some with some random people in them.

I found Nemo (and his twin brother/sister) in the gold fish markets. So many different fish, hanging in plastic bags with water. I felt sorry for the ones that were too big for the bag to swim around, and even more sorry for the ones that were floating upside down on the top of the water or lying still on the bottom :(

I also saw some really little turtles (about the size of a matchbox car I think) in the Reptile Shop so I took some photos of them too. I wanted to buy one but wasn't quite sure how it would survive the flight or whether I would get through customs.

The last stop was the markets, I forget the name. Anyway, if I had more room in my bag I would have bought heaps of cool stuff for my 'nieces' and 'nephews'. There was heaps of cool kids stuff with Winnie the Pooh, Hello Kitty, Elmo etc on it.

I tried to find some of the hazelnut filled waffle ball things that I'd had in South Korea. Had a bit of trouble with the translation and ending up with some kind of curried seafood on a stick, which I wasn't in the mood for. In the end, I ended up going to maccas, to use their clean loo's and get some food I could recognise. You can by cups of corn as a side order in Hong Kong. There is some useless information for you!

After that, it was time to go back to the Hotel to wait for the airport shuttle. There were no seats left, so I sat on the floor - after about 10 minutes they offered me one fo the seats from behind the desk which was nice of them. While I was sitting there, I read the guide to Hong Kong I had picked up last ngiht at the airport. I found out that I could have seen the incense spirals at another temple too - this particular one was about 50m from my hotel... Oh well, it was worth the adventure to get to the other one!

Right, I get kicked out of this travellers lounge in 17 minutes so I better sign off.

Look forward to seeing those of you who are in London real soon, and look forward to hearing from everyone else!!

Stacey